BASAbali supports local Indonesian languages, cultures and civic engagement by encouraging people to publicly discuss key issues using local languages on community-developed online platforms. In relation to reading, the Superhero series is modeled after traditional Indonesian shadow puppet storytellers and co-developed with the community and local artists. Digital superhero Luh Ayu Manik Mas engages youth to take action to advance sustainable development goals. The books offer language literacy, environmental and cultural literacy to children in an enjoyable way. This presentation will introduce the organization and its various activities, focusing on those that aim to promote language, environmental and cultural literacy. She will discuss the development of the superhero series, its successes and future plans. All ERWC6 participants will receive a copy of one comic book when they pick up their nametags on site.

Are you interested in writing stories for your students? This workshop will take you through the first steps in writing your very own story. The aim of this workshop will be to address questions such as, how do you get the inspiration for a story? How should a story be structured? What do I have to do to make the story interesting for my students and other readers? How do I maintain a certain language level? At the end of the session each participant will come out with a plan for their story.

The aim of extensive reading is to enable students to read fiction and non-fiction more efficiently. Non-fiction texts, such as biographies, instruction manuals, news reports, advertising, etc., follow the same basic structure as works of fiction. Why is this? Cognitive scientists have demonstrated that the human brain comprehends, analyzes, memorizes, learns, and teaches others through stories. This process of story creation and sharing is as much a part of our human nature as language and walking on two feet. Although we all have this natural ability to follow, retell, and create stories in our first language, when processing language stories through a second or third language we may find it harder to follow the narrative plot. This presentation introduces a series of activities to help students identify the stages of the plot of books they have read and then to consolidate their understanding through creating their own stories collectively.

Semi-secret societies like the Tolkien and Lewis’ literary discussion group ‘The Inklings,' where authors share their imaginative journeys, have the potential to engage learners at some of the highest levels on Bloom’s Taxonomy - and meld the strengths of a learner in their L1 with the possibility of collaborating with learners from other language backgrounds to create graded readers for multiple audiences. StudioCLA.org is a group of ‘Community Literacy Activist’ students who create, translate, and simplify readers in English and Japanese. The creation, translation and simplification follow an organic process that involves the design of the story elements, vocabulary level, word count, and target audience. The first volume of these stories - YAMS - or Young Adult Multicultural Stories, consists of six stories each in both English and Japanese and each at three levels. This presentation will describe the evolution of StudioCLA from a grant-initiated project (JSPS 20K13154), and invite your participation in an international society of human creative writers of language learner literature in multiple languages that aims to ‘change the world through the power of art’.

Students who read a great deal become better and more confident readers. But the effect of reading on students’ writing is less clear: students who are good readers continue to find writing challenging. In my presentation, I will first discuss the nature of the relationship between reading and writing and then explore how this relationship can be strengthened. I will then offer practical tips on how teachers can help students benefit from more focused reading, i.e., the kind of reading that enables students to notice language features and discourse rules found in texts. When students do this regularly, there is a good chance that they might become better readers and writers.

The presenters will discuss the process of writing narratives based on real-world issues. The focus will be on how the stories come into being, how they are mined, refined, and then redefined into graded readers. We will briefly describe the collaborative process from story development and editing, working with the authors and publisher, and some of the challenges in getting the readers into print. In the second half of the workshop, we will take a look at a new series in development focusing on content that we would like to share with our learners, stories that matter such as unsung heroines, marginalized groups, and people improving the lives of others. While the aim has always been to provide broader perspectives on global topics, we also want to create engaging, light-hearted content that does not compromise our efforts to leave our readers with the sense of humanity we crave in society.

When writing a story for language learners you enter into one of the most intimate relationships that a writer can have with a reader. This presentation will examine that relationship. How can the gap between reader and writer be bridged in order to make the reading journey as comfortable as possible? As a writer, you have to be with your readers at all times, anticipating parts of the road where they may stumble or fall. You have to extend a helping hand to help them during their journey. At the same time however, it is important that your fellow travellers do not see the hand you are extending. It has to be a real story. And with real stories you make the journey by yourself. You want readers to feel that that they have made the journey on their own, so they will come back next time, for another story.

To increase student motivation with regard to both Extensive Reading and Creative Writing, a graded reader writing competition was organized. Over the course of a semester, twelve student writers, under the guidance of their teacher completed novels, as well as cover designs and quizzes. Those graded readers, were then made available on the Xreading website so they could be read and rated by students around the world as well as a panel of volunteer judges. The presenters will discuss the process that was used, share samples, and ideas for expansion in the future.

This is a meeting for anyone involved, or anyone who wants to become involved, in journals and newsletters about Extensive Reading. Reviewers, editors, copy editors, layout editors, and website managers. We will also discuss the Proceedings for the Extensive Reading World Congress.