Journal of English Language Teaching

Aesthetic Reading: Efficient Enough

Stephen Krashen

University of Southern California (Emeritus), Los Angeles, California, USA

Keywords: Aesthetic Reading, Aesthetic readers, Efferent reading, Efferent readers

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Abstract

Ponniah and Priya (2008) reported that “aesthetic” (fiction) readers of English as a foreign language outperformed “efferent” (non-fiction) readers on tests of English.  This result is consistent with findings showing that aesthetic texts contain substantial amounts of academic language and supports the conclusion that fiction contains enough academic language to bring second language students to high levels of competence in English.

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