Turning input into intake: autonomous reading and its impact on writing

This paper shows the importance of reading in autonomous language learning. It presents the findings of an experiment in which a group of 19-year-old French EFL learners autonomously used the press as a repository of multi-word sequences. After receiving some in-class training in active reading strategies, they adopted a top-down approach to language learning to break down a number of press articles and identify various expressions and inherent language patterns that they then memorized and wove into their own formulations during in-class essays. Data was collected by means of a computer program and analyzed by two teachers of English using a purpose-specific taxonomy of errors. The results are described and followed by a discussion of the impact of reading on self-directed language learning