The procedure for the administration of a recall protocol is simple, and has proved to be a very useful tool to assess readers’ comprehension. Recall can take either a spoken or written form, each of which can be divided into immediate and delayed recall, depending upon the time interval between the completion of the reading task and the administration of the writing recall task. Recall can be further classified as cued or free recall depending on whether the task is with or without cues. Hayes (1989, p. 69) claims that recall protocol analysis becomes ‘cognitive psychology’s most powerful tool for tracking psychological processes’, and its use is based on the assumption that readers can retain information on the basis of their understanding (Apple & Lantolf 1994). In line with this, Berkemeyer (1989, p. 131) states that ‘the immediate recall reveals the interaction between the reader and the text, forcing the reader to comprehend the text well enough to be able to reproduce it in a coherent and logical manner’.
When administering a recall task, it is important to make sure that the instruction for doing so is clear, otherwise students may inadvertently perform a summary task instead. When a recall task is administered, readers should be simply asked to read the passage for a certain length of time or until they are quite sure they understand. When they have finished reading, they are asked to write down as much information as they can recall from what they have just read from the text without looking back at it (Bernhardt 1983). Further, Bernhardt (1991, pp. 187-188) suggests the following steps when using students’ recall as an L2 reading instructional tool:
1. Choose an unglossed text (perhaps 200 words)
2. Let students know that they may read the text as often as they like and that when they are finished you will ask them to write down everything that they remember from the text.
3. Provide students with sufficient time to read the text several times. 4. Ask the students to put the text out of sight and to write down
5. Collect the protocols written by the students.
6. Use these generated data as the basis for a future lesson plan that addresses: cultural features; conceptual features; grammatical features that seem to interfere with comprehension.’
The recall protocol is regarded as one of the alternative measurements for assessing both L1 and L2 readers’ comprehension, as evidenced by its widespread use both in L1 research (Fitzgerald & Spiegel 1983; Pearson & Camperell 1981; Snyder & Downey 1983) and in L2 research (Bernhardt 1983; Brantmeier 2002). Additionally, in L2 reading studies, there has been growing interest in using assessment of recall across range of areas of research interest. For example, there have been studies comparing recall with other testing methods (Lee 1987; Lee & Riley 1996; Shohamy 1984; Wolf 1993); into how factors such as background knowledge influenced L2 readers’ recall (Mohammed & Swales 1984); into how text structure influences reading comprehension (e.g. Carrell 1984; Lee & Riley 1990); and into the efficacy of training in the identification of the rhetorical organisation of a text and its effect on reading comprehension (e.g. Carrell 1985; Raymond 1993).
It is important to consider the use of the readers’ native language when assessing their comprehension when recall is utilised. It is recommended that the recall task should be written in the readers’ native language, rather than in the readers’ target language (Alderson 2000; Bernhardt 1991) because if it is written in the task takers’ L2, it will be a test of writing rather than reading (Alderson 2000). Bernhardt (1991) indicates that the immediate written recall protocol in learners’ native language is regarded as a valid assessment for reading comprehension because it can avoid miscomprehension due to readers’ lack of grammar, etc., without focusing the reader’s attention on the linguistic elements of the texts. Additionally, immediate written recall provides qualitative information, which critically benefits the assessment procedure and is thus vital for L2 comprehension processes, as well as for language instruction purposes (Bernhardt 1991). Berkermeyer (1989)
investigates the use of qualitative analysis for recall in order to develop reading instruction, suggesting that metacognitive strategies are regarded as a diagnostically useful pedagogical implication for learners to enable them to monitor their comprehension.
This preference is also confirmed by Shohamy (1984) who argues that questions, not only for a recall task, but also for other fixed test methods, such as comprehension and open-ended questions, which are written in the readers’ native language are much easier than those written in the readers’ target language, because, by doing so, readers will feel comfortable and less nervous. Similarly, Lee (1986) recommends, especially for L2 readers with an intermediate level of language proficiency, the use of readers’ native language to avoid underestimating and distorting the second language comprehension.
There are some characteristics of the recall protocol to compare with other reading comprehension assessment methods. According to Harris and Smith (1986), free written recall is a method of assessing reading comprehension that allows one to know what and how comprehension occurs. Written recall is considered as the ‘most straightforward assessment of the result of the text-reader interaction’ (Johnston 1983, p. 50), and Bernhardt (1991, p. 200) maintains that ‘a free recall provides a pure measure of comprehension, uncomplicated by linguistic performance and tester’s interference’. In comparison with comprehension questions, for example, Dehn (1984, p. 97) states that ‘free recall can reveal many of the inferences a reader has made, and also the structures in terms of which the reader understands the text’. Recall is different from other comprehension questions as it allows readers to construct what has been comprehended according to what seems to be logically right to them (Harris & Smith 1986).
Reading research findings in first-language reading research has been generalised to be useful for reading research in the second language (Alderson & Urquhart 1984; Chun & Plass 1997; Grabe 1991). Since L1 and L2 show different characteristics in many different ways, it seems
unreasonable to oversimplify the situation by directly adopting L1 reading research findings for the L2 reading process. Despite this, immediate written recall has been increasingly utilised as a means of assessing second language reading comprehension research (Bernhardt 1991; Deville & Chalhoub- Deville 1993; Kobayashi 1995; Lee 1986). The increasing interest in L2 reading research is likely to have been motivated by concerns about the complexity of L2 potential factors involved, such as language of assessment variability (Bernhardt 2005). Such a generalisation is still questionable since there are some possibly different conditions possessed by L1 versus L2; Grabe (1991, p. 389) concurs: ‘L1 research findings cannot always be applied to L2 contexts’.
Although reading, as Goodman (1973, p. 27) claims, is ‘much the same for all languages’, the transfer of L1 to L2 seems to be empirically conditional, due to some other potentially influencing factors that should be taken into consideration. As L1 reading ability is comprehensively constructed by linguistic knowledge and general reading skills, it is claimed that only L1 reading skills are transferable to L2 reading, while L1 linguistic knowledge is not (Schoonen, Hulstijn & Bossers 1998). The same conclusions have also been reached by Yamashita (2002) who indicates that L1 reading proficiency and L2 linguistic knowledge show complex interaction. Ulijn and Slager-Meyer 1998) add that L2 reading is a matter of not only linguistic knowledge, but also a matter of the reading strategies, and according to Block (1986), Alderson (2000) and Bernhardt and Kamil (1995), both are factors for reading comprehension. Upton and Thompson (2001) found that L1 for both intermediate and advanced learners plays a significant role in L2 reading tasks, but for L1 post ESL learners the L1’s role is almost insignificant. Furthermore, Bernhardt’s (2005) synthesis of the many studies indicates that the contribution of L1 reading to L2 reading is around 14% and 21% (Bernhardt & Kamil 1995; Bossers 1991; Brisbois 1995; Carrell 1991; Cook 1992; Cohen 1995). A translation strategy may be effective for L2 reading and in overcoming L2 language obstacles (Kern
1994), although L2 readers with lower L2 proficiency use their L1 more frequently (Upton 1997, 1998).