1. Revised Outline – Take time to edit your sentences.

Think about
spelling, grammar and word choice. Do all your sentences support their
topic sentence and main idea?
a. Main Idea
i. Is there a ‘Literacy Crisis?’ Literacy refers to literacy
proficiency which means how much someone can
understand difficult writing. These days, most people cannot
read above the third grade level. but most university
textbooks are written at sixth grade and above. According to
the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES),
Some 34% of students are below basic reading level in the
fourth grade. Another 31% are below the proficient reading
level. About 27% of eighth grade students are below basic
reading level, per NCES. Another 39% are below the prof
icient reading level.
ii. I can definitely say that there is a literacy crisis. Then, what
could we do to solve this problem? I want to introduce you
Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) by Stephen Krashen. FVR
means reading becuase you want to. it includes no book
reports, no questions at the end of the chapter. In FVR, you
don’t have to finish the book if you don’t like it. Krashen
says that FVR is the best way to improve students’ and
people’s ability to gain knowledge and proficiency in a
language. With FVR, students and people will find difficult,
academic-style texts easier to read, and grammar, spelling,
speaking, and vocabulary skills will improve.

iii. The researches show that FVR used in three different

formats; sustained silent reading, self selected reading, and
extensive reading produces better results for language
acquisition and use than traditional methods such as audio
lingual method.
1. In sustained silent reading, both teachers and students
engage in free reading. In self-selected reading,
teachers hold conferences with students to discuss
what was read. In extensive reading, a minimal
amount of accountability is required such as a short
summary of what was read.
2. In-school free reading programs provide some of the
clearest evidence for the power of reading. That FVR
is better than traditional methods is shown by many
studies such as results of reading comprehension tests
 between in-school free reading compared to traditional
approaches, differences between read and non-read
groups among in-school reading studies in South
African schools, and differences between the
extensive reading group and traditional group among
the results of the cloze test in japan.
3. In the respect of spelling acquisition, some researchers
reported no additional gains in spelling due to
supplementary free reading, but other reported
students made better progress in spelling. In any case,
traditional methods couldn’t make students do better.

iv. Reported researches of free reading in a second language

show that those who read more do better on a wide variety of
tests than those who study with traditional methods.
1. Studies in both second and foreign languages confirm
that those who read more do better on a wide variety
of tests.
2. In Stokes, Krashen, and Kartchner’s study, students of
Spanish as a foreign language in the United States
were tested on their knowledge of the subjunctive, a
verb form. The only significant predictor of the ability
to use the subjunctive was the amount of free
voluntary reading done in Spanish.
3. According to the study of Lee, Krashen and Gribbons,
Similar results for mastery of the English relative
clause were reported for international students living
in the United States.
4. FVR affected EFL students got better than before and
even got better than other students who were taught
traditionally. In Gradman and Hanania’s study,
students who reported more “extracurricular reading”
scored higher on the TOEFL test.

v. Those who read more tend to get better scores on the author
recognition test, and they are also better on reading
comprehension, vocabulary, and spelling.
1. In the author recognition test, subjects simply indicate
whether they recognize the names of authors on a list.
2. Significant correlations have been reported between
performance on an author recognition test and writing
performance in Chinese, and Korean, and between
 author recognition test performance and vocabulary
development in Spanish.
3. Those who report reading more also do better on the
author recognition test. This is true for English
speakers, Korean speakers, Chinese speakers, and
Spanish speakers.
4. Kim and Krashen reported that for high school
students of English as a foreign language,
performance on an English author recognition test was
a good predictor of performance on an English
vocabulary test.

vi. ‘Read and Test’ studies also provide evidence for the power
of reading
1. “Read and Test” is after students finish reading the
passage, they are tested to see if they have acquired
some or all of the meanings of the unfamiliar words or
if their spelling of these words has improved. Readers
are not alerted to the presence of these words in the
text, nor are they told that a vocabulary or spelling test
will be given after they read the text.
2. According to the Clockwork orange study by Saragi,
Nation, and Meister, it provides a powerful
demonstration of our ability to acquire vocabulary by
reading.
3. In Hermann’s study, it indicates that most context are
helpful to understand vocabulary through FVR
4. In each studies, students were not aware of that they
would take the test but they did better simply by
reading a book
vii. Traditional methods such as direct instruction cannot
account for the development of literacy, and there are several
compelling reasons.
1. direct instruction can be characterized as a
combination of two processes: first is ‘Skill-building,
second is ‘Error correction.’ Skill-building means
consciously learning a rule, word meaning, or spelling
an then making the rule “automatic” through output
practice. When errors are corrected, students are
expected to adjust their conscious knowledge of the
rule, word, or spelling.
2. And there are mainly three arguments against direct
instruction. First, is the complexity argument. Second,
 competence without instruction. Third, The impact of
direct instruction is small or nonexistent.
3. The complexity argument refers that language is too
vast, complext to be taught or learned grammar,
spelling, phonics, writing style, and vocabulary at a
time. Through Lorge&Chall, Seashore&Eckerson’s
studies, we can estimate the vocabulary size of adult
from about 40,000 to 156,000. It has been claimed that
elementary school children acquire from 8 to more
than 14 words per day according to Nagy&Herman
and Miller’s studies. Not only there are too many
words to acquire, but are also subtle and complex
properities of words such as spelling, word categories,
and writing style. They are surely not acquirable at a
time.
4. Competence without instruction means that literacy
development can occur without formal instruction. In
terms of some cases such as Ricard Wright and
Malcolm X, they couldn’t get school education well
but they could have literacy competence by reading
many books. In Richard’s, Kyte’s, Goodman’s, and
Haggan’s studies, each research shows that students
can learn spelling through reading.
5. the impact of direct instruction is not very effective.
When studies do show an effect of instruction, the
effect sometimes disappears with time. A series of
studies, dating from 1935, confirms that grammar
instruction has no impact on reading and writing
(reviews by Krashen and Hillocks)

viii. Conclusion
1. Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) is more effective for
reading comprehension, grammar acquisition, spelling
acquisition, speaking acquisition, vocabulary
acquisition and application in context. Otherwise,
traditional methods such as direct instruction are not
much more effective than FVR is.
2. In Successful Dyslexics study by Rosalie P. Fink,
dyslexics were expected to avoid reading and discover
ways to bypass or compensate with other strategies
rather than reading, but it turned out that they read
voraciously to find out more.
3. What method do you usually use to learn a language?
Now what about reading to do it?