Extensive Reading; Why do it, how to do it, how not to do it

Beniko Mason
ELT NEWS June 2005
http://www.eltnews.com/features/special/031.shtml

Even a brief look at the research shows that extensive reading (henceforth ER) is the most successful approach we have in second and foreign language education for students at the advanced beginning and intermediate levels. When those who do in-class self-selected reading are compared with those in traditional classes, readers do at least as well, and generally do better, with the greatest success seen in longer programs in which students have a chance to get thoroughly involved with books. The evidence we have so far shows that readers show better gains in reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar and writing. Studies done using other approaches (case histories, correlational studies) arrive at identical conclusions (See e.g. Krashen, The Power of Reading, 2004).

In addition to the test scores, studies also show that students prefer extensive reading to traditional instruction.

A current trend in ER is to bring in extra output-oriented activities, because it is felt that "Reading is not enough." This is an odd concern, considering that ER has been shown to be so successful in study after study. In addition, adding output in the form of writing has not been shown to increase language or literacy development. (For a recent study, see B. Mason, 2004, in the International Journal of Language Teaching.)

The problem with adding excessive output activities is that it takes time away from reading - this results in insufficient reading and little progress. When this happens, reading usually gets the blame, and teachers feel they need even more output activities.

It has been argued that students need to "practice" writing and speaking in class in order to learn to communicate in their second language. While I would never ban output activities from class, including an excessive amount of speaking and writing actually detracts from students' ability to speak and write. According to the Comprehension Hypothesis, language and literacy development occur in only one way, when we understand messages. Comprehensible input builds the competence that underlies our ability to speak and write a language fluently. The ability to produce output, in other words, is the result of language acquisition, not the cause. There is massive evidence for the Comprehension Hypothesis, and Krashen (Explorations in Language Acquisition and Use, 2003) has argued that there is no compelling evidence supporting various output hypotheses.

Our students are beginners and intermediates in English. Class-time should be devoted to helping them build basic competence through comprehensible input. In addition, we also want them to become autonomous: Extensive reading is a wonderful way of accomplishing this - if students continue to read, they will continue to improve long after their EFL program is over.