Students should read comfortably and at an adequate speed when doing ER. Reading duration, time-on-task, and effort are measures of reading engagement promoting reading comprehension. In the digital era, ER has shifted to online platforms. This study investigated the relationships between the reading speed, engagement, and reading comprehension of 34 Thai university students using XReading for six weeks. The time spent and number of activities were also collected using separate record forms. A Likert-scale questionnaire assessed the participants’ reading engagement. A Pearson r correlation revealed positive relationships between comprehension and indicators of reading engagement; namely, time-on-task (r = 0.62, p = 0.00), and reading engagement (r= 0.80, p=0.00) and reported no correlation for reading speed (r = -0.06, p = 0.77) and the numbers of activities (r = 0.08, p = 0.66). The implications for online ER practices and their limitations will be discussed.

This research project investigated the students’ flow experience (FE) when reading extensively and conditions that enabled their FE. The participants were 36 Indonesian university students who studied at an English department and enrolled in two reading classes. They read extensively and individually chose books which were available in X-Reading. The data of this study were collected by distributing surveys and observing students’ ER. The findings showed that when reading extensively, the students did experience flow and it happened mostly due to their interest in their reading material. In general, the students read more in the second semester than in the first semester. Although students read more words in the second semester, the correlation between FE and the sum of words that the students read was weak. The goal condition of FE was also found as the lowest variable in both semesters. The findings indicated the importance of guiding students to set their weekly goal and motivate their ER practice to facilitate opportunities for FE and increase the quality of their language learning.

This presentation shows examples of how extensive reading is integrated into course designs that focus on the active skills of speaking and writing. The practices showcased have been applied in college English skills classrooms in Japan and also in elementary school classrooms, sometimes with college student-instructors in a Service-Learning class design. The ER component comes from the use of level-appropriate vocabulary and the large amount of class time devoted to reading without much deliberate language teaching. We argue that extensive reading using XReading, read-aloud, and speed reading, combined with vocabulary and linked skills activities can be effective in active learning classrooms and in increasing learner confidence, motivation, and comprehension. In the college setting, success was measured by semester word count and self-reported goal achievement. In the elementary school class, schema building, pre-teaching vocabulary, an engaging worksheet, and activities sustained reading time over a large part of the session.

Are the benefits of reading out loud in a second language exaggerated or misplaced? Students with a strong background in having books read to them out loud may demonstrate good English pronunciation and smooth reading when they themselves read out loud. Good pronunciation and/or smooth reading when reading out loud, however, does not appear necessarily reflect the readers comprehension of the text. Indeed, it would appear that a student’s pronunciation and/or smoothness in reading out loud should be used as an ancillary means of measuring a student's ability to understand the meaning of a text. The presentation will discuss a series of pedagogical experiences and research-based conclusions that have challenged his previously misguided assumptions in this regard, and which have led to his recently modified approach to reading out loud in L2.

Studies (Kirchhoff, 2013; Arai, 2022) show that English learners experience "flow" (Csiksentmihalyi, 1990) during extensive reading (ER), but positive effects on performance have not been confirmed. This study addressed three questions: (1) whether learners experience flow in in-class ER, (2), whether learners who do engage in more out-of-class reading than those who do not, and (3) how reading attitude (RA) (Yamashita, 2007) of learners who do differs from those who do not. Of the 31 participants in this study, eight experienced flow, and the average number of words and time spent on out-of-class ER was higher for them compared to those who did not. Additionally, those who experienced flow had higher average values for several components of RA. Further research is needed to determine whether experiencing flow during in-class ER enhances out-of-class ER performance. Additionally, more investigation is required to identify the components of RA that facilitate flow in ER.

Previous Extensive Reading (ER) studies almost exclusively focus on English language learners and tend to be limited by their lack of control over how the ER treatment is conducted and assessed. Furthermore, studies that investigate the possible effects of different styles of ER, including Extensive Listening (EL) and Audio-assisted Extensive Reading (AER), are few. The goal of this study was to investigate the possible effects of monitored ER, EL, and AER on the vocabulary acquisition, reading rate, and comprehension of learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL). Using an experimental design, data collection for the second year of this three-year project (currently including data from 150 elementary and intermediate JFL learners) has been completed. Current data indicate mixed results from these three modes of ER. Pedagogical implications and future directions will be discussed.

Speed reading and extensive reading have been used in both L1 and L2/FL instruction for many years. Past research has found out that the two methods are beneficial for EFL reading fluency development (Waring, 2006; Renandya, 2007; Macalister, 2010; Nation & Tran, 2012; 2014; Day, 2015). More recently, Nation and Waring (2020) call for a component of extensive reading programs that targets reading speed. This study attempts to respond to this call and seeks to determine whether a combination of speed reading and extensive reading produces optimal results. In the three-month experiment, one group of participants did speed reading twice a week while the other did both an extensive reading program and a speed reading course. The results showed that both groups improved on the post-test, but the one that had extensive reading combined with speed reading attained a larger improvement on reading comprehension while maintaining to read at similar speeds as their counterparts. The findings suggest that a combination of extensive reading and speed reading extends the impacts of the two methods on EFL reading fluency development.

For many language teachers and most language students, fluency means the state in which you are able to use the language you have been given or chosen accurately and appropriately in any situation in which you find yourself. This general or broad definition conflates fluency with proficiency (Lennon, 1990), but fluency is also understood by language teachers and researchers as an aspect of the complex construct of proficiency along with accuracy and complexity. As such, fluency refers to those elements of language production that include speed, smoothness, and effortlessness (Chambers, 1997). It is easy to see how the accomplishment of accuracy has been the main driver of language classroom curricula in spite of attempts to shift focus to meaningful language use. Usage-based theories of language learning suggest, however, that building fluency should have a more prominent role in language curricula from the very beginning (Ellis, N. 2005), and in all four skills (Nation, 2007). Gaining proficiency in each of the skills necessitates efficient (automatic and stable) processing of low-level processes, which are unconscious, unintentional, and involuntary (Olkonnen, et al. 2020). For reading fluency, these processes include phonological processing (grapho-)phonemic discrimination, word recognition, syntactic parsing and linking grammatical forms with meanings (Grabe, 2010). One of the claims of those who research the benefits of ER is its impact on the development of reading fluency (Al-Hamoud & Schmitt, 2009; Beglar, Hunt, & Kite, 2012; Bui & Macalister, 2021; Mclean & Roualt, 2021), but in Nation and Waring’s “four strands” curricular scheme (2020), ER is not included as a fluency building activity. What then is fluency-building and how do we support its development in the classroom with or without ER?

This research investigates how Japanese EFL learners improved their reading fluency in an extensive reading and listening program, which is designed based on the findings from research emphasizing the importance of bottom-up processing (Kadota, 2015). It consists of 12 sessions in four months including lectures and tasks to develop students’ lower-level language processing, such as phoneme, word recognition practices, and syntactic analysis. The participants were the students who expressed an interest in enrollment in the program. They were required to read more than 10,000 words per week. In this presentation, we will discuss how well the tasks worked and the reading fluency of the students improved, analyzing the results of the tasks including the scores from pre/post tests, the word per minute (WPM) of timed reading exercises, and the responses of the pre/post questionnaires, which asked about their beliefs and attitudes toward reading in English.

This study investigates how the length and level of graded readers affects Japanese EFL college students’ (CEFR A2 level) reading speed. Participants freely chose and read English-graded readers outside of class for 14 weeks. Then they took a test to measure their reading speed while reading passages with comprehension questions before and after the duration of the activity. The results of the tests showed there was no statistically significant difference (p = .904) in the reading speed between the students who read short, easy graded readers (on average 1,805-word books, in total 31,064 words) and the students who read long, advanced ones (on average 5,023-word books, in total 51,836 words) although the latter group read significantly more words (p =.002, r =.45) within the period. Thus, even though some students tend to read advanced graded readers when given the opportunity, to improve their reading fluency, teachers of extensive programs should recommend easier reading materials.

A common understanding of the term 'fluency' is the ability to use speak a language you have been given or chosen to learn without thinking about it, to do just what needs to be done with language in any situation. For most people, this means accurate and appropriate use of language, which whether they realize it or not, includes many aspects of linguistic knowledge: syntax, morphology, phonology, phonetics, semantics, and socio-pragmatics. Fluency, however, is just one component of the construct of language proficiency, which also includes complexity, accuracy, and lexis (Skehan, 1998). More precisely, fluency is the component of proficiency which reflects the learners' ability to spontaneously access implicit knowledge to express their ideas and exchange information quickly and continuously (Lennon, 1990; Olkonnen & Mutta, 2020; Segalowitz, 2003, 2010; Skehan, 2009). Nation (2000) claims that fluency building activity should make up 25% of a balanced language curriculum since no matter what you know, you should be able to produce it fluently. Unlike accuracy, complexity, and lexis, however, fluency has been largely ignored as a focus of classroom-based language learning, of language teacher training, of published instructional materials, and of curricular design. In this workshop, after a brief review of the research-based rationale for including fluency development activity in the ESL curriculum, participants will engage in a variety of fluency-building activities for reading and listening that will support ER, EL, and language learning, in general. Principles for choosing and designing tasks for fluency development will be used to evaluate the activities as well as help participants design practical ways in which they can include fluency development activity in their current course or curricula.