The concept of Extensive Reading (ER) in the ESL context of Bengal (India) was propounded by West (1920), who concluded that when students read texts they found interesting, their improvement in the target language was immense. Therefore, the present study investigates the implications of ER in English for developing summarizing skills of 45, class 9 students in a girls-only vernacular medium school. Data was collected using questionnaires, one round of focus group interviews and results of the pre-and post-test that were administered before and after the month-long intervention programme on ER. An analysis of the data shows that using ER helped to improve certain elements of writing that are considered necessary for good summarizing skills. The availability of more time could help to bring about greater changes in the reading-writing process. The study has implications for using Classroom ER (Waring, 2012) in EFL and ESL contexts.