Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading, edited by Patricia Carrell, Joanne Devine, and David Eskey, is a welcome addition to the Cambridge Applied Linguistics series. The series provides a forum for the best new work in applied linguistics by those in the field who are able to relate theory, research, and practice.

Although reading has always had a prominent position in the interests of both second language teachers and researchers in second language teaching and learning, in recent years new views of the nature of the reading process have revitalized both theory and practice in second language reading. Originating in the work of theoreticians and researchers in first language reading, these new perspectives are typically associated with those who reject views of reading as largely a process of decoding and who see it instead as an interaction of both “top-down” and “bottom-up” processes – that is, processes that utilize background knowledge and schemata and are hence concept driven, as well as those that are primarily text or data driven.

This is the position advocated in this timely collection of original and reprinted papers spanning the literature in both first language and second language reading. The interaction between top-down and bottom-up processes in second language reading is examined from the perspectives of theory, research, and instruction. The book considers different models of reading as an interactive process, clarifying the nature and role of background knowledge, topic of discourse, schemata, and inferencing.