Graded readers How the publishers strongmakestrong the grade - NFLRC.pdfVIP

Reading in a Foreign Language April 2012, Volume 24, No. 1 ISSN 1539-0578 pp. 106– 119 Graded readers: How the publishers make the grade Gillian Claridge International Pacific College New Zealand Abstract Publishing graded readers is big business, but there is evidence that the texts themselves are not being read in sufficient quantity to improve language proficiency. This article reports on a study of graded readers, focusing on interviews with some major publishers of graded readers, to investigate their production rationales. The findings suggest that the opinions of the ultimate consumers, the learners, are not regularly researched, with publishers tending to base production more on the demands of teachers and librarians who buy the books. The largest quantity of graded readers is produced for the intermediate levels, although if pleasure reading is the main purpose of graded readers, it would seem logical to publish a greater number of texts at the lowest level, to inculcate good reading habits from the start. Keywords : graded readers, extensive reading, publishers, learners, levels, reading habits The publishing of graded readers is big business, as the number of catalogues produced annually by publishers testifies. Graded readers are described by David Hill (2008), former director of the Edinburgh Project for Extensive Reading, as “books written for learners of English using limited lexis and syntax” (p. 185). For learners of English as a second, or foreign language, they are potentially a major source of extensive reading material (Bamford, 1