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Les l ie Ono, Richard Day, and Kenton HarschJ A P A N A N D U N I T E D S T A T E S

XTENSIVE READING HAS THE POTENTIAL TO HELP ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

become better readers and make improvements in other aspects of their English

skills. However, most students are not accustomed to the autonomy accorded by

extensive reading. In addition, they may be used to struggling through short, bor-

ing, and extremely difficult texts, which, for many learners, entails painfully care-

ful reading and constant use of a dictionary. In short, language learners may not

understand the language learning value of reading easy, interesting material.

In extensive reading, English language learners read large quantities of easy

material in English. They read for information and enjoyment, with the primary

goal of achieving a general, overall understanding of the reading material. Stu-

dents select their own reading material and are encouraged to stop reading if the

material is not interesting or is too hard; over time, students are also encouraged

to expand their reading comfort zone—the range of materials they can read easily

and with confidence. To capture these aspects of extensive reading, Day and

Tips forReadingExtensively

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 4 E N G L I S H T E A C H I N G F O R U M

Bamford suggest that the motto of extensivereading be “reading gain without reading pain”(1998, 121; emphasis in the original).

There are several reasons why it is benefi-cial to encourage language learners to readextensively. Studies show that when studentsread extensively, they not only improve theirreading fluency, but they also build newvocabulary knowledge and expand theirunderstanding of words they knew before.Additionally, extensive reading can help stu-dents write better, as well as improve their lis-tening and speaking abilities. And perhaps thebest result is that students develop positiveattitudes toward reading in English andincreased motivation to study it.

Teachers have an important role to play inhelping their students get the most out ofextensive reading. As Day and Bamford(2002) point out, teachers need to introducetheir students to extensive reading and provideessential guidance as they read extensively. Inthis article, we offer ten tips that teachers cangive to students when they engage in extensivereading. The title for each tip is addresseddirectly to the learner, whereas the rationaleand instructional advice are written to you,the teacher. We discuss the rationale for eachtip and suggest ways to present these tips toyour students. We recommend that you pre-sent them before students begin to read exten-sively and then revisit them periodicallythroughout the semester or school year.

Tip 1: Read, read, and read some more.

This is perhaps the most important pieceof advice that you can give your students. Youmight want to introduce this tip by emphasiz-ing to your students that we learn to read byreading; this is true for both a first or secondlanguage. The more students read, the betterreaders they become.

When you encourage your students toread, read, and read, you might want to pointout that reading extensively can:

• Help them read faster and understandmore.

• Help them to read in meaningful phras-es, rather than word-by-word.

• Increase their confidence in their reading.

• Increase vocabulary knowledge.

• Consolidate grammatical knowledge.

• Help improve writing proficiency andoral fluency.

Tip 2: Read easy books.

Generally, it is hard to read books that havemany unknown or difficult words. Frequentlyencountering challenging vocabulary can befrustrating, if not discouraging. The same canbe said for the level of grammatical and organi-zational difficulty of books. So it is very im-portant for students to choose books that theycan read quickly and easily. This will increasetheir confidence and help them to becomemore comfortable with the process of readingin the foreign language.

Unfortunately, many students (and per-haps some teachers) are conditioned to believethat they must read books that are difficult,that the only way to learn to read is by readingmaterial that is beyond their capabilities. Dayand Bamford label this the “macho maxim ofsecond language reading instruction: no read-ing pain, no reading gain” (1998, 92; empha-sis in the original). This is the wrongapproach. When learners read a lot of easybooks, it allows them to become more fluent,effective readers. In addition, they are able tolearn new words and phrases, over time, whileenjoying what they are reading. To help weanstudents from the macho maxim, ask them toreflect on their experiences of learning to readin their first language—what types of materi-als did they read? Most likely standardizedtesting material was not in their selection ofbedtime stories.

You can help your students select materialat the appropriate level—books well withintheir reading comfort zone. Ask them to scantwo or three pages of a book, looking forwords they do not recognize. If there are morethan four or five difficult or unknown wordson a page, the book is probably too difficultfor extensive reading.

Even after your students choose a bookthat appears to be appropriate, they may findthat they are re-reading a few grammaticallydifficult sentences to try to figure out themeaning. If this is the case, the book is proba-bly too difficult, so they should find another.

Extensive reading materials can be anymaterial in English that is easy enough foryour students to read with overall comprehen-sion. Depending on the abilities of your stu-

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dents and the resources available to you, suchmaterials may include children’s books, comicbooks, or online texts. Additionally, a usefulsource of language learner literature, readingmaterial written for an audience of languagelearners, is graded readers. Graded readers aresimply books, fiction and nonfiction, in whichthe content is controlled to match the lan-guage ability of learners. All the major pub-lishers have graded readers. Hill (2001) pro-vides an insightful review of readers publishedin the United Kingdom.

Tip 3: Read interesting books.

Because students need to read many books,it is important that they are interested in andenjoy what they are reading. If the learners areexcited about their books, they won’t want toput them down. Additionally, they will be morelikely to attend to the content (meaning) of thetext, rather than merely focusing on grammati-cal aspects. If your students do not find theirbooks interesting or exciting, advise them tostop and find other books they may enjoy more.

At the same time, you might also want topoint out that they should not give up on abook prematurely. Some books start slowly.

Tip 4: Reread books you foundparticularly interesting.

Reading books a second or third time isuseful for several reasons. Having already reada book once, students will be able to read itmore fluently the second time. This helpsbuild vocabulary knowledge as well as confi-dence, and this, in turn, leads to increases inreading rate. Also, reading gains aside, it is funto reread a favorite book!

Tip 5: Read for general understanding.

When students read extensively, it is notnecessary to read for 100 percent comprehen-sion. On the contrary, they should simply readfor general, overall understanding. This meansthat they should be able to follow the generalstoryline and grasp the main ideas of the text.In extensive reading, the aim is to read a greatmany books, so it is in the learners’ best inter-est not to struggle over every detail and worryabout the exact meaning of every word orphrase.

To reinforce this idea, you could ask yourstudents to think about reading in their native

language (or, if they do not read much in theirnative languages, ask the students to thinkabout watching television or movies). Mostlikely, they do not fret over every detail in theirnative language, so they should not expect tounderstand every word when they read exten-sively in English.

Another way to encourage reading for gen-eral understanding is to remind students thatthey are reading for pleasure, and for benefitssuch as increasing fluency and vocabularyknowledge. You might want to stress that thereis no penalty for not understanding everydetail because they will not be tested.

Tip 6: Ignore unknown or difficult words.Skip them and continue reading.

Although extensive reading material shouldbe easy for students, they will inevitablyencounter unknown or difficult words on occa-sion. Students do not need to understand everyword. Often, they can ignore words they do notknow and still maintain a general understand-ing of the passage. Sometimes they can guessthe meaning of words from the context.

You can be of particular importance hereby helping learners get used to living with a bitof ambiguity when they read. One way to dothis is to have students skim a page or two oftheir books, circling any words they do notunderstand. Next, have your students readthose same pages, encouraging them to focuson the general meaning and ignore any circledwords. After they have finished, find out howsuccessful they were by asking general ques-tions about their texts, such as: Who are thecharacters? Where are they? What are theydoing? Most likely, students will grasp theoverall meaning, despite encountering a fewunfamiliar words. If a student is unsuccessful,then it is likely the book is too difficult.(Recall Tip 2—if the book has more than fiveunknown words on a page, then it is probablytoo difficult.)

Tip 7: Avoid using dictionaries.

Although students often resort to using theirdictionaries whenever they encounter newwords, convince them to break the dictionaryhabit. Stopping two or three times per page tolook up words in the dictionary is laborious andtime-consuming, and it can distract studentsfrom reading for general understanding.

14 O C T O B E R 2 0 0 4 E N G L I S H T E A C H I N G F O R U M

It can be difficult for students to ignoreunknown or difficult words when they havetheir dictionaries right beside them. Some stu-dents, when they engage in extensive reading,make a point of putting their dictionariesacross the room, out of the way. Thus they willbe less inclined to reach for their dictionarieswhen they come across unknown words.

But sometimes it is not possible, or advis-able, to avoid the use of dictionaries. There aretimes when not knowing the meaning of aword prevents overall understanding, or theunknown word reoccurs frequently in the text.In such situations, tell your students to use adictionary.

Tip 8: Expand your reading comfort zone.

As your students read more and more, theirreading fluency will increase and their readingcomfort zones will expand. As learners increasethe size of their reading comfort zones, theywill be able to read books that were initiallytoo difficult.

To assist students with expanding theirreading comfort zones, it is important that youare familiar with the level of texts they are read-ing and the extent to which they are able toachieve general understanding. You can moni-tor your students’ overall comprehension oftheir reading by incorporating extensive read-ing activities in the classroom. One idea, sug-gested by Iwano (2004), is that teachers brieflyinterview their students individually while therest of the class is reading. For other usefulactivities for monitoring your students’ exten-sive reading, see Bamford and Day (2004).

Additionally, it is a good idea to be familiarwith the range of extensive reading materialsavailable to your students. Being familiar withextensive reading materials and having anawareness of each student’s level and readinginterests will allow you to better help studentswhile they expand their reading comfortzones; you can offer useful recommendationswhen students choose new books.

We should add a note of caution, however.Students can easily be confused about the bal-ance between reading easy, enjoyable booksand challenging themselves with books at aslightly higher level to expand their readingcomfort zones. Because everyone has a desireto improve as quickly as possible, some learn-ers might challenge themselves too much, too

soon. Thus, it is important to pay attention towhat your students are reading and to makesure that they are not struggling with texts thatare too difficult. It makes sense to help buildlearners’ confidence and fluency with easierbooks, bearing in mind that books that were atone time too difficult will later become easierto read.

Tip 9: Set reading goals and keep areading log.

Setting personal goals can often be a strongmotivational factor. This is especially true forreading. Advise your students to consider theirschedules and to set aside times to read (atlunch, before going to bed, etc.). You mightwant to help your students set a reasonabletarget number of books per week or month, astheir schedules allow; encourage them to meetthose goals. An extensive reading target can beexpressed in pages, chapters, or even time—two hours a week, for example. Extensivereading targets are flexible and can be adjustedto fit the reading abilities and schedules ofyour students.

One way to set and monitor reading goalsis to encourage, or require, your students tokeep a log of their extensive reading. This willallow them (and you) to see their progress.Concrete, visible evidence can be very moti-vating. Two samples of simple extensive read-ing logs are provided in the Appendix. Thesecan be modified according to the needs ofyour students and the extent to which youintegrate extensive reading activities into yourcurriculum. Some teachers have found it use-ful to monitor extensive reading according tothe weeks of a school semester (see Appendix,Form 1); others require students to provide avery brief summary of each book entered intothe log in order to monitor general compre-hension (see Appendix, Form 2).

Tip 10: Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!

The more your students enjoy what theyare reading, the more they will read. If they donot enjoy reading, their desire to stick with itwill probably dwindle, and they may give upon reading. And they need to keep reading inorder to improve their reading fluency andincrease their vocabulary knowledge. Recallthe motto of extensive reading: reading gainwithout reading pain.


As teachers, our goal is to spark our stu-dents’ interest in reading and find encouragingways to make sure they keep on reading. If youfind that some of your students are starting tolose their enthusiasm, it might help to readaloud to them from a book that is easy, butcaptivating. Your enthusiasm when you readaloud can help them to get back into theframe of mind where they want to pick up abook at every opportunity.

Conclusion

Most teachers, above all else, must help theirstudents do well in their courses and pass therequired examinations. However, at the sametime, teachers can increase their students’ com-petency in English and help them become flu-ent readers in English by engaging them inextensive reading. It is important to realize thatthe increased fluency, confidence, and motiva-tion that so often result from reading extensive-ly will help students in their academic endeav-ors, such as improving exam performances. AsColin Davis said: “Any ESL, EFL, or L1 class-room will be poorer for the lack of an extensivereading programme of some kind, and will beunable to promote its pupils’ language develop-ment in all aspects as effectively as if such a pro-gramme were present” (1995, 335).

We hope that these ten tips will help yourstudents get the most out of reading exten-sively. When you provide insightful and care-ful orientation and guidance to extensive read-ing, you are not only helping your studentsimprove many aspects of their overall readingand language ability; you also might be open-ing a door to the variety of worlds that readingcan present.

We close with a tip for you, the teacher: Bea role model as a reader. Day and Bamfordclaim that “effective extensive reading teachersare themselves readers, teaching by example the

attitudes and behaviors of a reader.” (2002,140; emphasis in the original). If you are a firstlanguage reader of English, then considerreading extensively in your students’ first lan-guage. If English is a foreign language to you,then read English with your students. As Nut-tall observed, “reading is caught, not taught”(1996, 229).

References

Bamford, J. and R. R. Day, eds. 2004. Extensivereading activities for teaching language. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Davis, C. 1995. Extensive reading: An expensiveextravagance? ELT Journal 49 (4): 329–36.

Day, R. R. and J. Bamford. 1998. Extensive readingin the second language classroom. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Day, R. R. and J. Bamford. 2002. Top ten principlesfor teaching extensive reading. Reading in a For-eign Language 14 (2). http://nflrc.hawaii. edu/rfl

Hill, D. R. 2001. Graded readers. ELT Journal 55(3): 300–24.

Iwano, M. T. 2004. Individual interviews. In Exten-sive reading activities for teaching language, 80–81.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nuttall, C. 1996. Teaching reading skills in a foreignlanguage. 2nd ed. Oxford: Heinemann.

LESLIE ONO is an English lecturer at Kwan-sei Gakuin University in Japan. Her researchinterests include EAP reading, needs analy-sis, and materials design.

RICHARD DAY, a professor in the Departmentof Second Language Studies, University ofHawaii, is the co-founder and chair of theExtensive Reading Foundation (www.erfoundation.org). His most recent book, co-editedwith Julian Bamford, is Extensive ReadingActivities for Teaching Language.

KENTON HARSCH is Assistant Director of theEnglish Language Institute at the Universityof Hawaii at Manoa and is a co-author ofImpact Listening 3 and Impact Words andPhrases.



Form 1: Weekly Extensive Reading LogBOOKS (OR PAGES) PER WEEK

Name: _____________________________________________

Week: _________________________

Target: _______ books / pages (circle one)

Total Read This Week: _______ books / pages (circle one)

AP PE N D I X | EXTENSIVE READING LOGSTips for Reading Extensively • Leslie Ono, Richard Day, and Kenton Harsch

Date Name of Book Number of CommentsPages Read


Form 2: Weekly Extensive Reading LogHOURS PER WEEK

Name: _________________________________________

Week: _________________________

Target: _______ hours per week

TOTAL READING TIME THIS WEEK: ___________

Summary of / Responses to each book

BAP PE N D I X | EXTENSIVE READING LOGSTips for Reading Extensively • Leslie Ono, Richard Day, and Kenton Harsch

Date Name of Book Number of CommentsPages Read

Name of Book Comments

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