It is hoped that more educational institutions and teachers will seriously consider the possibility of fusing ER into their English curriculum in order to reap the numerous linguistic and non-linguistic benefits of ER.
Pleasure reading and reading rate gains. Reading in a Foreign Language, 26 1 , Csikszentmihalyi, M. Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper Perennial. Day, R. Extensive reading in the second language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Top ten principles for teaching extensive reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 14 2 , Extending extensive reading.
Reading In a Foreign Language, 27 2 , Ellis, N. Implicit and explicit knowledge about language. Hornberger Eds. Knowledge about language 2nd ed.
New York, NY: Springer. Ewert, D. Getting ER into the curriculum: No more excuses! Grabe, W. Reading in a second language: Moving from theory to practice. Hagley, E. Extensive graded reading with engineering students: Effects and outcomes. Reading in a Foreign Language, 29 2 , Huffman, J.
Reading rate gains during a one-semester extensive reading course. Reading in a Foreign Language, 26 2 , Jeon, E. The effectiveness of ER on reading proficiency: A meta-analysis. Reading in a Foreign Language, 28 2 , Khansir, A. The impact of extensive reading on grammatical mastery of Iranian EFL learners. Theory and Practice In Language Studies, 5 7 , Explorations in language acquisition and use: The Taipei lectures.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Krashen, S. Comprehensible and compelling: The causes and effects of free voluntary reading. Lee, S. Storybooks vs. Taipei: Crane. Lee, J. Effects of extensive reading and translation activities on grammar knowledge and attitudes for EFL adolescents. System, 52, Macalister, J. Guidelines or commandments? Reconsidering core principles in extensive reading.
Reading in a Foreign Language, 27 1 , McLean, S. The effectiveness and efficiency of extensive reading at developing reading rates. System, 70, McQuillan, J. Where do we get our academic vocabulary? Comparing the efficiency of direct instruction and free voluntary reading. Mermelstein, A. Reading in a Foreign Language, 27 2 , Nakanishi, T. A meta-analysis of extensive reading research. Nell, V. Lost in a book. Park, J. Integrating reading and writing through extensive reading.
ELT Journal, 70 3 , Renandya, W. Should you be teaching reading intensively or extensively? Stoller, F. Viewing extensive reading from different vantage points. Suk, N. The effects of extensive reading on reading comprehension, reading rate, and vocabulary acquisition.
Reading Research Quarterly, 52 1 , A large-scale study on extensive reading program for non- English majors: Factors and attitudes. Metacognition involves thinking about what one is doing while reading. Klein et al. Moreover, they attempt to form a summary of what was read. Carrying out the previous steps requires the reader to be able to classify, sequence, establish whole-part relationships, compare and contrast, determine cause-effect, summarise, hypothesise and predict, infer, and conclude.
Conclusion In the second part of this article I will look at the guidelines which can also be used as general ideas to aid students in reading and comprehending materials.
These tips can be viewed in three consecutive stages: before reading, during reading, and after reading. For instance, before starting to read a text it is natural to think of the purpose of reading the text.
As an example of the during-reading techniques, re-reading for better comprehension can be mentioned. And filling out forms and charts can be referred to as an after-reading activity.
These tasks and ideas can be used to enhance reading comprehension. Further reading Barnett, M. Teaching reading in a foreign language. See how they read: comprehension monitoring of L1 and L2 readers. Duffy, G. Moving from the old to the new: research on reading comprehension instruction. Review of Educational Research 61 Dubin, F. Models of the process of reading. In Celce-Murcia ed. Boston, Mass. Duke, N.
Effective practices for developing reading comprehension. Estes T. Strategies for reading to learn. Available at www. Fitzgerald, J. English-as-a-second-language learners' cognitive reading processes: a review of research in the United States.
Review of Educational Research 65 Klein, M. Teaching Reading in the Elementary Grades. McDonough , explains that, to a higher extent, this is the reason why ESL and EFL students find it difficult to read in a second language with texts that contain cultural assumptions of the target culture.
They may lack the culture-specific background knowledge necessary to process the text in a top-down manner. His reports on several studies demonstrate how people outside a given culture may misunderstand events with unfamiliar cultural connotations. The objective is to make sure that students have the relevant schema for understanding the text. One important skill teachers can impart at this stage is note-taking, which allows students to compile new vocabulary and important information and details, and to summarize information and record their reactions and opinions.
Post-reading activities focus on a wide range of questions that allow for different interpretations. Pre-reading activities Pre-reading activities is aimed to activate existing schemata, build new schemata, and provide information to the teacher about what the students know. Formal schemata will be activated by employing devices such as advance organizers and overviews to draw attention to the structure of a text.
The content schemata will be activated by using various pre-reading activities to help learners brainstorm and predict how the information fits in with their previous knowledge. According to him, predictions are questions the readers ask the world and comprehension is receiving the answers. He emphasizes that it is prediction that makes skilled readers effective when reading texts that contain familiar subject matter.
Another pre-reading activity is previewing, where students look at titles, headings, and pictures, and read the first few paragraphs and the last paragraph; these activities can then help students understand what the text is about by activating their formal and contents schemata and making them familiar with the topic before they begin reading in earnest.
It can also help build schemata and vocabulary that students do not yet possess. Again, it is important to know something about the students so the selected texts contain the type of material that is likely to be familiar and interesting to them.
Reutzel proposes another type of pre-reading activity called reconciled reading lesson, which reverses the sequence presented by many textbooks where the text is followed by questions. Smith criticizes comprehension exercises presented at the end of a reading because they are like memory tests. He argues that using prior knowledge efficiently contributes to fluent readers, and he believes that there is a reciprocal relationship between visual and non-visual prior knowledge information; the more the readers have of the latter, the less they need of the former.
Although not all the post-reading questions can be easily turned into pre-reading ones, this strategy can be invaluable to activate schemata. Research has gone even further to define the control executed by readers on their trial to understand a text. This control is what Block has referred to as meta-cognition.
In the context of reading, meta-cognition involves thinking about what one is doing while reading. Strategic readers do not only sample the text, make hypotheses, confirm or reject them, and make new hypotheses while reading. They also involve many activities along the process of reading, whose stages can be divided into three, i. The activities the readers involve before reading are to identify the purpose of the reading, identify the form or type of the text.
Finally, in the last stage, they attempt to form a summary, conclude, or make inference of what was read. Pre-Reading Tips Before the actual reading act on a text starts, some points should be considered for making the reading process more comprehensible. First, teachers should ensure that the words and grammatical structures in the texts to read are familiar to the learners.
Suppose the texts have unfamiliar words, they could be introduced in pre-reading activities focusing on language awareness, such as finding synonyms, antonyms, derivatives, or associated words.
If they are not, necessary background information should be provided to the reader to facilitate comprehension. Assigning the class members to brainstorm ideas about the meaning of a title or an illustration and discuss what they know are recommended to conduct this activity.
The followings are some activities teacher can use during the pre-reading stage. These activities do not necessitate a long time to conduct. But, they are very effective to overcome the common urge to start reading a text closely right away from the beginning. Teacher-directed pre-reading, which is directed to explain some key vocabulary, ideas in the text, and the text type.
In this approach, the teacher the information the students will need, including key concepts, important vocabulary, and appropriate conceptual framework are directly explained. The reason for introducing the text types is that texts may take on different forms and hold certain pieces of information in different places. Such familiarity will, in turn, enable them to focus more deeply on the parts that are more densely compacted with information. Interactive activities, in which the teacher leads a discussion by drawing out the information students already have and interjects additional information considered to be necessary to an understanding of the text to be read.
Reflective activities, which is directed to guide the students to realize the purpose and objective for reading a certain piece of written material. This can be done at the initial stages, but this strategy can be left to the students when they have become better readers. What benefits can I get after finished reading this? Their awareness of the purpose and goal to read, later—in during-reading activities—will enable them to determine the correct skill s to employ: skimming, scanning, reading for details, or critical reading.
Due to the fact that most attention is often paid to dictionaries, the text, and the teacher in English reading classes, these processes can be the most complex to develop in a classroom setting,. To encourage active reading, the teacher is recommended to let the students to practice the followings are tips. Making predictions: Students should be guided to master the skill to predict what is going to happen next in the text because it is necessary to enable them to integrate and combine what has come with what is to come.
Making selections: Proficient readers are more selective in what to read. Integrating prior knowledge: To facilitate comprehension, the schemata activated in the pre-reading section are required to be called upon. Skipping insignificant parts: The more proficient a person reads, the more he will concentrate on important pieces of information and skip unimportant pieces. Re-reading: Students should be made aware of the importance of re-reading to increase their comprehension.
Making use of context or guessing: encouraging students to define and understand every single unknown word in a text is necessary. They should also be taught to use the context to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words. Breaking words into their component parts: To read more efficiently, students should analyze unknown words by breaking them into their affixes or roots. Reading in chunks: To read faster, students should practice reading groups of words together. Such an act will also improve comprehension.
Pausing: Good readers do not read with the same speed from the beginning to the end. At certain sections, he will pause to absorb and internalize the material being read and sort out information.
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