As the number of international learners continues to grow in UK universities, the University of Salford Business School and LTEC join forces to offer an extensive reading programme overcoming barriers to learning, facilitating fluency, skills development, and wellbeing.
Extensive Reading (ER) means reading in English for pleasure. It is a well-established technique used by teachers for speakers whose first language is not English, to improve language acquisition. Research over the past 30 years shows a strong link between ER and increased reading fluency, learner autonomy, skill acquisition, and heightened wellbeing. However, uptake of ER by HE institutions in the UK is scarce despite successful global implementation in New Zealand, America, Japan, Kuwait, Iran, and Thailand.
The challenge, therefore, was to provide a six-week opportunity in a safe and comfortable space to read in English for pleasure for international learners at the University of Salford. Comprehension, reading speeds, and wellbeing were hoped to increase for participants in the short term, while fostering and deepening a love of reading in the longer term which may positively impact academic reading, independent learning, and course success.
Day & Bamford’s (2002) Top Ten Tips for Teaching Extensive Reading
The easily replicable top ten tips gave the project its foundation and structure:
- The reading material is easy. The use of graded readers is essential to ensure learners are reading within their comfort zone. For intermediate readers of English, no more than five difficult words should be encountered on a page. If there are too many, the learner chooses a lower level.
- A variety of reading material on a wide range of topics must be available. There are currently around 100 graded readers in the library, most of which are English and American classics.
- Learners choose what they want to read. Freedom of choice is paramount.
- Learners read as much as possible. Hence, ‘extensive’ reading.
- The purpose of reading is for pleasure, information, and general understanding.
- Reading is its own reward. Any tests, quizzes or measurements should be kept to a minimum and are not the sole purpose of reading.
- Reading speed is usually faster rather slower. ‘Speed, enjoyment and comprehension are closely linked with one another’ (Nutall, 1996: 128, cited in Day & Bamford, 2002). See Figure 1 below.
- Reading is individual and silent. No group work required.
- Teachers orient and guide their students. A visit to the graded reader section in the library ensues. In this study, the learners were also introduced to the Xreading platform.
- The teacher is a role model of a reader. The teacher gets to read for pleasure too at the same time as the learners read.
Extensive Reading with a Digital Twist
Traditionally, ER is taught with printed graded readers, which were offered to participants on this project. In addition, the Xreading programme was added to offer the convenience of extensive reading on any mobile device. Xreading is an online graded reader library and learning management system (LMS) devoted to ER which measures the number of digital books read, words read per minute, and comprehension levels via quizzes. Convenient thus for both learner and teacher.
The impact
Participants reported a large range of benefits including relaxation, imagination, thinking, concentration, happiness, friendship, wellbeing, and developed abilities and skills. In addition, 100% of participants believed ER will improve their academic success.
Reading skills were shown to improve via the Xreading platform:
• 100% of participants increased their reading speeds.
• A 13.6% increase in words read per minute (wpm) on average.
• A 6% increase in learners’ comprehension on average according to quiz results.
The grand total of online texts read was 160 between 5 students.
Straightforward, low-cost provision
The results and impact from this brief intervention reveal that the potential for learner benefits of ER is huge with sufficient teacher / learner buy-in. Fluency, reading speed, comprehension, skill acquisition and wellbeing can all increase when this relatively straightforward, low-cost intervention is offered. Awareness, accessibility, and appeal of ER is paramount to engagement and an ER app could help facilitate this.
Looking Ahead & Call to Action
Regarding inclusivity and representation, there is a need for a decolonised collection of graded readers expanding the subject matter beyond the usual English and American classics, to include a far broader range of books including themes and authors from the Global South. This would likely broaden the appeal of extensive reading to readers originating from countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and enrich Day & Bamford’s (2002) tip 2: A variety of reading material on a wide range of topics must be available to appeal to learner preference. Further, an extensive reading app could be co-created between staff and students and facilitate convenient reading on the go, on a range of devices, thus fulfilling tip 4: Learners read as much as possible. To ensure accessibility, audio versions of graded readers on such an ER app with ‘read along’ function may appeal to learners with additional needs and disabilities and those whose preference is to listen. Finally, moving beyond the language department, a toolkit to facilitate ER should be developed and provided to all university departments so lecturers feel confident in their knowledge of ER provision and facilitation with learners. This would in turn maximise the scope of ER provision to as many learners as possible.