Wednesday 7 July 2021

Interview with Sue Leather and Jez Uden (Extensive Reading)

Sue Leather and Jez Uden have a new book out on the topic of Extensive Reading and Motivation. I was keen to talk to them after looking into research on extensive reading and finding it to be one of the most effective interventions available to teachers. Here we chat about their new book, and some of the benefits of extensive reading. 


If you would like to read the book then you can get it from Amazon or directly from the Routledge site.


2 comments:

  1. Thanks for doing this interview.

    There were a few things that came up in the interview I wanted to comment on. In terms of why more teachers don't do extensive reading, I think one of the main reasons is lack of institutional support. Obviously, there is the issue of purchasing books, but that is only part of it. In a previous job, I was also in the position of working for a university where we had hundreds of graded readers in the library, but hardly anybody reading them. Despite my best efforts, I found it really difficult to convince my students that extensive reading was worthwhile. However, once students were 'required' (although not part of assessment) to do it as part of their course, I noticed greater uptake despite the fact that I didn't really do anything with regards to how I approached extensive reading in my classes. I guess being part of the course gave it a bit more face validity on the part of the students.

    For private language schools where there might not be fixed terms and less formal assessment, activities such as reading competitions between students and classes to see who can read the most can be one way of encouraging extensive reading at an institutional level.

    You mentioned the issue about checking how much students have read, and assessing students on what they have read. There is a website/Moodle plug-in called M-Reader where students can take short quizzes on books they have read. Teachers can then use this information to find out how many books/pages/words that their students have read.

    It was interesting to hear you talk about online reading (Btw, Xreading has lots of online books and is much cheaper than buying hard copies). I get the impression that most of my students in Taiwan haven't really fully embraced the idea of online reading. However, one of the benefits is that if the device/platform they're reading on supports dictionary translations, then students can easily click on a word they don't know to get a translation. I think this could have really big implications for how much vocabulary learning is possible through extensive reading. It would also mitigate against the issue you raised about students' ability to guess the meaning of words from context. As a slight aside, you might be interested in listening to what Paul Nation says about guessing meaning from context in this podcast( 5:00-6:30): https://podbay.fm/p/tefl-training-institute-podcast/e/1531692900

    The issue of goal-settting was mentioned in the interview, and I feel this is also worth emphasising, along with monitoring of goals. One thing I have had some success with is giving students a very basic form with space to write in how many minutes/pages they read per day. Periodical checking of this and asking students to share success/reasons for lack of success, re-evaluating goals, etc. can be helpful, in my experience. I think in the end, it's mostly about getting students into good habits (and keeping them).

    Being a good role model is also one thing that comes up a lot in the extensive reading literature, although it's something I need to work on!

    I think the most important thing though is to integrate extensive reading as part of classes, both at the start and at regular intervals, so that students see the value in it and can maintain their habit of reading over time. In the past, I have recommended extensive reading to students to do in their own time, but then not followed up on it properly in classes. Then when I asked them who is still reading, I mostly got sheepish looks in response! Though some students are still reluctant (and would rather do practice IELTS tests), doing some of the strategies I listed above has definitely made a difference.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for reading Peter, and thanks for the very detailed comment.

      the Nation podcast clip was interesting. I think Nation (2013) is a little out of step with other research I have read over the value of guessing from context. He seems a lot more positive about it than other researchers. My own personal experience is one of not being able to (often) guess words from context.

      He does make a good point though here, and elsewhere, that their must be a large degree of implicit learning for NS. that said, I did read something recently that suggested that a lot of words kids learn might be very contextual (look at the doggie!) et, so there may not be as much guessing as we initially supposed.

      Delete