In class, students only listen to stories told by you? Are there any associated activities? Do they do any worksheets, vocabulary work, or interaction of any kind?

Students all receive a list of words that are used in the story that I tell in the class. They focus on these words while listening, and then we check their understanding on the meaning of the words in Japanese. Students receive a list of the words with a Japanese definition on a separate sheet of paper. Students submit this sheet with their score, which gives me an idea of how much (story content and the words) they understood and it also serves as a record of attendance. Then, students read the story they've just listened to, and of we have additional time in class they do their free reading. They do not write or speak in English in class, but they do pay attention to words. There is some intentional learning here, but the words are used in the story. I give a review test the following week and also another vocabulary test (the final vocabulary test) at the end of the semester not only to check whether the words have been learned but also to give a chance to review the words in order to strengthen the memory.

Let me explain what I think about intentional learning and subconscious acquisition. You may say that what I do is contradictory to what the Input Hypothesis suggests. The Input Theory says that acquisition is subconscious, but I use conscious learning.

However, this conscious learning is not the same as the conscious learning in the traditional skill-building approach. Students have a list of words that they pay attention to during the class, and go home and review the words on the list to prepare for test the following week. What's important is when they look at the words at home, they remember the meaning of the words with the images that they attached to the words while they listened to the story in class. They only listened to a story. It was not a movie. They created images in their head while they listen to the story. The images of the words in one person's head are different from the images of the same words in another student's head. The activity is meaning-based acquisition and different from skill-based learning. The activity with a list may look the same externally, but internally it is different.

Let me further explain about the term free voluntary reading. You may also say that what students do in our reading class is not really free voluntary reading, but forced reading. I would refute that argument by saying that it is not forced reading, but guided reading. Good readers were all guided to reading, first by parents who read bed-time stsories, and then kindergarten teachers who told stories, and then reading teachers who introduced them to easy interesting books in elementary school. No one is a free voluntary reader until they are guided to be one. When the term free voluntary reading is used for our EFL reading class, our students are not yet at the level of being able to read in English freely and voluntarily, but the aim of the reading class is to guide them to that autonomous reader level. There are a lot of people who do not read voluntarily in their native language. Many Japanese college students do not read much in Japanese, either. Reading is often a new task for them to learn. We are doing this in a foreign language, but when we succeed, non-readers sometimes become readers in both their native language and a foreign language. It is very important for them to acquire the skill of FVR to live a full life. Obviously, if children do not acquire reading competence, they will not be able to make it in this fast paced modern society. We cannot skip this level (easy graded reading) of literacy development in our language classrooms.

Students do ER at home. Are there any in-class activities associated with this? Any other homework?

Each week they fill in and submit a notebook that comes with the book I published in 2006, called Free Voluntary Reading and Fairy/Folk Tale Listening. In class, students do not talk about books they read. I do not formally ask them comprehension questions. As I read their notebooks and feel like asking something, I do. When students are falling behind or racing ahead of schedule (in amount or level of reading) or I see some other issue (e.g., cheating, copying, not understanding) to be addressed, I try to have a short chat individually-finding out about their situation and giving guidance as needed. There is no other homework besides reading and filling in their notebook.

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