Reading short stories in a foreign language: Is it as pleasurable as in the L1? Absorption and appreciation of short stories in Dutch secondary school students learning German as a foreign language

Abstract

Against the background of a decreasing interest in reading among Dutch adolescents, we investigated whether reading short stories in a foreign language other than English (i.e., German) in an educational context, as opposed to reading in the first language leads to less absorbing reading experiences and, related to that, lower appreciation of stories.We collected absorption and appreciation data from 277 learners of German in Grade 10 of Dutch secondary education. Half of them read an originally German short story, whereas the other half read its Dutch translation.Our results indicate that adolescents learning a foreign language in secondary school become less absorbed in foreign language literary texts and that this is related to their lower appreciation of these texts, compared to their first language translations.