In this session the ERF Board will meet to discuss matters related to the running of the Extensive Reading Foundation. Affiliate Chairs are expected to attend and the session is open to the public.

During this session aspects of an action research project encouraging students to engage in extensive reading (ER) practices in Arabic that took place online will be discussed. The session will review some of the issues students face when reading in Arabic and showcase how the researchers sourced appropriate free online reading materials to include in the project. The online ER activities to engage students in reading will also be explained.

Why is extensive reading important for language learning? How can students be motivated to read for pleasure? How can instructors enhance a student’s incidental language learning through extensive reading? Join us to learn answers to these questions.

Graded Readers are supposedly "graded" according to their difficulty. While the grading may be internally consistent for a specific publisher, comparing even a few of the most popular series shows that books with identical headword counts can be labelled at widely different levels. Background info and suggestions will be offered.

This presentation will review an 8-week study that used authentic digital books with elementary and secondary students learning English in a foreign language setting. Participants were at the basic levels of CEFR. Study procedures and outcomes will be discussed.

In its second phase of implementation, in a pandemonium set up that can even curtail teachers' and students' motivation, ER, being adaptable, thrives and can support the primary curriculum to engage learners in language communication activities. Are you new to ER or contemplating implementing it? Then come and join!

In this paper, a classroom practice is reported in which extensive reading was combined with digital storytelling. It was conducted in an EFL reading class at a national university in Japan. The objective was to provide learners with an opportunity of extensive reading, story analysis, and active learning.

In this presentation, we will first give an overview of the currently available graded readers for Japanese language learners and point out some of the problems. Then, we will explain how we have developed our new graded readers for beginning Japanese learners.

This short presentation reports on action research into the baseline reading profiles of students and factors that may have impacted on learners’ past reading experiences. A reading project with graded reading, timed reading, and Reader’s Theatre was introduced to build skills and motivation for low proficiency university freshmen in Japan.

Reading literacy is significant for learners’ academic success, and high levels of reading literacy can be established through strong engagement in extensive reading. This study, thus, investigated lower secondary school learners’ habits and attitudes toward extensive reading. The data were collected from 377 learners in North Wollo Zone, Ethiopia, using a survey questionnaire. Descriptive (frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation) and inferential (independent samples t-test) statistics were used to analyze the data. The findings of the study indicated that majority of the learners’ habit of extensive reading was poor: a great majority of them did not read any book over the last year, and most of them did not read for pleasure every day at all. The finding of the study also showed that most of the learners’ attitudes toward extensive reading was not favourable, and they mostly read for academic purposes. It was also found that there was no significant difference between gender and age of learners regarding their extensive reading habits and attitudes. Lack of appropriate reading materials, low English ability, and lack interest in reading are the major factors that affect learners’ leisure reading habits. Based on the results, it can be suggested that integrating extensive reading programme (accessibility of a wide range of interesting reading materials based on the learners’ linguistic level and interest) in input-poor English as a Foreign Language contexts like Ethiopia is essential to promote learners’ extensive reading habits and develop positive attitudes toward (extensive) reading.

Extensive Reading has yet to gain popular support in Thailand and is not widely implemented at the high school level. This presentation will describe the realities of setting up, running, and managing an Extensive Reading Project and integrating it into the curriculum to form a fundamental base in the instruction of English. After 5 years we will demonstrate the scores our students achieve in comparison to other Thai schools in the national O-Net tests, and progression over the years through the annual Oxford Online Placement Test that students take. We will conduct a survey about student attitude toward reading at the end of July 2021 just before the conference to give an up-to-date reflection from students about their feelings toward reading in general and extensive reading in particular. There will also be a reflection from teachers about implementing XReading as a tool when the COVID pandemic forced a move away from physical copies of books and the use of the MReader website.

This presentation will provide an overview of Halico Online and how five graded readers from the 10-ways-to series were used to supplement a presentation and debate course at a Japanese university.

A total of 50 secondary school English Teacher involved in Experience sharing practical training to expand their extensive reading performances at 17 different provinces and districts of Mongolia. These participants, who have been teaching English at public and private schools were asked to 5 different exercising group “How to invest extensive reading in the remote country local school”, “How to combine the curriculum and extensive reading activities”, “How to motivate the graded readers”, “How to invest extensive reader at local school” and “How to integrate English readers to other subjects at school”. For the exercise groups, the instruction time was four-day-experiments for seeking the best practices how to expand Extensive Reading approach among other English teachers those not using extensive reading tools. Four-day-experience sharing practical training later, listened 15-minute micro training presentations from each group and questions, clarification and feedback on each presentation. The major findings are as follows: 1) Extensive reading invested by local school alumna, 2) Extra curricula and school activities maximized by extensive reading clubs. The results of this experience sharing, 14 the best practitioners were recognized to coach other new instructors to perform extensive reading approach in Mongolia.

To explore the integration of literature into secondary EFL teaching, this exploratory multiple case study investigates four reading programmes implemented by experienced teachers in Chinse secondary schools. Data were collected from teachers’ reflective journals, semi-structured interviews, and related documents and artefacts. Implications are discussed in relation to teacher education.

With the ubiquitous use of digital devices, it would seem that a technological solution to ER may be just as beneficial as a paper-based approach. Hence, this mixed-methods research project looks at how first-year Japanese EFL university students experienced a yearlong, technologically-assisted extensive reading curriculum in terms of their reading attitudes.

This study investigated the students’ perception of their extensive reading and flow experience (FE) including conditions that enabled FE.

Major events such as ERAW and ERWC are immensely stimulating for attendees. In addition to attending Insightful presentations and workshops, attendees have chances to meet and talk with other educators using ER from far and wide. These chance conversations can spark new lines of thinking and areas of collaboration. The coronavirus pandemic has taught us that technology can bring us together despite being separated by physical distance. In 2020, the JALT ER Special Interest Group started a monthly informal gathering using Zoom meetings. The monthly meetings let friends of ER meet a little more regularly. People who come by share ideas, talk about favorite books, or sometimes discuss research. We aim to keep things informal, and building camaraderie is just as important as deepening our extensive reading knowledge. Please come by, and learn more about how you can join in.

Beglar and Hunt (2014) suggested that completing the equivalent of 7,200 standard words of extensive reading per week will facilitate substantial reading rate gains. The goal of this study was to investigate the feasibility of such a goal for learners of Japanese. Results, pedagogical implications, and suggestions will be discussed.

This presentation addresses how Indonesian university students perceived themselves developing their reader identity through xreading and its follow-up activities. The presentation uses the perspective of literacy as social practice. Preliminary data from survey indicates that students' constructions of reading and being a reader have evolved throughout the online extensive reading.

This paper aims to report findings of a survey of English language teaching including extensive reading for early childhood education university students in Japan amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings are based on the identified correlations between online and face-to-face instruction modes in the teaching.

The purpose of this study is to investigate what motivates the participants who are in their 50s, 70s, and 80s to continue ER/EL for two to five years. How ER/EL in English stimulates them, and how their lifestyles have changed will be included in the presentation.

Xreading is very useful for assessing students’ progress, but as with any digital technology, teachers need to be aware of unscrupulous students who may try to cheat. The presenters will provide useful tips to minimize cheating, detect cheaters, and effective strategies to deal with students who have been caught cheating.

Grammar translation teaching styles in Japanese courses influence Japanese learners to conceive of reading as translating the propositional content of texts. However when reading extensively, learners may adopt different reading styles and patterns of behaviour, indicating that ER can enable students to develop more natural, normal ways of reading.

In this paper, I explain what a conversation agent (chatbot) is and demonstrate how a story can be adapted and be made flexible through the use of a Dialogflow conversation agent. I shall also present the feedback and opinions of the students who have interacted with the agent on a voluntary basis. Recommendations will also be given.

In Thailand, implementing an extensive reading program at a university level is relatively new, especially with an online library integration. This presentation focuses on the extensive reading program implementation using the Xreading virtual library at a large public university in Bangkok. The steps taken, the challenges faced, and the lessons learned will be discussed.

This paper intends to identify the correlation between ER and students’ critical thinking. The participants of this research are the first-year students of English Education study program in Universitas Negeri Surabaya who take part in ER program. The ER program implemented for students is X-Reading, an online extensive reading website with learning management system (LMS) that provides hundreds of graded readers. The data are collected from the recorded time spent by students on X-reading activities and questionnaires based on students’ perception on how extensive reading contributes to their critical thinking skill. The data are analyzed using Product Moment formula and Coefficient Determination to find out to which extent X-Reading contributes to students’ critical thinking skill.

This study examines the relationship between reading quality and the way readers monitor their progress. Learners through ER often feel the dilemma of quiz taking or pleasure reading. In this study, learners who read for pleasure demonstrated a better reading habit than those who read for quizzes.

The present study investigated two groups of freshmen’s vocabulary levels pre- and post-Extensive Reading programs in their respective universities.

The Coverage Comprehension Model (CCM) describes how learners who know >95-98% or more of the tokens within a text are likely to comprehend it. This presentation explains how the operationalization of the CCM is based on four assumptions that research suggests are incorrect. Teachers and researchers will benefit from understanding this.

This presentation reports on findings from an investigation into twenty-four Chinese EFL teachers’ understanding of Extensive Reading (ER). Despite their positive attitude toward ER, results revealed that these teachers’ definition of ER was different from that of researchers in the field of ER.

The study aims to investigate whether extensive reading (ER) can promote university students’ English reading motivation and foster positive attitude towards reading in English. It further explores the teachers’ perceptions of and the challenges faced in the implementation of ER activities. An ER program was held for eight weeks at two public universities in Thailand. Teacher’s observation and student’s log were applied to collect some insightful data. After the ER program ended, focus group interview were conducted with some students randomly and six lecturers from the participating schools who were involved in the ER program. The majority of the students from both institutions expressed positive attitudes towards the ER program. However, students with different knowledge levels of English expressed diverse opinions regarding ER practice and expectation towards English test achievement. While most of the lecturers realized the usefulness of ER, some of them were still worried about the time consuming and extra workload. Although the reflection on ER was varied in some aspects, there was a consensus about the benefits of ER in promoting English language learning among learners and teachers. Therefore, the study suggested to some degree the plausibility of implementing ER in the country like Thailand where ER is not well known.

This is an open session for ERF Affiliate members, those considering starting and ERF Affiliate, and the general public. In this session, the ERF Affiliate liaison will then present the ERFs vision for the future. Then, one member from each ERF affiliate is expected to present a 3-5 minute report on their activities since the last meeting and will mention any upcoming events. Affiliate representatives will be given time to discuss together about how to cooperate in the future, and to ask questions. It is hoped that the Chairs of each affiliate would then give some advice to those who are hoping to form an Affiliate.

This session will be an open platform for attendees to learn about their local ER associations, in many regions of the world. Come and join them to learn more about the ER community in your area. Each association will have their own breakout room. These include PERC China (Publink Extensive Reading Club), MERA (the Mongolian Extensive Reading Association), IERA (the Indonesian Extensive Reading Association), JALT-ERSig (the Extensive Reading Special Interest group of JALT), TEERA (the Taiwan English Extensive Reading Association); MENA (the Middle-east and North African Extensive Reading Association), KEERA (the Korean Extensive Reading Association); JERA (the Japan Extensive Reading Association); and the forming groups in Thailand, Vietnam, Ethiopia, the UK. There will also be a breakout room for people interested in starting their own ER Association. Some ERF board members will be there to advise.

We are well aware that providing opportunities to our students to read extensively for pleasure can help them develop their language proficiency. It is, however, quite unfortunate that such an awareness is rather limited to only a few groups of teachers. So far in Thailand, the implementation of ER programs has been an individual teachers’ effort. It is likely that the existence and continuation of ER will remain at the individual teachers’ level as long as there is no official association or organization that consistently promotes ER throughout the country, and gathers ER advocates to help push ER to be integrated as part of the formal curriculum throughout Thailand. Although several attempts to convince university lecturers to form an official affiliate in Thailand have been made, up to now an ER association has not been set up. However, this is going to change. In this presentation, we will unveil the vision of the soon-to-be Thailand Extensive Reading Association (TERA) and invite ideas from the audience on how to build interest in ER in Thailand.

PERC up with Extensive Reading

During this session, representatives from the MENA ERF will provide an overview of their activities and the extent to which others are welcomed to become involved.

An informal discussion about how to implement and assess an ER program.

Meet the Mongolian Extensive Reading Association.

This presentation will cover how Japanese university students responded to a year-long extensive listening curriculum. This presentation will be of interest to teachers who are considering either implementing extensive listening, using a set of class readers, and/or using a virtual library such as Xreading.

How to write a graded reader that engages and encourages the reader to read on.

This presentation reports the findings of a qualitative PhD study carried out with young learners. Extensive reading, reading circles and reading aloud were implemented. Action research was used to examine the L2 reading process. Findings show the participants’ L2 reading accounts.