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http://rel.sagepub.com The Power of Extensive Reading

Willy A. Renandya RELC Journal 2007; 38; 133 DOI: 10.1177/0033688207079578 The online version of this article can be found at: http://rel.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/38/2/133

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Article

The Power of Extensive Reading

Willy A. Renandya
SEAMEO Regional Language Centre, Singapore willyr@relc.org.sg
Abstract My goal in this article is to discuss the empirical support for extensive reading and explore its pedagogical applications in L2/FL learning. I argue that the benets derived from diverse studies on extensive reading in many different contexts are so compelling that it will be inconceivable for teachers not to make it an important feature of their teaching. Keywords book-based methodology, comprehension hypothesis, extensive reading, input hypothesis, reading pedagogy, second/foreign language reading, shared book approach, USSR.

Introduction What are some of the factors that help explain the relative lack of success in second or foreign language learning? Depending on ones personal experience, beliefs, and theoretical orientations, any of the following factors may be offered: x x x x x x x x inappropriate teaching methodology outdated coursebooks crowded classrooms underqualied and underpaid teachers unmotivated learners inefcient learning strategies lack of opportunity to use the target language lack of input.

These are all important factors, but over the years I have come to believe that it is a lack of suitable input that accounts for much of the variability in the outcome of foreign language learning.

Vol 38(2) 133-149 | DOI: 10.1177/0033688207079578 2007 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) http://RELC.sagepub.com
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In L1 learning, language input is abundantly available. Children learning their mother tongue are constantly ooded with oral as well as written language input. Not so in L2 or FL learning! In L2 and in particular in FL learning, the amount of input is severely limited. In addition, the quality of input is rarely exemplary. In fact, in some places, English classes are taught by teachers who have little prociency in the language. While we can not create an L2 environment that resembles an L1 learning context, we can immerse our students in the language they are learning by making available a large supply of books and other print or non-print materials in the classroom. With a little help from the teacher, students then choose books that they are interested in and can understand on their own, talk about what they have read, act out the content of the book, and do other enjoyable and meaningful post-reading activities. After a period of time, it is not uncommon to see dramatic improvements in students language prociency as a result of being exposed to an input-rich classroom environment. My goal in this article is to discuss the empirical support for extensive reading and explore its pedagogical applications in L2/FL learning. I will show that the benets derived from diverse studies on extensive reading in many different contexts are so compelling that it will be inconceivable for teachers not to make it an important feature of their teaching. What Is Extensive Reading? According to Carrell and Carson (1997: 49-50), extensive reading generally involves rapid reading of large quantities of material or longer readings (e.g. whole books) for general understanding, with the focus generally on the meaning of what is being read than on the language. While this denition provides an overview of extensive reading, Davis (1995: 329) offers a more useful denition of extensive reading from a classroom implementation perspective:
An extensive reading programme is a supplementary class library scheme, attached to an English course, in which pupils are given the time, encouragement, and materials to read pleasurably, at their own level, as many books as they can, without the pressures of testing or marks. Thus, pupils are competing only against themselves, and it is up to the teacher to provide the motivation and monitoring to ensure that the maximum number of books is being read in the time available. The watchwords are quantity and variety, rather than quality, so that books are selected for their attractiveness and relevance to the pupils lives, rather than for literary merit.
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Although extensive reading programmes come under different names, including Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading (USSR), Drop Everything and Read (DEAR), and Silent Uninterrupted Reading for Fun (SURF), and the Book Flood programme (Elley and Mangubhai 1983), they all share a common purpose: that learners read large quantities of books and other materials in an environment that nurtures a lifelong reading habit. In addition, these programmes also share a common belief, that is, the ability to read uently is best achieved through reading extensively in the language. People learn to read by reading, as Frank Smith (1988) and others have pointed out. Extensive reading differs from intensive reading. In intensive reading, students normally work with short texts with close guidance from the teacher. The aim of intensive reading is to help students obtain detailed meaning from the text, to develop reading skillssuch as identifying main ideas and recognizing text connectorsand to enhance vocabulary and grammar knowledge. It is important to note that these two approaches to teaching readingintensive and extensive readingshould not be seen as being in opposition, as both serve different but complementary purposes (Carrell and Carson 1997; Nuttall 1982). However, intensive reading seems to be the dominant mode of teaching reading in many language classrooms. This is despite evidence that intensive reading alone will not help learners develop their reading uency, a crucial skill that mature readers acquire only after repeated exposure to massive quantities of written text. Theoretical Framework The theory behind extensive reading is a simple one. We learn language by understanding messages, that is, when we understand what people say to us and when we comprehend what we read (Krashen 1997). This is a position maintained by a number of theoristsJames Asher, Harris Winitz, Kenneth Goodman, Frank Smith, Warwick Elley and Richard Day, just to name a few. But it was Stephen Krashen who formalized this position into a theory known as the input hypothesis, which he later called the comprehension hypothesis (Krashen 2004). The comprehension hypothesis states that the following conditions are needed for acquisition to take place: x that the input is abundantly available x that the input is comprehensible x that the input is slightly above students current level of competence.
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When these conditions are met and when the student repeatedly focuses on the meaning of a large number of interesting messages, he or she incidentally and gradually acquires the forms in which they are couched (Elley 2001: 129). Some theorists, however, claim that comprehensible input alone is not sufcient and must be supplemented by comprehensible output (Swain 1993, 1999). It is believed that learners need to be pushed to produce output that is meaningful and syntactically appropriate. Other theorists, notably Krashen (1998), maintain that output is not necessary for acquisition to take place. Whether or not output is essential, and to what extent it contributes to language learning, is an empirical issue and is not likely to be resolved in the near future. From a more pragmatic and pedagogical perspective, however, there is no harm in making provision for students to try out the language forms they have picked up from regular exposure to meaningful messages. Anecdotal Evidence When people ask me how I learned English, I never hesitate to tell them that I did a lot of pleasure reading when I was a student in college and that Im still doing a lot of reading now. And when learners of English ask me what the best way to learn English is, I never hesitate to quote Christine Nuttall (1982: 168): The best way to improve ones knowledge of a foreign language is to go and live among its speakers. The next best way is to read extensively in it. To this quote, I usually add that for a more complete mastery of the language, one has to listen to the language extensively, too. Extensive reading and listening complement each other nicely. It is not difcult to conrm Nuttalls observation. My conversations with language professionals and practitioners provide believable evidence that extensive reading is a key component to language acquisition. I knew of a group of teachers working in a language institution in Indonesia who were asked to take the TOEFL test some years ago. The majority scored rather dismally. Two of them, however, scored way above 600, which by Indonesian standards is very high. Both of them turned out to be avid readers of English. More recently, I asked a group of teachers in Vietnam about their TOEFL scores. Those who scored high reported that they read regularly in English. My own personal experience also provides conrmation for the key role of extensive reading. Despite six years of studying English in high

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school in Indonesia, my level of prociency in English was close to being non-functional. I knew some words and how to put these words into sentences. But that was about all. Armed with this minimal knowledge in English, I applied for admission into an English teacher training college in Indonesia and got accepted. All lectures were conducted in English, so imagine how hard it was for me to cope in class. Most of the time, I was there in class without understanding very much about what was going on. We were all required to read graded readers in the rst two years, something that I did not really enjoy doing. Upon reection, this was mainly because the contents were not that interesting (most of the readers were simplied classics) and culturally not very suitable (I could not relate to what happened in the stories). What I disliked most was the book report that I had to do after I nished each book. It was a real torture having to write in English when you were not really ready to write. Then I chanced upon a thriller (the famous Perry Mason seriesa fast moving, courtroom drama series) that got me hooked onto reading. It was the rst time that I enjoyed the luxury of really understanding a full narrative written in English. It was such a wonderful feeling and an exhilarating experience! You know what happened next: I would read and read and read until my eyeballs popped out, to quote a line from Roald Dahls poem Advice on Television. By the time I graduated, I must have read all 40 or 50 titles in the Perry Mason series, not counting other stories written by other authors. Over the years, I have become convinced that it was the vast amount of reading that I did that contributed signicantly to my language development. It could not have been the numerous grammar classes that I had attended then because I remember quite vividly that I did not really understand the explanations given during class sessions. What is interesting is that in spite of this, I performed extremely well on the grammar tests, better than most of my classmates who would spend hours and hours preparing for the tests. A more believable account on the impact of extensive reading can be found in the numerous case studies of individuals that have been reported in books and journals. One case study is reported by Cohen (1997, cited in Krashen 2003) who attended secondary school in Turkey at the age of 12. Turkish is the main language used in school and in the wider community in Turkey. English is taught as a foreign language. Cohen started to read extensively after only two months of study and by the end of the rst year in secondary school she became an avid reader.

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She would read all kinds of books that she could get hold of. She got into a bit of trouble in her writing class when she submitted two awless written compositions which her teacher refused to mark. Her teacher suspected that someone must have helped her write the essay, as the quality was way beyond the level of the class. In Cohens words (cited in Krashen 2003: 18):
She wanted to know who had helped me write them [the compositions]. They were my personal work. I had not even used the dictionary. She would not believe me. She pointed at a few underlined sentences and some vocabulary and asked me how I know them; they were well beyond the level of the class. I had not even participated much in class. I was devastated. There and then and many years later I could not explain how I knew them. I just did (emphasis added).

Cohens experience ts nicely with Elleys (2001) observation cited above, that is, repeated exposure to a large number of meaningful language enables learners to learn lot of new language forms. Empirical Evidence Empirical evidence abounds. A large body of experimental studies have now been documented that show the profound effects of extensive reading on rst and second language development (for an annotated bibliography of works on extensive reading in L2 learning, log on to www. extensivereading.net). Stephen Krashen in his book The Power of Reading (1993) provides a summary of L1 studies comparing the achievements of students who received traditional reading instruction with those who were asked to do sustained silent reading or self-selected reading at schools. Table 1 below (adapted from Krashen 1993: 2) displays the effects of school-based free reading programmes on standardized tests of reading.
Table 1. Results of Reading Comprehension Tests: Free Reading vs Traditional Reading Instruction Duration Less than 7 months 7 months 1 year Longer than 1 year Positive 5 3 8 Results of No Difference 13 18 11 Negative 3 0 0

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Two points are worth highlighting here. First, the table shows that in 38 out of 41 comparisons or 93%, free readers perform as well as or better than instructed students. Note that a result of no difference does not put our free readers at a disadvantage. Instead, it shows that free reading alone is just as good as traditional instruction, which conrms that free reading results in literacy growth (Krashen 1993: 3). Second, for studies that last one year or longer, the results are more consistently positive. In 8 out of 9 comparisons, free readers signicantly outperformed students in the traditional language arts programme. If reading is good for students learning their rst language, is it also good for those learning a second or foreign language? The answer is a resounding yes (see Day and Bamford 1998). Extensive reading works with both young and older learners of English in both ESL and EFL settings. Many of the studies report a large gain in reading and other aspects of language prociency. The results also generally echo Krashens claim that the longer the length of the reading programme, the bigger and more robust the impact of extensive reading is. In a number of correlational studies in ESL or EFL contexts, the amount of reading has been shown to be positively correlated with various aspects of second and foreign language competence. The amount of free reading that ESL students reported doing was a signicant predictor of their TOEFL test scores (Constantino, Lee, Cho and Krashen 1997) and their ability to judge the grammaticality of complex English structures (Lee, Krashen, Gibbons 1996, cited in Krashen 2003). Interestingly, the length of the students formal English study and their length of residence in the United States did not show signicant correlations. In a study I did in Singapore (Renandya, Rajan and Jacobs 1999), I looked at the relationship between a number of variables and the learning gain of a group of EFL students from Vietnam who studied English intensively for two months in Singapore. Learning gains were obtained from the pre and posttest course results. Only variables related to reading were signicantly correlated with the students gain scores. The amount of English study in the students home countries was not correlated with their gain scores. Of the three variables related to reading, the free reading the students were assigned to do as part of the course requirements was the only signicant predictor of their gain scores (see Table 2 below which is adapted from Renandya, Rajan and Jacobs 1999).

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Table 2. Multiple Regression Analysis: Predictors of Gain Scores Predictor Amount of extensive reading done in Singapore Amount of English newspaper/magazine reading in Singapore Books read in home country Amount of English study at school in home country Amount of intensive English course in home country Beta -.414 -.279 -.208 -.179 -190 T -2.83 -1.85 -1.31 -1.27 -1.39 P p<.05 ns ns ns ns

The past two decades have also seen a substantial number of experimental studies on extensive reading in second and foreign language learning contexts. One of the rst pioneering studies was conducted in the late 1970s in Nieu, a small island in the South Pacic. DeAth (2001) used the Shared Book or Shared Reading Method to introduce 50 high interest, short, illustrated story books to Grade 3 pupils. After one year, children in the book-based classrooms outperformed those in the traditional audiolingual method in all three measures that were used, that is, reading comprehension, word recognition and oral sentence repetition. Figure 1 below is adapted from DeAth (2001).

Figure 1. Results of Book-based vs. Audiolingual Classrooms

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141 The Power of Extensive Reading

In another school-based research study, Elley and Mangubhai (1983) were able to show the dramatic effect of extensive reading on second language learners language development in Fiji. Nine to eleven-year old children at Grade 4 and 5 from a number of schools took part in the experiment. The control group followed their regular audiolingual programmes. The students in the experimental conditions, however, were literally ooded with 250 high interest books and were divided into two groups: the read only group and the shared reading experience group. After one year, the book ood students outperformed their audiolingual counterparts in some of the measures. For Grade 4, the reading groups did signicantly better on tests of reading comprehension and English structures, but not in word recognition and oral sentences. What is striking is that in terms of actual reading growth, the book ood groups produced 15 months reading growth over a period of 8 months, while the traditional group gained 6.5 months. For Grade 5, the reading groups were superior to the control group in reading and listening comprehension measures but not on tests of English structure and writing. In terms of growth in reading, the book ood groups produced an average of 12 months reading growth, while the control group gained a dismal 2.5 months over a period of 8 months.

Figure 2. The Reading Growth (in Months) of the Audiolingual Group vs. the Book Flood Groups over a Period of 8 Months

After two years of implementation, however, the effects of the book ood programmes were more clear cut. The reading groups were far superior to the traditional group in all measures. For Grade 5, the reading
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groups outperformed the traditional groups on tests of reading, listening, and English language structures. For Grade 6, the reading groups outperformed the audiolingual group on tests of reading, vocabulary, grammar and writing. Furthermore, the effects spread to maths and other languagerelated skills. The book ood students outperformed the control students in the National Examination in Mathematics, English, General Studies and Fijian Language. An adapted version of the Fiji book ood programme was implemented in Singapore (called the REAP programmeReading and English Acquisition Programme) and in Brunei (called the RELAReading and Language Acquisition Project). In both countries, the results of the bookbased programmes echoed the Fiji book ood programme, and proved to be so successful that they were subsequently adopted in the national curricula of these countries (see Elley 1991 for details of the results). In the UK, Haz and Tudor (1989) reported on a three-month extensive reading programme using graded readers with students of Pakistani origin aged 10-11 years. The experimental group did self-selected pleasure reading with minimal accountability for one-hour every day over 12 weeks. Two matched groups who followed their normal lessons served as controls. All three groups were given a battery of three reading tests and four writing tests before and after the experiment. The test results are highly revealing: 1. the pleasure reading group made signicant gains on all tests of reading and writing 2. one control group did not make any signicant gains on all tests 3. the other control group made no signicant gains on any of the three reading tests, but did signicantly better on two of the four writing tests. In the studies reported above, the researchers worked in relatively wellresourced schools. A big question remains, though: Is it possible to set up a successful extensive reading programme in a resource poor school? There is evidence to suggest that the answer is yes. Lituanas, Jacobs and Renandya (2001) were able to show the striking effect of extensive reading despite the rather limited quality and quantity of the reading materials used in the extensive reading programme. The participants were 60 Grade 7 remedial students who attended their normal 40 minutes of English instruction plus a remedial class. In their remedial class, the control students studied via a traditional approach that empha-

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sized intensive reading and phonics. The students in the extensive reading group, on the other hand, were provided with reading materials and were encouraged to do self-selected reading and a variety of post-reading activities. Two standardized tests on reading comprehension were used to assess the impact of extensive readingthe Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) and the Gray Standardized Oral Reading Test (GSORT). After six months, the extensive reading students made more profound reading gains than the traditional group on both measures. Figures 2 and 3 show the results of the pre and posttests.

Figure 3. Performance on IRI

Figure 4. Performance on GSORT

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Studies conducted in EFL settings have largely conrmed the language learning benets of extensive reading. Robb and Susser (1989) and Mason and Krashen (1997) investigated the effects of extensive reading with EFL college students in Japan. In both studies, students who did extensive reading performed signicantly better on reading comprehension posttest scores than those who were taught in the traditional way (skills building or intensive reading method). Implementation What does a successful extensive reading programme look like? The following characteristics are generally thought to be among the most important (Day 2006; Day, Bamford and Lee 2000; Jacobs, Davis and Renandya 1997; Renandya and Jacobs 2002): 1. Students Read Large Amounts of Material This is one of the key features that distinguishes extensive from intensive reading programmes. In ER, teachers attempt to build a reading culture in which students read in quantity. The programme will not obtain optimal benets unless students are hooked on reading and read in quantity. 2. Students Usually Choose What They Want to Read With highly motivated students, this feature is easy to achieve. However, with less motivated learners, the availability of materials that they do like to read can make a lot of difference. These learners usually dont read much. To get them hooked on reading, they need access to a good collection of books and other materials that they want to read. Unfortunately, the kind of material that these students are more likely to pick up (e.g. ghost stories, comics and the like) may be hard to nd, or even nonexistent, in school libraries. 3. Reading Materials Vary in Terms of Topic and Genre Students should be exposed to different types of materials so that they become familiar with different kinds of genre and accustomed to reading for different purposes and in different ways. Although younger learners may prefer ction, they should gradually be introduced to nonction. While a good selection of ction often can be found, there is a relative scarcity of nonction materials for less procient readers. Even more difcult to nd are materials for adult learners who want to read simplied materials on such topics as law, business, technology, and medicine.
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4. The Material Students Read Is within their Level of Comprehension Unlike in intensive reading where the material is typically above students linguistic level, in extensive reading the material should be near or even below their current level. To use an SLA jargon, students should be reading text at an i+1, i, or i-1 level, with i being their current prociency level, and 1 referring to language features that are slightly above students competence. The rule of thumb here is that to get students started in the programme, it is better to read easier texts than more challenging ones. For students who have had minimal exposure to contextualized language and who lack condence in their reading, even i-2 material may be appropriate, at least at the initial stage of the reading programme (Day 2006). 5. Students Usually Take Part in Post-Reading Activities The most commonly reported post-reading task that teachers employ is, unfortunately, that of summary writing or book review. This task is not without value, but because writing a summary is time-consuming and often dreaded by students, it should be used less often. Other less laborious and potentially more inviting post-reading tasks can be fruitfully used. These include asking students to: x x x x x x design a book mark to suit the book role play the story design a poster to advertise the book read interesting/exciting/well-written parts aloud copy interesting words and useful expressions into a notebook write a letter to the author.

6. Teachers Read with their Students, thus Modeling Enthusiasm for Reading We can not get our students to read if we ourselves do not read. This advice is particularly important when rst beginning an extensive reading programme. We can show students the books or other materials we have just read or are reading, let them see us read silently, and read aloud to them parts from our favorite materials. This sends a strong message to our students that we value reading and that our students should do the same. 7. Teachers and Students Keep Track of Student Progress Ideally, students read on their own without the need to monitor their reading. However, regular monitoring is recommended especially when working with reluctant readers. A simple book record can be designed to
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check students progress. In addition to using book records, a monthly student-teacher conference can be scheduled to nd out if students are having any problems with their reading. This conference can be as brief as ve minutes or less. It should be noted here that monitoring should be seen as a way of displaying student progress and motivating students, rather than as a way for the teacher to assess them. Why Are We Not All Doing Extensive Reading? Those of us who have been in the profession for some time know that extensive reading is not new. However, although many of us would readily acknowledge the educational benets of ER, how many of us are actually implementing extensive reading in our second language programme? If extensive reading is good for second language development, why isnt everybody doing it? According to Day and Bamford (1998), one of the most important reasons is that many teachers believe that intensive reading alone will produce good, uent readers. As was mentioned earlier, in intensive reading students spend lots of time analyzing and dissecting short, difcult texts under the close supervision of the teacher. The aim of intensive reading is to help students construct detailed meaning from the text, to develop reading skills, and enhance vocabulary and grammar knowledge. This overemphasis on the explicit teaching of reading and language skills leaves little room for implementing other approaches. Researchers agree that the intensive reading approach may help students perform well in conventional reading tests, but may not help them become uent and independent readers. A related reason why extensive reading is not done goes back to the whole paradigm issue of the role of teachers: sages on the stage or guides on the side. Many teachers are perhaps still uncomfortable with the idea of playing a less central role in the classroom. In intensive reading, instruction is more teacher-centered in that teachers are more center-stage in what is happening in the classroom. They do lots of talking and decide what skills or strategies to teach, how these are taught, and what passages to use. In contrast, with ER, roles shift as teachers not only pass on knowledge, but also guide students and participate with them as members of a reading community (Day and Bamford 1998: 47). Other reasons are more practical in nature. In teaching in-service courses, I often hear teachers saying that they do not have enough time to get students to read extensively because they feel pressured by the admini-

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stration to cover the predetermined materials specied in the syllabus. Some others report that since extensive reading is not directly assessed, they feel that curriculum time would be better spent on other subjects that students are tested on. Even in places where extensive reading has been incorporated into the second language curriculum (e.g. Singapore), full implementation of the extensive reading programmes is hampered by these practical considerations. Careful examination of these implementation variables should naturally receive more attention in future research. Conclusion Extensive reading is certainly not a panacea to all the problems we have in language learning. It will not guarantee a perfect mastery of English for all. But at present, when the traditional textbook and teaching methods produce less than attering results, book-based methodology, such as the shared book approach or extensive reading method in which pupils are given wide access to large quantities of comprehensible input, may just be the right antidote for our pupils learning problems. Even in the unlikely event that extensive reading does not produce measurable language gains, it will surely result in a more enjoyable language learning experience. The evidence for extensive reading is simply too strong to ignore. REFERENCES
Carrell, P.L., and J.G. Carson 1997 Extensive and Intensive Reading in an EAP Setting, English for Specific Purposes 16: 47-60. Constantino, R., S.Y. Lee, K.S. Cho and S. Krashen 1997 Free Voluntary Reading as a Predictor of TOEFL Scores, Applied Language Learning 8: 111-18. Day, R. 2006 Extensive Reading: Helping EFL Students Become Readers. Plenary Address delivered at the Suncheon International Conference on English Education, Suncheon Gangnam Girls School, Suncheon, Korea, 29 September, 2006. Day, R., and J. Bamford 1998 Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Day, R., J. Bamford and M.L.C. Lee 2000 Zarinas Discovery (or How One Teacher Found What Was Missing in her Language Class), Guidelines 22(2): 9-14. Davis, C. 1995 ER: An Expensive Extravagance?, ELT Journal 49(4): 329-36.

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DeAth, P. 2001 The Niue Literacy Experiment, in W.B. Alley (Guest ed.), Book-based Approaches to Raising Literacy in Developing Countries, International Journal of Educational Research 35: 137-46.

Elley, W.B. 1991

Acquiring Literacy in a Second Language: The Effect of Book-based Programs, Language Learning 41: 375-411. 2001 Guest Editors Introduction, in W.B. Alley (Guest ed.), Book-based Approaches to Raising Literacy in Developing Countries, International Journal of Educational Research 35: 127-35. Elley, W.B., and F. Mangubhai 1983 The Impact of Reading on Second Language Learning, Reading Research Quarterly 19: 53-67. Haz, F.M., and I. Tudor 1989 Extensive Reading and the Development of Language Skills. ELT Journal 43(1): 4-13. Jacobs, G.M., C. Davis and W.R. Renandya 1997 Successful Strategies for Extensive Reading (Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre). Jonopoulos, M. 1986 The Relationship of Pleasure Reading and Second Language Writing Prociency, TESOL Quarterly 20: 763-68. Krashen, S.D. 1982 Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition (Oxford: Pergamon Press). 1993 The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research (Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited). 1997 The Comprehension Hypothesis: Recent Evidence, English Teachers Journal 51: 17-29. 1998 Comprehensible Output, System 26: 175-82. 2003 Explorations in Language Acquisition and Use: The Taipei Lectures (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann). 2004 Free Voluntary Reading: New Research, Applications, and Controversies. Paper presented at the 39th RELC International Seminar, 19-21 April, Singapore. Lituanas, P., G.M. Jacobs and W.A. Renandya 2001 An Investigation of Extensive Reading with Remedial Students in a Philippines Secondary School, in W.B. Alley (Guest ed.), Book-based Approaches to Raising Literacy in Developing Countries, International Journal of Educational Research 35: 217-25. Mason, B., and S.D. Krashen 1997 Extensive Reading in English as a Foreign Language, System 25(1): 91-102. Nuttall, C. 1982 Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language (London: Heinemann Educational). Renandya, W.A., B.R.S. Rajan and G.M. Jacobs 1999 Extensive Reading with Adult Learners of English as a Second Language, RELC Journal 30(1): 39-61.

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Renandya, W.A., and G.M. Jacobs Extensive Reading: Why Arent We All Doing It?, in J.C. Richards and 2002 W.A. Renandya (eds.), Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Robb, T.N., and B. Susser 1989 Extensive Reading vs. Skills Building in an EFL Context, Reading in a Foreign Language 5(2): 239-51. Smith, F. 1988 Understanding Reading (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum). Swain, M. 1993 The Output Hypothesis: Just Speaking and Writing Arent Enough, The Canadian Modern Language Review 50: 158-64. 1999 Integrating Language and Content Teaching through Collaborative Tasks, in C.S. Ward and W.A. Renandya (eds.), Language Teaching: New Insights for the Language Teacher (Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre).

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