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Part of
Digital Social Reading and Second Language Learning and Teaching
Edited by Joshua J. Thoms and Kristen Michelson
[AILA Applied Linguistics Series 21] 2024
► pp. 102–125

Chapter 5
Addressing text difficulty in novice L2 digital social reading

| Brigham Young University
| The University of Texas at Austin
| The University of Texas at Austin

Data from L2 digital social reading (DSR) can reveal textual features that increase literary discussion, with text difficulty shown to be a key inhibiting factor. Using DSR, 200 beginning university French students annotated lyrics to six songs of varying difficulty, with words beyond students’ expected proficiency levels glossed in English. No inverse relationship was found between four measures of text difficulty and the use of literary affordances, suggesting that glossing effectively allows beginning French learners to engage in literary discussion of texts through DSR beyond their current proficiency level. Analysis of other textual features leads to recommendations that teachers of beginning L2 learners hoping to maximize literary discussion should prioritize multimedia texts with cultural specificity and should embrace texts of higher difficulty provided that glosses are added as needed.

Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Affordances in digital social reading
  • Text difficulty in digital social reading
  • Data
  • Methods
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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