Jesse Elam

Meiji Gakuin University

About

Jesse R. Elam is an associate professor at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. With an Ed.D. in TESOL from the University of South Carolina, his research is mainly focused on utilizing educational technology through inquiry-based approaches in the EFL context to foster students’ self-awareness and intercultural competence. More recently, he has entered into the research field of extensive reading.

Sessions

College and University Japanese university students’ attitudes towards extensive reading online more

Tue, Aug 8, 15:00-15:35 Asia/Makassar

Extensive reading (ER) has been well-documented as a robust tool for developing EFL students’ L2 skills. For a large portion of its existence, ER research and approaches have relied heavily on paper-based materials. However, appropriate paper-based graded readers for students are often limited at Japanese universities. Thus, this research project aimed at supplying 50 Japanese EFL students with access to a digital library, allowing them to use any device for reading eBooks that aligned with their reading interests and abilities. Through a mixed-methods approach, the participants of this study were surveyed about their attitudes toward graded readers via an online extensive reading digital library utilizing a modified version of Yamashita’s (2007) Reading Attitudes Survey and an open-ended questionnaire in order to get a better understanding of how cognitive, affective, and behavioral factors play a role in extensive reading mediated by technology.

Jesse Elam