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Extensive reading: why it is good for our students…
and for us.

Alan Maley

What is Extensive Reading (ER)? Extensive Reading is often referred to but it is worth checking what it actually involves. Both common sense observation and copious research evidence bear out the many benefits which come from ER, namely:

ER develops learner autonomy. There is no cheaper or more effective way to develop learner autonomy. Reading is, by its very nature, a private, individual activity. It can be done anywhere, at any time of day. Readers can start and stop at will, and read at the speed they are comfortable with. They can visualize and interpret what they read in their own way. They can ask themselves questions (explicit or implicit), notice things about the language, or simply let the story carry them along.

ER offers comprehensible input. Reading is the most readily available form of comprehensible input, especially in places where there is hardly any contact with the target language. If carefully chosen to suit learners’ level, it offers them repeated encounters with language items they have already met. This helps them to consolidate what they already know and to extend it. There is no way any learner will meet new language enough times to learn it in the limited number of hours in class. The only reliable way to learn a language is through massive and repeated exposure to it in context: precisely what ER provides.

ER enhances general language competence. In ways we so far do not fully understand, the benefits of ER extend beyond reading. There is a spread of effect from reading competence to other language skills: writing, speaking and control over syntax. Even evidence of improvements in the spoken language has been observed. So reading copiously seems to benefit all language skills, not just reading.

ER helps develop general, world knowledge. Many, if not most, students have a rather limited experience and knowledge of the world they inhabit both cognitively and affectively. ER opens windows on the world seen through different eyes. This educational function of ER cannot be emphasized enough.

ER extends, consolidates and sustains vocabulary growth. Vocabulary is not learned by a single exposure. ER allows for multiple encounters with words and phrases in context thus making possible the progressive accretion of meanings to them. By presenting items in context, it also makes the deduction of meaning of unknown items easier. There have been many studies of vocabulary acquisition from ER.

ER helps improve writing. There is a well-established link between reading and writing. Basically, the more we read, the better we write. Exactly how this happens is still not understood but the fact that it happens is welldocumented. Commonsense would indicate that as we meet more language, more often, through reading, our language acquisition mechanism is made ready to produce it in writing or speech when it is needed.

ER creates and sustains motivation to read more. The virtuous circle – success leading to success – ensures that, as we read successfully in the foreign language, so we are encouraged to read more. The effect on self-esteem and motivation of reading one’s first book in the foreign language is undeniable. This relates back to the point at the beginning of the need to find ‘compelling’, not merely interesting, reading material. It is this that fuels the compulsion to read the next Harry Potter. It also explains the relatively new trend in graded readers toward original and more compelling subject matter.

Extensive Reading for Teachers My contention is that reading extensively, unrestrainedly and associatively is good for teachers, and for personal development. The idea of the teacher having to be someone who is constantly developing and growing as a whole human being as a prerequisite for being able to truly help his or her students to be able to do the same, is such a core truth of teaching, yet it is often ignored in Foreign Language Teaching (FLT).

ER helps teachers to be better informed, both about their profession and about the world. This makes them more interesting to be around – and students generally like their teachers to be interesting people. For our own sanity we need to read outside the language teaching ghetto. For the sake of our students too.

It also helps teachers to keep their own use of English fresh. Research on language learner reading shows how extensive reading feeds into improvements in all areas of language competence. If this is true for learners, how much more true for teachers, who risk infection by exposure to so much restricted and error-laden English or who only read professional literature? Regular wide reading can add zest and pleasure to our own use of the language.

Teachers who show that they read widely are models for their students. We often tell students to ‘read more’ but why should they read if we do not? Teachers who are readers are more likely to have students who read too.

Furthermore, the books we read outside our narrow professional field can have an unpredictable effect on our practice within it. So much of what we learn is learned subconsciously. Its effects spread more by infection than by direct injection. And it is highly individual. Individuals form associative networks among the books they read. This results in a kind of personal intertextuality, where the patterns form and re-form as we read more different books. This gives us rich mental yeast which we can use to interact with others, while still retaining our individual take on the texts and the world. So Extensive Reading has a lot to offer—both for our students and ourselves!

(http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk. Adapted.)

The sentence from paragraph 6 – By presenting items in context, it also makes the deduction of meaning of unknown items easier. – stresses a very important skill used by competent readers, which is