ABSTRACT
This book has explored some of the new research in the area of English L1 and L2 reading and offered a new concept of profi cient English L2 readers as expert decision-makers and problem-solvers who use knowledge of language and the world, effective cognitive comprehension strategies, and quick automatic low-level processing strategies to interact with the text effi ciently. However, the discussion in many of the chapters tiptoes around an important topic. There is evidence from brain activation studies that different writing systems cause human brains to acquire different patterns of activation based on the writing system or orthography that they learn. That means that knowledge and processing strategies are highly language dependent. There is evidence that the reading system (as shown by the brain activation in English learners of Chinese) can accommodate a different writing system if the readers have some prior experience with that type of writing. Still, if there is little or no prior experience, the question remains: to what extent can teachers expect to change, through instruction, the L1 patterns of activation that are hard-wired, so to speak, into the brain? Is native-like brain activation even necessary for effective or fl uent reading in L2? The answers to these important questions are not yet known.
