Limitations and Directions of Criminal Justice

            
             As the title of this chapter suggests, the discussion here will approach our experimental findings from three different perspectives. First we consider the implications of our work for L2 instruction and materials design. Then we discuss problems in the research and how they can be addressed. Finally, we propose a plan for investigating important questions raised by our experiments. In brief, the chapter explores the following questions:.
             How can we use our findings to make teaching and learning more effective?.
             How can our experimental model be improved?.
             How can we use the model in future investigations?.
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             We turn to the first of these questions in the next section which begins with a review of the thesis findings.
             2. How can we use results to make teaching and learning more effective?.
             2.1 Recapitulating the findings.
             The thesis set out to demonstrate what had seemed initially to be a simple truth: Extensive reading is good for L2 vocabulary development because you will run into new words often and this will help you learn them. Matters proved to be far less straightforward. One of the first problems we encountered was that few of the words that most learners are likely to be interested in acquiring are actually repeated very often in natural texts (such as novels). Nonetheless, we found a repetition effect for the small set of uncommon words that did occur often in a narrative text. In the Mayor of Casterbridge experiment reported in Chapter 4, frequently repeated words were acquired by more of the learners than words that occurred in the text less often. But exposing learners to reading materials specially rewritten to include more repetitions of unfamiliar words did not produce the same effect. In the newspaper texts experiment reported in Chapter 5, frequently repeated items were not acquired by more learners than less frequent items. .
             So we decided to take a second look at natural texts and the opportunities available for learning from multiple encounters, this time using more sensitive measures and a case study methodology.