Can Free Reading Take You All the Way? a Response to Cobb

This is an article taken from the website Language Learning and Technology.

Summary

This text deals with the usefulness of free reading and it's also a critique to Cobb's view.

Cobb said that free reading was not enough for students to acquire the vocabulary needed to understand an L2 reading, he said that free reading did not give learners enough opportunities to acquire high levels of vocabulary and that it required a minimum of six to ten exposures to a word family to be acquired.

On the other hand, Krashen have said that free reading contributes to the acquisition of vocabulary not only in the second language but also in the first one. Free reading can promote vocabulary although not the appropiate for academic purposes.
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I think that free reading is good to encourage students read, because it is easier to learn vocabulary in the context of a sence or a paragraph than learn isolated words. I believe that students would feel more motivated if they are reading something they are interested in, so we can support learning through different ways