Reading in a foreign language: a reading problem or a language problem?

Even knowing that the knowledge of a foreign language is important to academic studies, most students fail to learn to read adequately in the foreign language. Either they read with less understanding than one might expect or considerably slower than they reportedly read in their first language.
Readers do not simply have to learn translation rules, but far more: how to relate what is being processed to one’s existing knowledge, emotions, etc. and to do so with an appropriate degree of flexibility. MacNamara (1970), studying Irish-English bilingual students, found out that those who understood the words and structures of the texts were still unable to understand what they read in the second language as well as in their first language.
Knowing that, researchers started to wonder if reading in a foreign language is ‘simply’ a problem of knowing the words and the grammar of the language, or if there were other causes of the difficulties learners experience.
In Latin-American countries, teachers have asserted that the reason their students cannot read adequately in English is that they cannot read adequately in the native language, in the first place an if only they knew hoe to read ‘properly’ in their first language, the problems of learning in English would be vastly reduced.
Several speculations have risen upon this matter:
Jolly (1978), for example, claims that success in reading a foreign language depends crucially upon one’s first-language reading ability rather that upon the students level of English ‘if this is identifiable’.
Cody (1979) shares the same view and asserts that foreign language reading is a reading problem and not a language problem.

Yorio (1971), however, takes a contrary view. He claims that the reading problems of foreign language learners are due largely to imperfect knowledge of the language and to native language interference in the reading process. In Yorio’s view, reading involves four factors:
1. Knowledge of the language;
2. Ability to predict or guess in order to make the right choices;
3. Ability to remember the previous cues;
4. Ability to make the necessary associations between the different cues that have been selected.

And this process becomes even more complex because of new elements which summarize as interference from the native language and inadequate knowledge of the target language:
1. The reader’s knowledge of the foreign language is not like that of the native speaker;
2. The guessing or predicting ability necessary to pick up the correct cues is hindered by the imperfect knowledge of the language;
3. The wrong choice of cues or the uncertainty of the choice makes associations more difficult;
4. due to unfamiliarity with the material and the lack of training, the memory span in a foreign language in the early stages of it’s acquisition is usually shorter than in our native language: recollection of previous cues then is more difficult in a foreign language than in the mother tongue; and at all levels, and at all times, there is interference of the native language.

Unfortunately, the views of Yorio, Coady and Jolly remain assertions: they are eminently researchable assertions, but do not base themselves upon empirical evidence.
What is needed is the development of a series of researchable hypotheses, from which not only empirical evidence should flow but hopefully also a series of pedagogic implications might be derived for the teaching or learning of reading in a foreign language.

*A cue is anything that leads you to act in a particular way.
*Empirical means resulting from or involving practical experience rather than theory.
*The word span is added to nouns to form compound words which refer to a particular length from end to end in distance or time.