A Community of Readers: Interviews with Extensive Reading Scholars & Practitioners Edited by Michael McCollister
Contents Foreword Acknowledgements Introduction The Interviews David R. Hill Richard Day Paul Nation Rob Waring Mark Helgesen Tom Robb Junko Yamanaka Beniko Mason Willy Renandya Atsuko Takase Daniel Stewart Sy-‐ying Lee Philip Prowse Jennifer Bassett Marcos Benevides Matthew Claflin Kris Vicca Wendy Lambert Online Resources
Introduction Extensive Reading in Asia Extensive reading is an approach to language learning that has taken a strong foothold in many parts of Asia over the last twenty years or so. Japan, which accounts for more than half of all graded reader sales worldwide, is currently the center of all things related to extensive reading, but Korea is also home to many ER programs and much ER research. Not surprisingly, the Extensive Reading Foundation (ERF) chose Kyoto, Japan, as the place in which to hold its 1st World Congress with over 400 attendees from over 20 countries joining the two days of presentations and workshops in September, 2011. Many of the participants in this collection of interviews presented at the first Congress; David R. Hill, in fact, delivered the opening plenary. Equally unsurprising is the fact that Seoul, South Korea, was selected to host the 2nd World Congress in September, 2013. Attendance for this second event exceeded 600, a testament to the organizational abilities of the people on the ground as well as to the ever-‐expanding interest in the ER approach. Dr. Paul Nation, another participant in this current volume, delivered one of the plenary talks in Seoul. A key factor in the flourishing of the ER programs throughout these two countries is the presence of local support groups to assist teachers and provide them an arena in which to discuss, debate, and publish research. The Extensive Reading Special Interest Group (SIG) sponsored by the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) held its 6th annual ER seminar in June, 2013. It also publishes two journals focused exclusively on ER. The SIG’s ER Outreach Grant program offers financial assistance to schools—both domestic and international—that wish to implement ER programs in their language curriculums. The Korean English Extensive Reading Association (KEERA), which co-‐hosted the 2nd World Congress along with the ERF, offers similar assistance to ER practitioners in Korea. KEERA also hosts an annual one-‐day ER colloquium as part of the larger KOTESOL conference, again providing local teachers an opportunity to interact with colleagues and share fresh ideas and research. And this research, conducted by scholars in these two countries and others around the ELT world, continues to support ER as an effective adjunct to regular classroom instruction that can lead to real, measurable
growth in language development. Just as importantly, it is an approach that many students seem to both enjoy and embrace. A research project conducted by students from my university’s Department of Marketing during the 2011-‐12 academic year showed that the ER component in our Freshman English program had the support of 85% of students interviewed. So if the benefits of extensive reading are supported by an ever-‐growing body of research as well as by an overwhelming percentage of the student population, one has to wonder why extensive reading has failed to garner the same support in other corners of the ELT world as it has in Japan, Korea, and other Asian locales. One of my goals in undertaking this project was to acknowledge the critical role played by these local organizations in coordinating and disseminating information related to the theory and practice of extensive reading. There are undoubtedly ER practitioners in disparate settings around the globe who have implemented successful ER programs and have positive stories and research to share, yet lack the local conduit to interact and debate with local colleagues. Therefore, establishing professional academic organizations similar to those in Japan and Korea—and, ideally, directly affiliated with the Extensive Reading Foundation—would seem to be an invaluable first step in bolstering awareness and support for ER. A second, more immediate goal is to provide information—in layman’s terms—about the ER approach: its basic principles, information about setting up a program, the role of assessment within a program, as well as current and future trends in the field. The colleagues who agreed to participate in this project have a wealth of both classroom and research experience to draw upon. Some have years of experience, others decades, and one, in the case of David Hill, has close to half a century of expertise to share. Hopefully after reading these interviews, colleagues both here in Taiwan and around the world will feel better informed as well as better equipped to introduce an ER program into their own classes or their institution’s language curriculum. Principles of Extensive Reading Richard Day and Julian Bamford’s excellent book, Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom (1998), remains the most thorough introduction to ER theory and practice. In it, the authors lay out the
fundamental principles of the ER approach. Of these, three seem of paramount importance: 1. Students read as much as possible, perhaps in and definitely out of the classroom. 2. A variety of materials on a wide range of topics is available so as to encourage reading for different reasons and in different ways. 3. Students select what they want to read and have the freedom to stop reading material that fails to interest them (italics by authors). So, in an ER program, students do lots of reading, ideally at least one graded reader per week. Less is acceptable, but more is actually preferred. Students are encouraged to start with relatively easy material that they can digest with little or no need of dictionary assistance. Having no more than two to three unknown words per page is considered optimal. Under these conditions, students can truly become immersed in their reading experience: no need for translating material back into L1, little or no need to backtrack and re-‐read confusing passages, and hopefully little temptation to give up due to linguistic difficulties. The idea is to ramp up language input so students get massive exposure to the vocabulary, grammar, and structures they have practiced in their textbooks and have been taught in the classroom, but under more natural and stress-‐free conditions. Day and Bamford’s second and third principles seem based just as much on human nature as they do on educational theory. Most ER practitioners use graded readers as the staple of their ER library, but children’s books, young adult readers, and other ‘graded’ material can be employed as well. The emphasis, though, needs to be on variety. All students have different tastes, backgrounds and interests, so the ER library must be composed of an equally varied and robust collection of materials. The editors of the major graded reader series have done an admirable job of building this variety into their individual series by publishing titles in many different genres: adventure stories, detective stories, science fiction stories, ghost stories and tales of the supernatural, romances, as well as a spattering of re-‐told classic fiction. One series, Cambridge English Readers, is unique in that it offers a similar array of genres, but all the stories are original works of fiction. And books are written for language learners at all levels of proficiency. Most graded reader series are divided into 6–7 levels, from CEFR pre-‐A1 up to B2/C1 proficiency, so any individual series allows students plenty of room to expand their reading comfort zone as they make their way through their ER program.
The key point here, however, is not that the publishers build this variety of genres and proficiency levels into their graded reader collections, but that teachers allow their students to take advantage of this variety and linguistic variation. As Day and Bamford make clear in their 3rd point cited above, it is crucial that we give our students the power to choose. Decisions about what is to be read in an ER program should lie with the student, not with the teacher. Being told to read something because it is good for improving your language skills—or that it is simply a required part of the course—can throw up immediate motivational roadblocks. Again, it is human nature to resist things that are foisted upon us. But allow students to browse a local bookstore—or better yet, the well-‐stocked ER collection in the school library—and it quickly becomes apparent that most can find reading material that appeals to their individual interests. Better still, allow students to recommend previously-‐read titles to their classmates. This kind of student-‐to-‐student interaction can be very motivating and informative; it can also provide the teacher with a better sense of what kind of material is attractive to contemporary students. To briefly re-‐cap, extensive reading is not so much about introducing new material, grammar, and vocabulary to students as it is about consolidating, reinforcing, and building fluency with language that has already been studied in the classroom. This is not to say that nothing “new” will be learned by the reader; students will certainly encounter new usages of previously-‐learned grammar and new meanings of “old” words, but by and large ER is about deepening and stretching students’ understanding of the language. Rob Waring, in a presentation entitled Why Extensive Reading Doubles Your Students’ Vocabulary delivered at the Korean Association of Primary English Education International Conference in 2011 (and currently available on Youtube), uses an analogy about cars and driving lessons to elucidate the role of ER in a well-‐designed language program. The classroom experience with teacher and textbook is akin to learning the nuts and bolts of the car and engine: how it works, the function of the individual parts, rules of the road, etc. Extensive reading, in contrast, is like taking a leisurely Sunday afternoon drive. So first comes the learning and the studying, and then comes the practicing of what has been learned. Both parts are equally vital to the overall learning process.
While the publication of Day and Bamford’s landmark book was certainly a pivotal event in the development of ER, the book was more likely than not a reaction to the rapid growth of ER programs in the 1990s as opposed to the cause of this growth. It was the first volume to clearly lay out the theories and practice of extensive reading and make a cogent appeal for the adoption of ER into language curriculums throughout the ELT world. However, perhaps the most powerful explanation for the rise of extensive reading programs during the period was a corresponding rise in the proliferation and acceptance of Stephen Krashen’s theories on second language acquisition. Krashen’s input hypothesis, first published in 1977, posited that language is acquired only when the learner understands messages in the target language, and so if input is controlled—or, as it is now more familiarly known, comprehensible—real language acquisition can take place. In Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition (1982), Krashen writes, “We acquire by understanding language that contains structure a bit beyond our current level of competence (i + 1). This is done with the help of context or extra-‐linguistic information.” This, it seems to me, is the real theoretical underpinning for ER programs, for in a well-‐designed and implemented ER program, students are reading at an appropriate level—a comfort zone—that is right at, or perhaps ever so slightly above their current level of language proficiency. They read plenty of material—get plenty of comprehensible input—at that level until they feel ready to move up to slightly more challenging material. ER is meant to be a bridge to authentic, perhaps academic texts. Krashen’s name and his hypotheses are mentioned frequently in the upcoming interviews, having served as a mentor, a collaborator, and an inspiration to many of the participants in this collection. So in the foreground of current ER development are figures like Stephen Krashen, Richard Day and Julian Bamford, but the background is just as populated with equally important seminal figures. One of the participants in this project, Paul Nation, was already employing the principles of ER when he and a co-‐worker published two graded readers using a controlled vocabulary in the late 1970s and early 1980s; now out of print, he has made them available for free on his website. Philip Prowse and Jennifer Bassett both talk about introducing ER in Egypt and Greece in the early 1970s and, as you will read in his interview, David Hill was using graded readers while teaching in Uganda in the early 1960s. And in his interview, Paul Nation cites Michael West as an early inspiration. West published A General Service List of English Words in
1953; this volume identified the 2,000 most frequently occurring words in the English language, and the list—though now out of print—is still used to some extent by publishers when designing words lists for their reader series. But even before the publication of the GSL, West, an Educational Service officer in India in the 1920s, was writing his own graded readers—based on word frequency lists he helped to develop—to use with his students in India and Bangladesh. In his New Method Readers series, published in 1926, West had already begun, “making reading materials more accessible to his students through vocabulary control” (Gilner, 2011). So the ER programs in place today are really modern interpretations of an approach to reading that is now almost a century old. Benefits of Extensive Reading As already noted, extensive reading allows students to practice and consolidate much of the material they may have previously learned from course books in their language classes. But research has shown that there are some more specific and tangible benefits to be gained than mere consolidation alone. In the introduction to their companion volume Extensive Reading Activities for Teaching Language (2004), Day and Bamford write: Good things happen to students who read a great deal in the new language. Research studies show they become better and more confident readers, they write better, their listening and speaking abilities improve, and their vocabularies get richer. In addition, they develop positive attitudes toward and increased motivation to study the new language. In their earlier volume, Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom, the authors devote one chapter to looking at some early ER programs in both EFL settings (Fiji, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore, and Hong Kong) and ESL settings (USA and England) and reviewing the findings. All programs produced positive results; in addition to gains in areas highlighted above like reading, writing, vocabulary, listening, and speaking, they also cite gains in spelling and overall linguistic competence. But the area receiving the most attention would appear to be gains in affect, or attitude. I don’t think this finding can be overemphasized. In Taiwan, as probably in most of Asia and elsewhere, many students lose interest in English language learning at an early age and never fully recover. They tire of complex grammar rules and endless vocabulary lists and reading and listening exercises that demand more than their linguistic abilities allow. My son, now in sixth grade at a
local elementary school here in Taiwan, estimates that up to 80% of his classmates have already tuned out their English lessons. At the university level, the situation is better, but perhaps only slightly. An alternative approach to language instruction would seem to be worthy of consideration: hopefully, extensive reading has a role to play in any potential new approach. If there is any one idea that unites all the participants in this project it is their common desire to present their language students with something new and fresh— but more importantly, effective and motivating—in the classroom. The Interviews The interviews collected in this volume were conducted via email over several months during the first half of 2013. My first mail explained the project and the rationale behind it and asked if these selected individuals would be willing to participate. I was fully prepared to be rejected by many and put on hold, so to speak, by others, knowing that these were all busy educators who were no doubt heavily involved with their own projects and teaching duties. To my delight—and amazement—no one said no. I then forwarded a questionnaire containing 15 questions along with the instructions that not all of my queries needed to be answered; again, most participants provided responses to all questions. The questionnaire forwarded to Philip Prowse and Jennifer Bassett was adjusted ever so slightly to take advantage of their background in the composing and publishing sides of the graded reader business. Participants then returned the questionnaires to me when completed, after which I did some minor editing and perhaps asked for a clarification here or a slight re-‐write there. The questionnaires were then returned to each participant for a final review, so the final responses are as each participant intended for them to be presented. Any attached references or notes have been left in place, so interested parties can read further if they so desire. What I hope emerges from reading these interviews is a clearer sense of extensive reading, both in theory and in practice. There are a number of generally accepted guiding principles, but few fixed or prescribed rules. Practitioners in different academic settings are implementing ER in somewhat different ways, depending on variables such as curricular goals, available time and scheduling, funding and the like that vary from institution to institution. For example, the ER program introduced by Matthew Claflin and Tom Robb at Kyoto Sangyo University in Japan seems quite similar to the program introduced by Kris Vicca and Wendy
Lambert at Feng Chia University in Taiwan, but it is noticeably different from the approach taken by Beniko Mason with her students at Japan’s Shitennoji University. In the Kyoto Sangyo and Feng Chia programs, students’ ER work is generally done outside of the classroom and is meant to serve as a complement to a student’s in-‐class work. Students’ reading is also carefully monitored and assessed. For Beniko Mason’s students—as well as for the students of Junko Yamanaka, Atsuko Takase, and Syying Lee, whose approaches to ER seem nearly identical—extensive reading is the primary source of language input. There are no course books, and this reading input is occasionally supplemented/complemented by in-‐class extensive listening work. No follow-‐up activities are brought into the classroom and students are not directly tested or assessed on their ER work. The Kyoto Sangyo and Feng Chia programs have been implemented in required, school-‐wide programs; Beniko Mason, I believe, introduces ER to students in an elective reading course. Both approaches, I would argue, are legitimate, effective and workable interpretations of ER theory. Matthew Claflin even admits that given a more ideal environment—smaller classes, an opportunity to better know your students, etc.—that a teacher may consider employing an approach “closer to the ‘purer’ ER.” Which approach will work best at any individual institution can only be decided by the language faculty on-‐site at these schools.
Final Thoughts Some have written that perhaps the best way to measure the success of an extensive reading program is not through a comprehension quiz or a book report or an interview, but whether after finishing one book a student enthusiastically picks up another. We hope to get our students—as many as we can—hooked on reading as a lifetime habit. Similarly, the success of this project will ultimately be measured by how many readers are inspired to search for more information on extensive reading. Perhaps presumptively, I have included a page of online resources at the end of this volume. Better still would be to engage colleagues at your institution in a discussion about the benefits of ER and the feasibility of implementing an ER program. I am confident that with a little more investigation and a little perseverance in talks with colleagues and administrators, extensive reading may soon become an integral and enjoyable component of many EFL curriculums.
Michael McCollister Feng Chia University August, 2013 References Bamford, J. and Day, R.R. (2004). Extensive Reading Activities for Teaching Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Day, R. R. and Bamford, J. (1998). Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilner, L. (2011). A primer on the General Service List. Reading in a Foreign Language, 23 (1), 65-‐83. Krashen, S.D. (1977). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Permagon.
Rob Waring
Dr. Rob Waring teaches at Notre Dame Seishin University in Okayama, Japan. He is an acknowledged expert in extensive reading and second language vocabulary acquisition and lectures and publishes widely on these subjects. He is on the Executive Board of the Extensive Reading Foundation and is also author and series editor of the Foundations Reading Library, the Footprint Reading Library, and the Page Turners Reading Library published by Cengage Learning.
Q: Can you remember when and how you first heard about or became involved with extensive reading? It was about 25 years ago on my first teacher training course. At the time I thought ‘what a waste of time just sitting in class reading… they should be studying something!’ Little did I know how my opinions would change dramatically in the next few years. Q: Under what circumstances did you first introduce ER into one of your courses? It was at the British Council in Kyoto, Japan in 1991. There was a small and largely unused library there, so during one of the summer intensive courses I suggested the students read a book over the weekend and we discuss them on Monday. I was very pleased to see they all did it and more importantly they enjoyed the reading. Q: Can you remember your students’ first reaction to ER? Positive? Negative? Quizzical? They enjoyed the reading but some of them mentioned it was hard to read such long texts. I then realized the importance of making sure teachers introduce ER to students properly by explaining the level, how to select books well and so on. I spent a long time researching ER and watching what people did. Q: Can you remember one early, enlightening “Eureka” moment when you became thoroughly convinced that ER would be indispensable to your approach to language teaching? It wasn’t a single moment, but I remember seeing a teenager on the train reading his graded reader. He was so engrossed in it that he missed his stop. He realized he was at his station and got up and ran to the door, but it closed before he got out. He just put his bags down and started reading again. I then realized how powerful the right text can be for learning. Q: In what way(s) has your approach to ER as a supplement to regular classroom instruction evolved over the years? Early in my career I saw it as a supplement, but now I don’t. I try to stress in my writings and presentations that it is a complement to other activities and indeed an integral—even indispensable—part of language learning. Seeing ER as a supplement elevates ‘study’ as the norm, reducing meaningful reading to a lesser status, and thus when time or other resources seem to demand more, it can become a candidate for omission. Q: Could you introduce a typical ER program in one of your recent courses? Required books or pages? Follow-‐up activities? At the beginning of each year in my Oral Communication first year university course, I go through the usual getting to know you and orientation activities and only later do I introduce ER. This is because firstly I don’t
want to overload them in their new surroundings and secondly, I want them to become familiar with the intensive reading as taught by the Japanese teachers in the university. Contrasting ER with the intensive reading makes the comparison more striking for them. They already know that one type of reading is for ‘study’ so I don't need to do this. Then I introduce them to one easy graded reader which we go through as a class together chapter by chapter over a few classes. They soon realize that this type of reading is for somewhat natural but meaningful fluent practice. I then introduce them to our library and train them to choose books carefully and well. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgzFsmsVq2c: a video introduction to Notre Dame Seishin University’s Extensive Reading Library). Q: If someone is interested in setting up an ER program at his/her school or in his/her class, what are two or three of the most important “Do’s” and “Don’ts” that you would recommend? DO get everyone involved, because if it becomes your thing and not a school thing, then when you leave the school, the program may collapse. If you develop the program as part of the standard curriculum, then it cannot be victimized for cuts and will continue regardless. DO think big, but act small at the start. Start with systems for book management, assessment etc. that can grow as the program grows. Then you won’t need painful adjustments later. DON’T spend all the money you get for books straight away. This will leave you no room for adjusting your library later. If you buy the wrong books and have spent your money, the program may be in danger. DON’T miss a chance to explain ER to teachers who believe you are doing the wrong thing by asking your students to ‘just read’. Q: Based on observations or discussions, what is the biggest mistake that teachers new to ER tend to make? Starting the ER program too fast and too enthusiastically. Many new to ER try to ‘sell’ ER to students as if it’s the best thing since sliced bread. It’s far better to introduce it as if it is all part of the natural way people learn languages. They can easily understand that children learn to read in their mother tongue by reading naturally and that’s what they need to do in the second language. In this way the students are more likely to accept it. Q: Could you introduce your approach to the role of assessment in your ER program? Purists seem to feel that there is no role for quizzes or reports. Do you agree? Assessment within an ER framework is fine. Assessment decisions should be based on educational needs not on some pronouncement about abstract idealized learners living in a vacuum. The world created different cars for different needs. Q: How do you measure student progress; that is, how do you prove to yourself and to school
administrators that students truly benefit from their ER reading? Student engagement. I assess the success by the end of term reports about how students feel about their reading. They typically say they enjoy it but some say it’s hard to find time. Q: What arguments do you feel would be most effective in persuading reluctant school administrators about the benefits of instituting an ER program? It depends on the person. Some are motivated by the parents’ perceptions and reactions, others by authority figures, others by pride and school status, and some by the ego of the individual (i.e. someone who wants to take credit for something), and so on. Each person would react differently to a presentation, a demonstration for example, and it would depend on who did it. The trick is to find out what makes a difference for that person. This is why we should not rush into ER programs without careful planning. Q: Could you briefly introduce your research interests as they relate to ER? I’m particularly interested in vocabulary uptake from ER—individual words, multi-‐word units, collocation and colligation. I’m currently building a website to collect data on what vocabulary meaning senses (not just words) students ostensibly know in their reading in order to build a knowledge based wordlist which will be accessible for free. It will have thousands of free texts to read. (www.er-‐central.com) Q: Could you introduce some research areas that young scholars who wish to focus on ER could contemplate exploring? Extensive Listening is still basically under-‐researched. Most of what we know about ER comes from reading and the canon of ER studies needs replicating for listening. I’d also spend time trying to understand how students develop a ‘sense’ of language from ER. It’s incredibly difficult and I think mainly because we don't yet have the assessment tools to research this fully. Q: Any thoughts on what is next on the horizon for ER? Digital materials available for free to anyone any time. Q: Any final pearls of wisdom to leave us with? Remember you are planting seeds for life long readers and learners, not just getting them to read this term.