Neville Grant
1. Extensive reading can provide “comprehensible input”.
Krashen (1982) argues that one of the key elements in language learning is “comprehensible input”, among which he lists extensive reading. He argues that extensive reading will lead to language acquisition, provided that the texts include adequate exposure to the language, interesting material, and a relaxed learning environment. Krashen and others emphasize that the quality of the language to which the learners are exposed is very important if they are to learn from the input. Elley (1991) notes the existence of “an exposure gap” between L1 learners and L2 learners, and reports on a number of relevant studies, showing that children between 6 and 12 years of age provided with extensive reading materials showed rapid growth in language development compared with other groups.
2 Extensive reading can enhance learners’ general language competence.
There is much evidence to support this view. For example, the book flood project in
3 Extensive reading can enhance students’ general knowledge.
While developing the widely-used series Junior and Senior English for China, Liu Daoyi reported that time and again, one of the key motivating factors in English classrooms was the desire to increase the students’ knowledge of the world, (Liu Daoyi, personal communication). The same applies to non-English majors in College, who have comparatively little intrinsic interest in learning English. One of the most popular elements in Active English, the series this author was involved in, was the “Enrichment reading” component. Students reported that they liked the texts provided because they were interesting, authentic, and “enable us to learn about the world.” (Gu Yueguo, personal communication.)
Motivations can come from many sources: the desire for general knowledge is one f them, but the intrinsic interest of the texts is another. Students in
The issue of motivation has a large literature which cannot be explored fully at this time.
A study by Nagy and Herman (1987) claims that children between grades 3 and 12 in the
It is also the case that extensive reading can consolidate vocabulary and language forms already treated in the classroom. In the past, the emphasis has traditionally been placed on graded readers, which have a controlled grammatical and lexical load, and these certainly have the advantage of providing regular repetition and reinforcement of language forms. (Wodinsky and Nation 1988). However, the development of the “real books” movement, particularly in the
Krashen (1984) reviews a number of studies in an L1 learning environment to support this view, but more relevant in
The classroom focuses inevitably on shorter texts, and extensive reading provides learners with the opportunity of reading longer texts, on more varied subjects, on their own, and in their own way. This is a very important aspect of extensive reading: students do need to be liberated from dependence on the teacher, and reading gives them the opportunity to do so. Many of our students go on from
However, a word of caution is required on this issue: most texts selected for wider reading tend to be fiction; fictional texts are a very different genre from the non-fiction that learners have to use in academic study, and it is questionable how far the reading strategies and approaches appropriate for fiction are also appropriate for non-fiction. We cannot assume that there is transfer from one genre to another, and for this reason it is strongly urged that non-fiction as well as fiction – in fact, as wide a range of genres as possible – should feature in an extensive reading programme. For this reason, the PEPUPYE series already alluded to does include a wide range of genres, and a healthy infusion of non-fiction as well as fiction. It is to be noted that this is also one of the requirements of the latest Ministry of Education syllabus.
How to implement an extensive reading programme
Extensive reading can be approached on two fronts:
The aim of the class reader is to enable the learners to improve the quality of their reading. (Grant 1975; Grant 1984) The class reader is a text that all the class read for a period, typically four or five weeks, both in class and out; selected parts are treated by the teacher in class, and it is the basis for numerous classroom activities, including (almost entirely oral) questioning, discussion, role-play, reading aloud (by both teacher and students) and creative writing. It is important not to spend too long a period on any one class reader; spending too long on one book can turn it into a bore, and the whole exercise can then become counter-productive.
The class reader has not been a common feature of many Chinese classrooms, but it can play a valuable part in helping to orchestrate imaginative response. As it is not directly related to examinations, it does not have to have any examination-style question types associated with it, and the teacher can send the students a number of crucial messages, including
*
* It is entirely acceptable to skim read – you don’t have to understand every single word to get the gist.
* It is good to develop opinions and personal responses while you are reading, both social, ethical and aesthetic.
If the class reader is concerned with the quality of reading, the IRS is concerned with both quality and quantity. The aim of the IRS is to get the learners to read as widely as possible, and as much as possible, as enjoyably as possible. How this is done depends very much on the resources that a school has available. It can approached in a number if different ways:
Using the school library
Students go into the library once a week, and select the books they want to read. During this period, the teacher monitors what books they are reading, helps them to choose, and carries out personal interviews with learners who have just completed a book – usually to find out their response to it (and in a perfect world to find out if they have in fact read it.) Students and teacher keep a record of titles read, with dates.
This operates in a very similar way, but this time the library is a smaller selection of books, and is available to the class in a book box, or cupboard. The books are carefully selected so that they are suitable for the class (one of the problems with a school library is that students sometimes select books that are inappropriate for one reason or another.)
If the resources of the school are limited, it is sometimes possible to get individual students to each buy one book, or share in the cost of buying books, and exchange them every week. By purchasing one book, a learner then has access, potentially, to 50 or more, depending on the size of the class.
It may be possible in some areas to encourage the learners to purchase their own books, and build up their own individual (or family!) libraries. If such schemes are to be successful, teachers have to persuade parents that such purchases are a worth-while investment.
Experience suggests that a number of features can assist in developing a successful IRS.
However the IRS is organized, there are always practical problems – organizing books, maintaining lists, sharing experiences of individual books, and so forth, and experience suggests that the more learners are involved, the better. Much better than asking the teacher to do everything!
Every week, a small number of learners should be invited to give a short presentation on the book they have just completed. Learners love to hear what others think of individual books, and these presentations play a useful role in helping others to choose books they are likely to enjoy.
“SloMo” reading is what takes place in the intensive reading classroom, where every word is sometimes taken apart and put together again; this is frequently counter-productive in the intensive reading lesson, and is doubly so in an extensive reading programme. The crucial skills of “Infski” should be developed as an important reader’s survival strategy. “Infski” is not a Russian Psycholinguist! It stands for “Infer or Skip”.
So dictionaries should very seldom be used, and good extensive reading materials will typically provide instant glosses of any key words that may cause readers to stumble. (This is a strategy employed in PEPUPYE.) Actually, one feels ambivalent about providing these bilingual glosses, but research suggests that this is what both students and teachers wanted, and if it makes the reading process easier, and quicker, and more motivating, so be it.
Teachers should keep track of what the students are reading – and how much they are reading. Backsliders may need a pep talk! Or maybe, as I have frequently found happened, the students may have chosen something highly unsuitable. When I was teaching in Dar-es-Salaam I once found that one of my students, normally a high-achiever, seemed to have ground to a halt in the IRS lesson. I found that he had chosen an original version of a Charles Dickens novel, and had got totally bogged down in chapter 1 for weeks on end!
Records of students reading can be kept in a book or on catalogue file cards, or even (in the case of a class library) on a wall chart (done by students!) big enough to list all the books available on the reading scheme down the side, and all the students’ names along the top. The date a book is completed is then entered on the chart. At the end of each semester stars can be awarded if desired, and can be converted to marks, if that is found to be motivating.
On the whole, tests, as such, should be avoided;
Short pieces of written work, as appropriate, may also be done – a good text frequently acts as a useful stimulus, as we saw with the young woman from.
6 Teacher’s promotional activities
These are essential, and can take many forms. Enthusiasm for reading, and about books, can be infectious; and teachers are urged to develop such enthusiasms – and to demonstrate them in action (see below, section 3). Among the promotional activities suitable are:
pep talks
reading aloud
the use of multi-media (videos, CD-rom, audio tapes, film etc.)
enrichment activities ( anecdotes, theatre visits, film visits, exploiting posters, indeed, exploiting anything that is relevant to what they have been reading.
awarding marks as appropriate to students as a reward for their reading efforts (efforts – not achievement!)
SSR, and its numerous variations –
SSR is not that new: as far as I know it was first introduced by Hunt (1970) and has since attracted much research, both in L1 and L2 situations. The results have been mixed, partly because many adaptations to the approach have been made. The research is reviewed in Chow and Chou (2001). An exhaustive account of SSR and its ramifications can be found in Pilgreen (2000). The consensus seems to be that it can work with some linguistically disadvantaged students, or ESL students, but that there are doubts as to the value of such a program with no testing or monitoring involved; this applies particularly to L2 students. This whole subject needs more research in
Experience from across the world suggests that extensive reading programs can play an important role in promoting language improvement and development. They require a certain amount of investment in both time and resources, but the benefits far outweigh the costs. With the new introduction of a new syllabus in
(Adapted from the author’s lecture The Theory and Pratice of Extensive Reading.)
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