New paper co-authored by @beverleyjj.bsky.social Daisy Powell & @drhollyjoseph.bsky.social uses corpus linguistics to understand what #adolescents read in #school and at home - how do they prepare students for their #GCSE #EnglishLanguage exam?

doi.org/10.1016/j.ac...
@celm-uor.bsky.social

With thanks to University of Reading for the open access.

The implications considered, with special focus on the English language GCSE (a high-stakes, gateway exam taken by students in England). Should teachers be steering their students towards the type of reading that is in the exam? Or should the exam better reflect the challenges of curriculum reading?

The reading materials analysed were new primary data, collected from small samples of students' actual independent and curriculum reading. Whilst independent reading had a greater diversity of vocabulary, the curriculum materials had more abstract and conceptual vocabulary.

Published in Applied Corpus Linguistics, with co-authors Daisy Powell, Sylvia Jaworska and Holly Joseph, this paper explores samples of two types of adolescent reading materials: curriculum reading and independent reading (reading for pleasure) to see how the vocabulary in them differs.

Good reading ability is crucial to achieving well. For adolescent students, as the texts they read increase in difficulty, the vocabulary knowledge that they build through their reading experiences is key to developing this reading ability.