Instituting an Extensive Reading Component: Preliminary Findings
The Department of Language Education at Kinki University is working to establish a new English curriculum to start in April of 2010, and it was agreed that incorporating a strong reading component was indispensable. Thus, the new curriculum has been built around Extensive Reading (ER) because the curriculum development members believe in the effectiveness of ER. The current study will research and review todays practices of extensive reading (ER) activities in various language programs within higher education. In order to examine the best method of incorporating ER, curriculum development members have pilot tested their own ways of using ER in the classroom for the past year. This paper will illustrate how each method was carried out and show how students attitudes and proficiency levels have (or have not) changed after being exposed to ER. Most members implemented a comparative study between an experimental group (Ex) and a control group (NonEx); assigning ER activity to Ex, while giving other activities to Non-Ex. The results of the pilot studies did not show statistically significant gains in either vocabulary level or attitudes toward reading. However, different ER practices produced insightful feedback, thus providing the instructors with a clear path to a better ER program. The continuing pilot ER study of 2009-2010 will have the following characteristics: (1) ER will account for 40 ％ of the total grade. (2) To receive a passing grade in the ER component, students must read 10,000 words. (3) To get credit for reading and to show that students have indeed read the 10,000 words, students must successfully pass a Moodle module test or write a 75-word report on each graded reader. (4) Modified pre- and post-attitudinal surveys will be administered. Based on the findings and feedback of this continuing ER pilot study, a new curriculum incorporating ER will be initiated in the academic year of 2010.
Yoshihiro Omura
Department of Language Education,Kinki University
国际会议
2009 International Conference on Applied Linguistics & Language Teaching(2009应用语言学暨语言教学国际研讨会)
台湾
英文
173-184
2009-04-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）