📌Free webinar on "Extensive Reading" Extensive Reading (ER) is an approach to second language reading. When learners read extensively, they read very easy, enjoyable books to build their reading speed and fluency. Another way to say this is students learn to read by actually reading rather than examining texts by studying the vocabulary, grammar and phrases. It is instructive to compare Intensive Reading (IR) with Extensive Reading. Purpose: The purpose of an extensive reading webinar is to encourage reading fluency, so students should not be stopping frequently because they do not understand a passage.

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4. Extensive reading fits into the
meaning-focused input and
fluency development strands of
a course, depending on the level
of the books that the learners
read.

5. However, because of the nature of reading and learning from reading,
a reading development programme will benefit from careful planning
and monitoring. There are two major language-based reasons for this.
First, reading requires considerable knowledge and skill.
Second, learning through extensive reading is largely incidental
learning

6. THE CHAPTER IS ORGANISED AROUND A SET OF GUIDELINES FOR PLANNING A
PROGRAMME.
Extensive reading is a form of learning from meaning-focused input.
During extensive reading learners should be interested in what they
are reading and should be reading with their attention on the
meaning of the text rather than on learning the language features of
the text.
There is now plenty of evidence (Elley, 1991) that reading can result in a
variety of substantial proficiency gains. However, it is important to note
that these gains require considerable time and effort.

7. Extensive reading can only occur if 95 to 98 percent of the running
words in a text are already familiar to the learner or are no burden to
the learner (Hu and Nation, 2000).
The clear message from this is that for learners of English to do
extensive reading at the elementary and intermediate stages of
proficiency, it is essential that they read graded readers that have
been specially prepared for learners of English.

8. Hill (in Day and Bamford, 1998) provides a very useful list of what he
considers to be the best graded readers and this is a very valuable
starting point in building a collection of graded readers. As there is no
recent report of what learners enjoy most, it is worth collecting data
on this. The Extensive Reading Foundation website (http://
www.erfoundation.org/) is also an excellent source of award-winning
graded reader titles.

9. Research on the vocabulary covered by different numbers of graded readers
(Nation and Wang, 1999) suggests that learners need to read many books in
order to gain control of the high frequency words of English, preferably at
the rate of a graded reader every one or two weeks.
In an extensive reading programme, reading should be the main activity and
other activities should occupy only a very small proportion of the time so
that time is not taken away from reading. For this reason, most extensive
reading programmes do not require learners to do elaborate comprehension
tests or exercises on the books they read.

10. One of the most useful ways in which the course can support extensive
reading is by providing training in reading faster.
A speed reading programme involves the learners reading texts that are well
within their language knowledge; that is, they contain no unknown
vocabulary or grammatical features.
A good reading speed is around 250 words per minute. Most learners
without training read at less that 100 words per minute.

11. Nation and Wang (1999), in a detailed study of 42 graded readers in the
Oxford Bookworms series, reached the following conclusions, considering
only the aim of vocabulary learning.

12. 1. Learners should read at least one graded reader every week, no
matter what level they are reading at. This rate of reading allows unknown
vocabulary to be repeated before the immediately previous occurrence is
forgotten.
2. Learners should read at least five books at a level (say Level 2) before
moving to books at the next level (Level 3). This number of books provides a
chance for most of the vocabulary introduced at that level to occur.
3. Learners should read more books at the later levels than the earlier.
This is because the vocabulary of the earlier levels occurs very frequently in
the books at the later levels. Books at the later levels thus provide good
conditions for learning all the vocabulary of the graded reader series.

13. Not all texts for extensive reading need to be simplified texts as there are
other ways of helping with the vocabulary load of extensive reading. These
include glossing, computer-assisted reading, and elaborating.

14. Glossing involves providing the meanings of words in L1 or in a simple L2
definition in the margin next to the line containing an unknown word.
Computer-assisted Reading
One of the best computer-assisted reading programs can be found on Tom
Cobb’s website www.lextutor.ca. Look under the heading Read with
resources. The learner pastes in a text, clicks build, and then starts reading.
By clicking once on a word, a spoken form of the word can be heard. By
clicking twice, several concordance examples appear. These additional
contexts can help with guessing the word’s meaning from context clues.
Elaboration
Elaboration involves the rewriting of texts but it involves adding to the
original text rather than removing or replacing what is there. The unknown
words in the text are, in effect, glossed in the text itself.

15. This discussion of guidelines for an extensive reading programme has
focused mainly on learning conditions and research and has not given
attention to more practical factors such as how to organise and manage a
library of graded readers, how to obtain graded readers, and how many are
needed to set up a library. These issues are well covered in Day and Bamford
(1998).

16. Practical applications
• Use assessment to find out how well students are reading, and
also how to help them read better.
• Choose a method of assessment appropriate for the level and
type of student.
• Higher order questions take the form of ‘how’ and ‘why’, rather
than ‘what’.
• When choosing materials for assessing non-native speakers, be
mindful of words and concepts that might be unfamiliar.

17. to find out how well children are reading in
order to help them improve (diagnosis).
to measure how much progress has been
made.
In beginning reading, assessment is normally
done by listening to students reading aloud.

18. Text comprehension is usually assessed
through questions.
Methods of assessment vary with the types of
responses students make to the questions.
The students’ responses can be spoken or
written.