The factors that make a text readable were identified in Unit 1.  Unit 2 has offered you the experience of and the chance to reflect on what else can make a text readable.  Every reader is a novice reader of texts on some topics:  because that reader is missing cultural background, key information, or certain kinds of language knowledge.  Moreover, the customary learning helpers, word lists or glosses, often do not exist for particular classes of texts -- or, as often happens, those glosses may not match the needs of that reader.  In the worst case,  a traditional gloss on a text tempts the novice reader to translate rather than read, making the process of reading laborious (because it slows the reader down, while creating the impression that the linear sequence of words of a text's sentences are the only way to understand it).  A reader is often not entirely prepared for a particular reading the experience.  In that case, he or she may need to seek out the missing information, background knowledge, or language they need to understand a text by consulting additional materials from the L2 culture (texts, illustrations, or brief expositions of significant content), rather than relying principally on  glosses and dictionaries. Making a text readable in the alternative ways suggested above often renders reading more enjoyable, and it opens the reader up to a greater range of cultural knowledge that can be acquired in the process of reading.

     Unit 1 discussed what text-internal factors make a text more readable;  Unit 2 shows how a range of other factors, often materials from outside the "text" proper, also can enhance the readability of a text.  That is, Unit 2 has illustrated how factors relating to the context of the text will affect its readability for a particular audience.

     A text with an illustration or an effective layout on the page, or a chart, graph, list, photo, or other picture on the text topic, helps the reader to find a concrete orientation to the content and language of the text, without overloading their language abilities.  Graphics and graphically-enhanced presentations of a text's content aid a reader in connecting with the who, what, where, and when of the text.  Those graphics may be part of the original presentation of the text, as in the case of an illustrated magazine article.  In other situations the graphics can be provided independently, to function in lieu of or as a supplement to a dictionary.  As we have seen, for instance, a brief list of historical dates on WW II would help a reader understand the sample text offered above, Heiner Müller's "Der Vater."

     A text that relies on the kind of prior knowledge that a reader already has will generally be an "easier" text for that reader to read.  A more "readable" text is one that matches what a reader already knows:  what kind of language, what information they have from other sources, and the cultural points of view held by that reader.

     Another way that an L2 text becomes more readable is in the situation after a reader has read an L1 text on a similar topic.  That prior reading experience will help not only in overcoming a reader's language difficulties, but also will lead the reader to make comparisons and connections with another culture more easily.  That L1 text can orient the reader to a text's topic and point of view more effectively (more pleasurably, more in tune with cultural comparisons) than can other kinds of language aids (e.g., dictionaries), since it focuses the reader's attention on appropriate connections of language and cultural elements, on culturally-appropriate patterns in the comparable texts.

     In short, what we have been illustrating is that a text can be made considerably more readable when the reader's initial contact with the text is framed in ways appropriate for that reader, even if the text itself does not contain all those framing elements.  If the text does not immediately signal what its category or categories of significant information may be (as in the case of a weather report, as we have seen), or if the  "who, what, where, when" that should situate the text for the reader are not obvious, that text can nonetheless be made readable with the appropriate additional materials.

     This exercise in discovering other things that make a text readable (beyond its language level and topic) also leads to a set of techniques that will allow a teacher to introduce reading into an L2 classroom much earlier than a student audience's abilities in vocabulary and syntax might otherwise suggest.   Unit 1 has explained criteria that make texts readable for most audiences;  Unit 2 suggests, in addition, that texts lacking some of these criteria can nonethess be made readable for a particular audience, if information deficits are remedied so that the reader can begin to bridge the gap between the world of the text (its language, cultural context, and topic) and his or her own.

     The assessment of the readability of a particular text can be made more precise if the following questions are asked about that text:

     -If a text does not have a clear point of view (e.g., the weather report), can it be given one easily?

     -If the text relies on simple language, but complex concepts, can those concepts be introduced in compressed form (e.g., in a list of 3-5 important dates from or events occurring during the Second World War), or through an illustration (e.g., a star chart)?

     -If the text relies on familiar (if complex) concepts, but in difficult language, can those concepts (rather than a dictionary or gloss) be used to introduce the text (as in the case of a parallel text presentation  in English or a graphic version of the same topic)?

     -If the text has an illustration, does that illustration enhance the text, or add little to it (e.g., as in the Club Med ad)?  Is there a better illustration (chart, etc.) that could substitute for the original, or be added to it?
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     Pre-reading strategies have been part of reading assignments for years.  Yet, as Units 1 and 2 have introduced, "reading" a text can be described in many different ways, just as a text itself can be judged (or be made) "readable" for various reasons.    Unit 2 has encouraged you to explore the factors which can make a text readable for a particular audience.  Unit 3 of Part 1 will turn to definitions of "What Can Be Read Out of a Text?": to show how these various kinds of readability can lead to a range of reading outcomes described in the Standards.  Unit 3, then, moves beyond readability to actual reading outcomes, to introduce what kinds of reading goals and assignments correspond to the Standards.