Why L2 Readers Cannot Play a Psycholinguistic Guessing Game

Abstract

In 1967 both L1 and L2 reading specialists were provided with a particularly influential model of reading, that of reading as ‘a psycholinguistic guessing game’ by Kenneth Goodman. The model not only revolutionized the conceptualization of the reading process by referring to its psycholinguistic back-ground, but also offered a metaphor of reading as a game-like process based on extensive guessing, still found appealing by some practicing L2/FL teachers. The present paper will argue why the definition of reading as a hypothesis-testing process based on prediction, sampling, confirming and verification worked out by Goodman gave such an important impetus for change in understanding the reading process and the development of reading competence. On a more practical side, it will be explained why the view that L2 readers can build the meaning of a text on the basis of contextual redundancy, as well as infer the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary by sampling selected features of the visual display has proved problematic for second/foreign language instruction. Finally, some current conceptualizations of the reading process and the way they counteracted the influence of the belief in top-down processing of texts with the abundant use of context will be analyzed.