"This second edition of Reading in a Second Language is both different from the first edition, but also a direct continuation. We are happy to report that the general findings of research informing reading comprehension and reading development are essentially the same as the interpretations of research in the first edition. At the same time, there are new chapters in the second edition that reflect changing perspectives and priorities over the past 14 years. Certain chapters have been slimmed down to provide room for these additions. Perhaps more importantly, new research has altered our own views on the roles of background knowledge, implicit learning, orthographic and syntactic processing, automaticity and the speed of word-to-text processing, amount of reading (or extensive reading), and the larger relationship between linguistic theory and language acquisition. Despite these changes from the first edition to the second edition, the goals remain the same as the first edition, using research findings to inform reading comprehension skills and reading instruction"