Writing about topics that students have read enables them to visualize comprehension. It also helps readers frame and focus their understanding (Graham & Hebert, 2010). This research highlights the year one results of a two-year factor analysis project to ascertain opinions of focused reading sessions within Japanese university classrooms. The research will outline students initial feelings toward focused reading sessions, and how these changed at key points throughout the semester when combined with connected writing sessions and comprehension activities. It will also indicate how such short sessions could benefit inclusion within syllabi to stimulate improvement of both skills.

Task-based language teaching is an approach that shares some fundamental principles with ER, which can be used to guide assessment. If we think of “Read a book” as a task, we can agree that in ER, as in TBLT: 1) meaning is primary; 2) the task relates to a real-word target activity; and 3) assessment is based on task outcome (i.e.: on having read the book). Indeed, some of the same assessment issues arise in TBLT and ER; e.g.: how to grade without negatively affecting motivation. This session presents how a university EFL program in Japan applies TBLT principles to assessing ER across its three proficiency levels. Some solutions to be shared include how to curate a library (i.e.: provide meaningful material); how to set goals that are clear and based on how people actually read (i.e.: that match real world conditions); and how to use spreadsheet data to measure outcome achievement fairly.

Extensive reading (ER) is widely regarded by many educators and researchers as an effective means in improving students’ language knowledge and skills. This action research aimed to examine the impact of ER strategies on English Foreign Language (EFL) students’ English reading and writing abilities in a Vietnamese university. The study involved 35 EFL university students. The research was conducted through three cycles in three months in which ER strategies were applied to foster EFL students’ reading interests. The data were collected from a questionnaire, follow-up interviews, students’ diaries and classroom observations. The findings indicated that participants rated ER as beneficial for improving their background and linguistic knowledge. The majority of participants were motivated towards reading in terms of reading frequency and time duration. The test scores of the final test improved significantly, compared to other classes which did not do ER. From the results, many pedagogical implications were put forth for enhancing the quality of English learning and teaching process in EFL context.