Extensive Reading

To get maximum benefit from their reading, students need to be involved in both extensive and intensive reading. Whereas with the former, a teacher encourages students to choose for themselves what they read and to do so for pleasure and general language improvement, the latter is often ( but not exclusively ) teacher-chosen and directed. It is designed to enable students to develop specific receptive skills such as reading for gist ( or general understanding – often called skimming ), reading for specific information ( often called scanning ), reading for detailed comprehension or reading for inference ( what is “behind” the words) and attitude.

Extensive reading

In order to develop our students’ word recognition and their improvement as reader, it is not enough to tell students to “ read a lot “ ; we need to offer them a programme which includes appropriate materials, guidance, tasks and facilities, such as permanent or portable liraries of books.

      Extensive reading materials

One of the fundamental conditions of a successful extensive reading programme is that students should be reading material which they can understand. If they are struggling to understand every word, they can hardly be reading for pleasure – the main goal of this activity. This means that we need to provide books which either by chance, or because they have been specially written, are readily accessible to our students.

Specially written materials for extensive reading – what Richard Day and Julian Bamford call ‘language learner literature’ (1998:61) – are often referred to as graded readers or simplified readers. They can take the form of original fiction and non-fiction books as well as simplifications of established works of literature. Such books succed because the writers or adaptors work within specfic lists of allowed words and grammar. This means that students at the appropriate level can read them with ease and confidence. At their best, despite the limitations on language, such books can speak to the reader through the creation of atmosphere and/or compelling plot lines. Consider, for example, the following short extract from the second chapter of level 1 (elementary) murder mystery for adults. In the first chapter, a man in a hospital bed appears to be suffering from amnesia. In the second chapter, that same man speaks to us directly :

There is a man near my bed. His clothes are white. No. Some of his clothes are white. He has a white coat, but his trousers are brown. He also has brown hair. The man in the white coat says he’s a doctor. He says his name is Doctor Cox. He tells me to call him Phillip. He says he is going to help me.

But he’s not going to help me. They think I don’t remember. They think I don’t know anything. They know nothing, the doctors. Or the police. Nobody kows who I am. I sit in the bed and answer questions. They ask lots of questions.

‘ Do you know what amnesia is, John?’ Doctor Cox asks me.

Doctor Cox, Doctor Philip Cox. He thinks he’s somebody. He’s nobody. I know what amnesia is.

 From John Doe by A Moses ( Cambridge University Press)

The language is simple and controlled, but the atmosphere – in true murder-mysery style – is satisfyingly creepy. A students who enjoys this kind of story, but whose level of English is fairly low, will enjoy it enormously.

·         Setting up a library

In order to set up an extensive reading programme, we need to build up a library of suitable books. Although this may appear costly, it will be money well spent. If necessary, we should persuade our school and institutions to provide such funds or raise money through other sources.

If possible, we should organise static libraries in the classroom or in some other part of the school. If this is not possible, we need to work out some way of carrying the books around us – in boxes or on trolleys.

Once books have been purchased, we should code them for level and genre so that students can easili identify what kind of books they are. We should make the students aware of what the library contains and explain our classification system to them.

We need to devise some way of keeping track of the books in the library. A simple signing-out system should ensure that our collection does not disappear over time.

All of these setting-up procedures take time. But we can use students to help us administer the scheme. We can, if we are lucky, persuade the school administration to help us.

If our students take part in extensive reading programmes, all the time we have spent on setting up a library will not have been wasted.

·         The role of the teacher in extensive reading programmes

Most students will not do a lot of extensive reading by themselves unless they are encouraged to do so by their teachers. Clearly, then, our role is crucial. We need to promote reading and by our own espousal of reading as a valid occupation, persuade students of its benefits. Perhaps, for example, we can occasionally read aloud from books we like and show, by our manner of reading, how exciting books can be.

Having persuaded our students of the benefits of extensive reading, we can organise reading programmes where we indicate to them how many books we expect them to read over a given period. We can explain hoe they can make their choice of what to read, making it clear that the choice is theirs, but that they can consult other students’ reviews and comments to help them make that choice. We can suggest that they look for books in a genre ( be it crime fiction, romantic novels, science fiction, etc) that they enjoy, and that they make appropriate level choices.

      Extensive reading tasks

Because students should be allowes to choose their own reading texts, following their own likes and interests, they will not all be reading the same texts at once. For this reason – and because we want to prompt students to keep reading – we should encourage them to report back on their reading in a number of ways.

 One approach is to set aside a time at various points in acourse – say every two weeks – at which students can ask questions and/or tell their classmates about books they have found particularly enjoyable or noticeably awful. However, if this is inappropriate because not all students read at the same speed ( or because they often do not have much to say about the book in front of their colleagues), we can ask them each to keep a weekly reading diary, either on its own or as part of any learning journal they may be writing. Students can also write short book reviews for class noticeboard. At the end of a month, a semester or year, they can vote on the most popular book in the library. Other teachers have students fill in reading record charts ( where they record title, publisher, level, start and end dates, comments about level and a good/fair/poor overall rating), they ask students to keep a reading notebook ( where they record facts and opinions about the books they have gone through) or they engage students to write in, as the following example for a book called  The Earthquake  shows:

Rating	Your comment and your name
5	I’m afraid earthquake happens to us Shoko
5	Great! Gabriel is nice. He is cool. Tomoko
4	“Who is really taking care of me,” I think after reading this book. Yoko
4	I had a chance to think what’s the most important thing by reading this book. Hisako

                From Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom

                By R Day and J Bamford ( Cambridge University Press )

It does not really matter which of these tasks students are asked to perform, provide that what they are asked to do helps to keep them reading as much and as often as possible.

Reference :

Harmer, Jeremy. The practice of English Language Teaching 4th Edition.