The participants in this study were fourth-year undergraduate students enrolled in the Teacher Education Program at a private university in Japan. For their seminar work, the students read articles describing the benefits of extensive reading (ER), the process of implementing an ER program and relevant research studies. After six weeks of lessons, the teacher trainees participated in an ER lesson as students. Data was collected through the use of a questionnaire containing open-ended questions. Each question represented a research question for this study. The questions elicited the teacher trainees’ opinions about: ER’s viability within the Japanese context and for low-level learners; perceived weaknesses and strengths of ER; possible approaches for incorporating ER into English classes; ER and student motivation; and whether they plan to use ER in the future. The results indicated the trainees had a positive view of ER, but they were mostly concerned with ER’s viability for low level learners.

Studies show that Extensive Reading (ER) helps students to improve their reading skills, vocabulary, and understanding of other cultures. However, teachers have doubts about how to conduct ER programs and students might not be familiar with ER. Hence, collaborative learning in a form of mentoring both for teachers and students, Literacy hERoes is put forward to help introduce ER. This presentation showcases the activism of Literacy hERoes who joined in the IERA Goes to School (IGS) Program in 2022. They were actively involved in the program with the support of the IGS Program Team. Using data resulting from the reflection sheets and focus group discussion sessions, we will also discuss the merits and the lessons learned along with challenges they faced in this program. As a result, these LHs can take advantage of their involvement for their future learning.

The benefits of ER are now well established (Nation & Waring, 2020) and language courses which include an ER program developed with a principled approach can provide learners with quality opportunities to improve their language proficiency (Nation & Macalister, 2021). When the Foreign Language Division at a women’s university in Japan was established in 2018, its staff envisioned utilizing ER to provide its students with quality opportunities to improve their language proficiency. This presentation reports on how an ER program, now in its fifth year, was set up and maintained for 700+ first-year students in a university-wide compulsory English course. It describes how the ER program started with printed graded readers in 2019 and transitioned to digital graded readers with Xreading in 2020. It details how the program is managed, how it navigated the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, students’ achievements, and students, teachers and administrators’ perceptions of the program.

It is no doubt that extensive reading (ER) and intensive reading (IR) are powerful teaching approaches that can help students develop a love of reading and overall language skills. This presentation aims to investigate teachers’ attitudes towards ER and IR through a nation-wide survey that involved 2,111 junior high school teachers of language and non-language subjects. The survey was conducted online and taken prior to a series of three-day workshops on ER and IR sponsored by the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology. Each workshop was attended by approximately 120 teachers from different regions across Indonesia. In general, the survey results revealed that teachers demonstrated positive attitudes towards ER and IR. Moreover, a remarkably high percentage of teachers (86.8 %) believed that teaching reading was not only the responsibility of language teachers. On the other hand, only a small percentage of the respondents (1.9 %) admitted that they were knowledgeable about reading comprehension strategies, let alone teaching them to students due to inadequate training and resources. In addition, most participants (68.8%) expressed a need for professional development on how to teach reading and writing related to their subjects. The study implied that continuous training on integrating ER and IR across curriculum should be carried out.

The "Four Strands" approach maintains that we need to provide our students with more time to practice through meaning-focused input (Reading & Listening) and output (Speaking and Writing) as well as "fluency training" by having them read, write, speak and hear material that they already understand. It states that 75% of student learning should be devoted to practice with only 25% of the time spent on frontal teaching or studying grammar or vocabulary. This session will discuss what this means in practical terms bringing recent research to support Nation’s contention.

It is generally acknowledged that extensive reading contributes more to the acquisition of language competence than classroom learning, especially for younger learners aged from 3 to 16. Most language schools which are still struggling through only classroom learning turned out to be unavailing. Thus the presenter started their trials of integrating ER program with IR course and helped the students to achieve more. In this presentation, the presenter would like to share their experience of how they integrated ER to the curriculum, including how to do the diagnostic tests and periodical assessments for the students; how to choose the proper ELL or ESL readers for them accordingly; how to setup the targeted skills and strategies for both IR & ER course; how to guide the in-classroom ER course and lead the at-home ER practices, and how students benefit from Extensive Reading.

This presentation will focus on implementing and maintaining an online extensive reading (ER) program using Xreading in a private Japanese women's junior college and university. The program is designed to increase reading fluency and is part of all compulsory first-year reading (4) and four skill (5) classes. Reading is done outside class time, and students must read 180,000 words to achieve the maximum score, comprising 10% of the total course grade. The presenter will discuss the different approaches of specific teachers and challenges in online ER. In addition, the results of a questionnaire administered last year to 81 first-year students (TOEIC 175 to 965, Mean = 466.49) to evaluate the program will be shared, highlighting the perceived benefits of ER, such as vocabulary acquisition and reading fluency. Additionally, students' attitudes and engagement with ER, as well as the impact of teacher practice and quizzes on motivation, will be discussed.

The purpose of this study is to describe how the extensive reading program was conducted in higher education and what the students’ perceptions about the program. The descriptive qualitative study used observation, questionnaires, and interviews to collect data. The data was taken from activities in the extensive reading program, which is one of the courses included in the curriculum of the program from 2009 to 2022. The participants were undergraduate students of English Education Department from a State University in Indonesia. The research findings indicate that the extensive reading program could be conducted as an independent course within the curriculum, through offline, online, blended, and hybrid learning. The study also showed that the extensive reading program stands out as a program that can cover the four language skills as well as improving students' vocabulary and grammar use.

Many studies have found the benefits of extensive reading (ER). However, many teachers still need to learn what ER is and its benefits. In this presentation, we will share our experience introducing ER to English and non English teachers through a workshop sponsored by the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture. The workshop was held for three days and was attended by more than 2000 teachers from all over Indonesia. From the workshop, we learned that most participants were interested in implementing ER principles. They shared their plans on how to integrate ER into their subjects. However, they admitted that their biggest challenges are the limited time and lack of sources. This shows that implementing ER synergically at schools needs long-term commitment from teachers and school policymakers.

The presentation aims at investigating teachers’ reflections through their narratives. Approximately 2000 teachers of language and non-language subjects participated in a nationwide workshop on Extensive Reading and Intensive Reading sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology. At the end of the workshop, the workshop participants were invited to write reflective notes on their experience attending the workshop. One hundred twenty narratives submitted by the participants were coded for common themes. The analysis revealed that the participants held positive responses to the workshop. Theoretical contents delivered in the workshop convinced teachers of their best teaching practice, enabling them to theorize their practice. Moreover, practical exercises on ER and IR were considered to boost teachers’ confidence to implement ER and reading strategies in the classroom. Participants could also foresee themselves becoming role models of readers for their students. In addition, the participants expected continuing professional development to be provided by the government to help them keep up-to-date with trends in the implementation of ER and IR.

This paper reports a longitudinal study that observed Japanese learners in a long-term extensive reading program. Participants were eight students who continued extensive reading throughout their elementary to senior high school years. Observation periods varied between learners: they started reading between pre-school and 4th grade and ended in 11th to 12th grade. Analysis used participants’ reading history corpus and reading and teaching records which included titles of books read, how they read, notable events, learners’ comments, and teacher’s observations. Corpus analysis revealed that both reading amount (running words) and lexical input (word types) commonly increased rapidly from 7th to 9th grade. Three major phases were observed in the transition of book selection, which were partially divergent according to individual learning motivation, reading preference, and reading ability. Participants' learning motivations were found to have shifted from extrinsic toward intrinsic regulation, with some individual differences.

Teaching reading is a complex act, and is made more challenging if the teaching environment is very complicated as it was in many contexts during the Covid-19 pandemic. This unfavorable context required teachers to engage in regular reflections to make critical decisions about how to respond to the pandemic and its regulations so as to improve their practice. Post pandemic, the current study captures the reflections of two Foundation Phase teachers on implementing an extensive reading program with 40 learners aged between 7-10 years old. The reading program was implemented during COVID-19 lockdown in a township in South Africa. This qualitative, interpretative study used data generation methods of self-reflective journals and focus group discussions to document experiences of the two teachers. Analysis of the reflections show that COVID-19 regulations negatively impacted the successful implementation of the program. However, teachers were overwhelmingly positive about the benefits of implementing the program during this time, as they became reflexive and reflective in their practice. Findings imply that challenges in implementation should not be regarded as obstacles of weakness but as new opportunities of knowledge. Recommendations for implementing reading program post COVID - 19 are provided based on the data collected.

This talk will focus on the practicalities of conducting an extensive reading program, with comparisons of both in-person lessons and lessons conducted online. The benefits of extensive reading seem fairly uncontroversial but incorporating these within a larger curriculum that meets the demanding time constraints of university students remains somewhat challenging. The presenter will highlight his approach as well as tools such as paper graded readers, free online readers and subscription services that students were able to utilize in order to participate both during the pandemic and when classes resumed face-to-face.

This presentation outlines the evolution of the JALT ER SIG's monthly online event PresentERs. First, the different versions of the event are described, as well as how they responded to the evolving needs of our members during the pandemic. This part focuses particularly on the decision to change the focus of the event from socializing to professional development. The latter half focuses on how we developed PresentERs in the hope that other organizations can create similar online spaces for their members. This includes how we aimed to give direction to meetings while allowing for free participation, the process of recruiting people to speak at the event, and using social media to advertise and get a larger more diverse group of attendees.

This paper aims at (1) introducing part of a reading project carried out at a high school in Vietnam and (2) investigating students’ interest in reading during the project. The project is supposed to cover 4 topics, and each topic takes 6 weeks to be explored. This paper focuses on the topic of Lunar New Year (the biggest traditional festival in Vietnam). 45 students of grade 11 participated in the project from January to mid-February 2023. They were divided into five groups. Each group was given a collection of literary works and they themselves chose three articles about Lunar New Year to read, then picked up words/ phrases relating to the topic to build a vocabulary bank and made a short video clip to present the topic. Data collected from the survey and interviews with students showed that they really developed their interest in reading during the project.

Extensive reading (ER) plays an important role in Indonesian high schools as it supports the National School Literacy Movement and improves students' English skills. However, ER-based activities during school hours mostly rely on the 15-minute silent reading at the beginning of the day. This study describes a piece of research carried out in seven high schools in Java and Bali into students’ perceptions of after-school ER programs. Arranged by ER enthusiasts in the Indonesian Extensive Reading Association (IERA), this program explores fifty-eight students’ perceptions of the reading materials and the follow-up activities through an online questionnaire. The findings of the survey found that composing acrostic poems based on the book they read was the most interesting among other ER-based follow-up activities. Another finding revealed that the students expressed a more positive attitude towards ER which is enjoyable, inspiring, and entertaining. Pedagogical implications will also be discussed.

The plenary speakers will share their observations on the major concerns they noticed concerning the future of extensive reading and extensive listening. Time permitting, questions will be taken from the audience.