Extensive reading seems to be receiving a lot of attention in contemporary language teaching and it’s almost impossible to join a language teaching conference without attending a session on this intriguing topic. John Macalister’s keynote at the TESOL Colloquium held at the University of Sydney last month, as well as one of Scott Thornbury’s recent blog posts on extensive reading inspired me to reflect on my days of being an ESL student in New Zealand. At some point during my ESL studies, one of my teachers suggested that I pick up a book at the local second hand bookstore if I was serious about improving my English. I somehow managed to slug through and finish Animal Farm, and shortly afterwards – perhaps impressed by my effort – my host family gave me a thicker novel for Christmas. I also began reading the local newspaper every morning. Reading in a foreign language was not an easy thing for me to do by any means. My vocabulary was extremely limited at first, and I had to train myself to ignore many of the unknown words and simply read on. Soon, however, the reading bug got a hold of me and after a few months of reading I began to feel that I was making progress, not only in regards to fluency but also vocabulary and general comprehension. Yet, at the same time, I realized that I needed to retain some of the low-frequency words I encountered, and so I began to keep an old fashion word list and I started reading with a dictionary. It’s interesting to note that Scott discusses the use of similar strategies. Anyhow, based on my own experience, I believe that L2 learners should underline unknown words while they’re reading and only consult their dictionaries once they’ve read several pages or even an entire chapter; otherwise, reading is tedious and boring and the whole process becomes counterproductive if they open up their dictionary every time they come across a new word. If students are taught this explicitly, generally, they are able to read without being interrupted and they usually obtain a sense of achievement in a relatively short period of time. To return to the title of this blog post, yes, I believe in extensive reading as long as the reader is equipped with some of the strategies mentioned above. Is extensive reading the magic potion that will enable us to learn languages in the blink of an eye? Certainly not, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
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I am a Senior Lecturer in TESOL at the University of Wollongong in Australia. This blog is a reflection of my journey as a researcher, L2 teacher educator, and language teacher. Archives
June 2021
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