How can we identify authentic reading material that matches the learner's proficiency and fosters their language development? Traditionally, this involves assigning a one-dimensional label to the text that identifies the grade or proficiency level of the learners that the text is intended for. Such an approach is inadequate given that both the…

"The Critical Word Factor," based on word recognition demands of texts, is a measure of text difficulty designed specifically for texts used by beginning readers. The measure is a function of the number of new, unique words per 100 running words of text that fall outside a designated curriculum. The authors investigated the validity of the…

Reading in the Malaysian primary and secondary school system is largely a master of skill mastery and school textbooks, workbooks and even examinations are a testament to this approach. The teacher of reading is often forced to make the choice of training her learners to read and answer comprehension questions for examination purposes. Reading in…