A few days ago, one of my colleagues approached me in the MFL Department corridor to share a resource he referred to as ‘Parallel texts’ from Steve Smith’s www.frenchteacher.net . ‘This is excellent!’ – he said, showing me a worksheet (here: http://frenchteachernet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/parallel-reading-texts-for-near.html) . This contained a text in French on daily routine on the left hand-side and its translation on the right; some comprehension activities were included, too. ‘My students find them very useful!’ he added.

I hardly needed any convincing as I had used Parallel Texts (French / Italian) myself in the past when working as a translator for the European Union in order to refine my English, day in day out for a few months – and it paid off; my English vocabulary, syntax and awareness of text-specific discourse features grew exponentially as a result. In this article I will show what the potential benefits of using parallel texts with L2 learners can be in light of L2 acquisition theory and how they can be best exploited, in my view, in the classroom and/or as homework.

How can they impact foreign language learning?

Benefit 1 – They encourage ‘noticing’

‘Noticing’ is a phenomenon first documented, in the L2 acquisition literature by Richard Schmidt. According to Schmidt’s (1990) ‘Noticing hypothesis’ the learning of a foreign language grammar structure cannot occur unless the learner ‘notices’ the gap between the way that structure is used in the target language and his/her own L1. In my classroom experience I have witnessed many a time that Eureka moment when a student said, almost thinking aloud, “Oh, I get it! ‘I went’ in French is actually ‘I am gone’. That would be an occurrence of ‘noticing’. Another common occurrence of this process is when our students process our feedback on error and notice the gap between our version and their erroneous output.

One of the benefits of parallel texts, when the translation is as faithful as possible to the text, is exactly that the co-occurrence, side by side, of the target language and the first language version on the same page facilitates ‘noticing’. What’s more, such noticing, occurs in an ‘authentic’ linguistic context (not on the board through teacher-led examples), under lighter cognitive load (as the translation facilitates information processing) and in a safe ‘environment’ (as the translation takes away the risk-taking that inference-making involves). It is advisable, obviously, when using parallel texts, to encourage and scaffold ‘noticing’ by asking, for example, metalinguistic questions on the text, which can become the springboard for an inductive or explicit grammar session on a specific grammar / lexical structure.

Bringing the importance of ‘noticing’ into the learners’ awareness as a powerful catalyst of language acquisition can, in my opinion, impact those students who are more motivated and metacognizant. In fact, if we aim at forging autonomous learners, fostering noticing is a must and I cannot think of any other reading or learning activity that lends itself as beautifully as Parallel texts to creating a context for learning to ‘notice’. They certainly worked for me as a learner.

Benefit 2 – They can effectively scaffold reading with less confident readers

This is especially true of less confident learners who are put off by texts with masses of words they do not understand. The fact that one knows that there is a translation one can fall back upon when one ‘doesn’t get it’, may lessen the anxiety levels of such learners and provide a solid affective scaffold. But won’t this, someone may argue, encourage over reliance on translation? It won’t if parallel texts are used sensibly, with the right students and emphasizing the importance of looking at the translation only when they are stuck or when they need to double check that their inferences are correct. The use of parallel texts as scaffolds for reading is recommended at the early stages of instruction; the translation support will be gradually phased out as the students become more confident.

Benefit 3 – Students learn vocabulary in context

Parallel texts are one of the most ‘authentic’ ways of presenting new lexical items, as the learners do not process the target vocabulary through artificial means (e.g. through flashcards) or in a vacuum (e.g. vocabulary lists), but in an authentic linguistic environment (e.g. articles, short stories, poems), without the direct mediation of or need for the teacher. Moreover the process is relatively effortless both for teachers and students, thanks to the translation. But would it not be better, instead of ‘spoon-feeding’ them, to get them to find out the target words meaning inductively? Surely, the cognitive investment would result in deeper processing and consequently ‘better’ learning, right?

The answer is: it depends on what you are trying to achieve. If my aim is to develop/enhance student reading strategy use, I will elect not to use parallel texts. However I will prefer parallel texts when they represent a first step in a sequence of vocabulary activities aimed at recycling ‘to death’ useful words/phrases I have identified in the text and I want my students to learn. Hence, being the ‘presentational’ stage in a planned sequence of tasks I will have my students process those items effortlessly, to start with (i.e. with the support of the translation). After this first stage, one can, for instance:

1. Gap the L2 or English version and ask the students to fill them in with the missing words (in the context of a multiple choice quiz)
2. Cut up / Jumble up the English text and ask the learners to rearrange it based on the French text;
3. Then the English translation may be removed and typical vocabulary building and reading comprehension activities can be carried out (e.g. matching lists of English words with L2 words in the text; matching lists of L2 words with synonyms in the text; true or false, questions and answers; summaries or even translations of specific parts of the text; etc.)
4. Another activity students enjoy is to be given a modified version of the original texts, where the L2 or the English text contains errors ‘planted’ by the teacher. The learners are told the number of mistakes in the translation and are given ‘X’ number of minutes to spot and fix them.

In order to sensitize the learners to the target words in the text, quizzes and other vocabulary activities can be carried out prior to reading the text, which focus the students on those words. This, in my experience, can significantly enhance retention of target lexis.

Benefit 4 – They facilitate access to more challenging texts

Often, at lower levels of proficiency, learners cannot access texts due not so much to the vocabulary per se, but because of the complexity of the grammar or syntax. Parallel texts make it possible for learners to access higher level texts by providing valuable support in this respect, by means of the bilingual translation.

Benefit 5 – Differentiation

Parallel texts can be very helpful in differentiation from a more practical point of view. Imagine you want to carry out one or more comprehension tasks on a text. You could first either download a parallel text from a source or create your own; then you could eliminate the translation altogether for the more able learners whilst keeping ‘bits’ for the less able. With a little bit of editing you will be able, in a few minutes, to obtain three or four differentiated versions of the original.

In conclusion, parallel texts are a very useful and versatile learning tool that can be used to (a) scaffold reading with less confident learners (by virtue of being ‘safer’); (b) to facilitate conscious or subconscious ‘noticing’ (thanks to the co-occurrence on the same sheet of the L1 and L2 version); (c) to differentiate (with little work on the teacher’s part) and (d) to present new vocabulary in context. The best examples of non-electronic parallel texts for lower levels of proficiency I have located on the web so far are found at http://www.frenchteacher.net . I hope that the author, Steve Smith, will carry on producing them targeting higher levels of proficiency, too. Great interactive online parallel texts can also be found at http://www.textivate.com.

The enhancement of reading skills proficiency in foreign language learners has never been as crucial to their linguistic and holistic development as in the 21^st century classroom, due to the prominent role that digital technology and the Internet play in their lives. The Internet allows foreign language students easier and cheaper access to masses of information without having to purchase or borrow a book, and allows for a vast variety of choice of topics and text-types.

The goals of reading in the 21^st century classroom

With this in mind, in this day and age, more than ever, in their daily practice, curriculum planners, L2-instructional material writers and teachers need to have reading proficiency development in their focal rather than subsidiary awareness, striving, as much as possible, to enable learners to become competent autonomous readers. This means ensuring that they :

1. WANT to read independently – this implies experiencing success and enjoyment in reading tasks in the classroom as well as being conversant with the benefits of reading for the enhancement of one’s overall L2-proficiency;
2. Have effective approaches to reading independently – this requires learners to have acquired (a) effective reading strategies to compensate for lack of vocabulary knowledge; (b) learning strategies (such as using dictionaries effectively and knowing how to select accurately website resources for reading);
3. Have a wide enough vocabulary repertoire to be able to read independently;

To this we must add the need for students who may one day pursue a career as translators or interpreters to acquire translation skills.

The problem

To what extent do published instructional materials, MFL departments’ schemes of work and teachers explicitly, regularly and consistently focus on the above? Let us take a look at some of the typical reading activities in foreign language lessons (in totally random order):

• Word-recognition tasks;
• Searching the target text for the L2 equivalent of a list of L1 words;
• Deciding if statements about a text are true / false (or not mentioned);
• Closed / open-ended questions on a text;
• Inferring how target grammar structures in a text work;
• Partial or full translation of a text;
• Practice of compensation strategies (inferring meaning from context);
• Reading for gist (students summarize the main points);
• Reading for pleasure;
• Gap-fills;
• Split sentences to match;
• Matching questions and answers;
• Looking for information we need to accomplish a typical real-life task;
• To model the use of the discourse features and conventions which characterize a specific text-type;
• Jigsaw reading (piecing a jumbled up text back together);

Research strongly indicates that most foreign language lessons in UK school settings focus mainly on reading comprehension tasks such as true or false, (closed) questions and answers, gap-fills, matching exercises and, to a lesser extent, split-sentences and jigsaw reading. Although there is a place for this kind of activities, they hardly serve the goals of reading instruction listed in points (1), (2) and (3) above.

What these activities do, is test students’ comprehension of the written text whilst implicitly modelling a perception that reading is about skimming and scanning texts for answers to questions. These tasks, do have the potential to enhance the foreign language learner’s reading proficiency, do not get me wrong, in that they require students to apply inference strategies to answers the questions they are asked and semantic analysis; moreover, if the students are allowed and encouraged to use dictionaries, they may learn some new language in the process. However, they do not always per se necessarily widen and consolidate learners’ vocabulary repertoire – unless each texts is recycled through a range of activities and has some pre-reading tasks building up to them and some post-reading ones aimed at consolidation.

Even at the level of strategies acquisition the learning gains of this practice may be overestimated. Research clearly indicates that for reading strategy instruction to be most effective, reading strategies need to be taught explicitly – which, in most cases, in my experience, doesn’t happen.

The most detrimental impact of exposing students mostly to reading comprehension tasks, in my view, refers to the affective domain: how do we motivate learners to enjoy reading for reading’s sake by perpetuating such practice day in day out? How can we model real-life-like reading behavior if students carry out reading tasks that do not really occur in the real world apart from trivia-quiz nights? Real-life reading tasks involve (i) comprehending the main points of  text – not necessarily as directed by the questions formulated by the teacher/textbook; (ii) finding information one needs for the accomplishment of a task, to fill gaps in their knowledge or (iii) simply reading to learn new things for the sake of personal enrichment. Such tasks are more likely to motivate foreign language learners than comprehension for comprehension’s sake. Not to mention the negative consequences for the motivation to read when learners who are less good at making intelligent guesses or inferring details consistently score poorly.

The personal enrichment aspect briefly touched upon above is, in my view, the least tapped into in the typical MFL lesson, possibly because it entails that the learners would have to have a higher degree of involvement in choosing what is read in class – which some teachers may disagree with. But if we want to model independent learning, this has to happen and, thanks to the internet and mobile technology, this is easier to implement in the 21^st century classroom.

From a cognitive point of view, another harmful effect refers to the fact that we do not engage our students in extensive reading often enough. Yet, this is crucial to develop their autonomous competence as readers. Extensive reading, must be actively promoted and scaffolded in class as well at home, as often as possible for it to become a habit to carry over to out-of-classroom student practice. Scaffolding is the key word here, as students will need reminders to read and materials, worksheets, google documents, Edmodo, Padlet or other platforms to log in new words they found, to ask the teacher for clarification, to express their response to the content, etc.

Grammar, too, is rarely linked to reading activities. Yet, recent research has found that readers who are able to analyze the language occurring in a text structurally, i.e. through the application of their knowledge of the L2-grammar rule system do have greater chances to understand a text than those who do not. Reading skills enhancing activities should therefore also include tasks which demand learners to analyze texts metalinguistically (e.g.: sorting specific words in the text into nouns, gender, tense; asking questions as to why an adjective has an ending rather than other, etc.) .

Implications for the enhancement of reading skills

Top-down and Bottom-up processing skills – Reading skills instruction should aim at developing Top-down processing and bottom-up processing skills. The former refer to reading strategies involving using previous knowledge about the topic and context of the text-in-hand to infer meaning. Bottom-up processing skills refer to the way the learner reconstructs a text’s meaning through the knowledge of vocabulary, grammar/syntax and sociolinguist features. In order to practice both sets of skills, just giving students reading comprehension ‘quizzes’, marking them and giving scores is not enough to impact reading proficiency. I advocate the following tactics:

1. Pre-reading tasks which (a) elicit background knowledge of the topic and context of the target text and model useful reading strategies and (b) present and practice the key vocabulary occurring in the target text;
2. Recycling of the same text through several activities to exploit its full linguistic potential across the lexical, grammatical and cultural dimensions. Such activities will involve word-recognition; finding target language equivalent in the text of L1 word (see www.frenchteacher.net for examples) ; scanning the text in search of synonyms of a list of L2 words; grammatical analysis; comprehension questions, true or false and gap-fills. Text manipulation activities of the like found on www.textivate.com can also be very useful.
3. Post-reading receptive and productive tasks aiming at consolidating the vocabulary and the grammar ( odd one outs, categories, gap-fills, split sentences – see www.language-gym.com/work-outs for more example)

Real-life reading activities – in order to enhance student motivation and effectively scaffold independent Internet-based out-of-the-classroom reading, reading activities should also include the same activities the learners engage in real life, whether for pleasure (e.g. reading media gossip about a pop-star, synopsis of a movie, reviews of videogames, short stories, poems, magazines articles ) or to accomplish a task (checking the train schedule; researching information for a piece of homework; finding out where one can buy a given product at the cheapest price, booking a holiday online).

Student-driven text selection -teachers ought to give students a degree of choice as to what is read in the class. This can be done fairly easily in settings where students have tablets, personal computers or mobile devices. When this is not possible, the teacher could carry out a survey to find out what students are interested in and select the target texts accordingly. Teachers should not be afraid to be high jacked away from the topic under study a few lessons per term.

Reading longer texts – This should become a habit amongst our students, starting with simplified readers or using parallel texts of the likes found on the excellent www.frenchteacher.net and culminating in the use of longer short-stories. Reading clubs can be set up with the support of school librarians, parents or older students. I personally have found extensive reading to be very useful in enhancing reading and language proficiency overall.

Web-related learning strategies – students should be made aware of what the most effective approaches to developing reading skills on the web are. This will include advising them on where to find resources suitable for their level of proficiency; modelling ways to exploit such resources effectively; how to use online dictionaries or forums where to seek linguistic support (e.g. the wordreference.com one); how to store and organize effectively the new vocabulary they come across and even how to use it for self-teaching (e.g. by using quizlet or memrise).

In conclusion, textbooks and teachers should be more creative, eclectic and systematic in their approach to reading skills practice and enhancement. The development of an effective and motivated Internet-savvy autonomous L2 reader should be at the heart of any pedagogic approach to reading instruction in the 21^st century. This entails providing the learners with effective cognitive tools (reading strategies), adequate L2 declarative knowledge (vocabulary and grammar), an enhanced awareness of how the Internet can help them improve their reading skills (web-related learning strategies) and opportunities for reading-related enjoyment and personal enrichment.