This paper explores the approaches and strategies used by secondary school learners of different languages in England completing Asset Languages reading tasks at levels A1 and A2 of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). Assessments across languages at the same level of proficiency were designed to a common specification and at…

"Decoding"--converting the written symbols (or graphemes) of an alphabetical writing system into the sounds (or phonemes) they represent, using knowledge of the language's symbol/sound correspondences--has been argued to be an important but neglected skill in the teaching of second language (L2) French in English secondary schools.…

In this article I describe how a survey instrument was constructed to elicit from Year 7 learners their strategies for reading in French as a foreign language. The rationale for this project entails a brief review of the status of foreign language reading in England since the advent of the GCSE and the National Curriculum for Modern Foreign…

This paper reports the findings of a small-scale study which focused on reading strategy instruction for learners of French or Spanish as a modern foreign language. The objective of the study was to explore the potential of reading strategy instruction in raising the learner readers' awareness of reading strategies, in extending the range of…