Impact of Long-Term Extensive Reading Programs on Students

These three transcripts originate from separate plenary sessions at the ERWC7 conference, focusing on the topic of Extensive Reading (ER) and its role in language education. The first features David Beglar, who discusses the promises and limitations of ER for developing reading fluency, arguing that while extensive reading is crucial, it should be supplemented with other intentional fluency activities. The second presents Akio Furukawa and details the six-year extensive reading program at SEG, sharing student success stories and the methodological approach of starting with simple stories and gradually increasing complexity, alongside the importance of the Yomi Yasa Level (YIL) grading system. Finally, Yoko Yamashita provides an overview of an ER program in a Japanese school and the results of a graduate survey, highlighting the long-term positive impact of the programme on students' language skills, cultural awareness, and the development of a global mindset. 

I'm a fan of NotebookLM and this summary of the three plenaries at the ERWC7 conference gives a great introduction to what the three speakers covered.

The Video Overview adds to that and here it is at 7 minutes long with subtitles extracted by Turboscribe.

Here's the same video with subtitles generated by Clipchamp

Here are the three plenaries from the ERWC7 Conference:

ERWC7 Plenary 1 David Beglar: Extensive Reading and Reading Fluency: Promises and Limitations

ERWC7 Plenary 2 SEG Akio Furukawa: How to Conduct a 6-year Extensive Reading Program

ERWC7 Plenary 3 Yoko Yamashita: Impact of Extensive Reading Programs on Students more

A 40-year Reading Experiment described in 8 minutes!

This is a Video Overview produced by NotebookLM based on just one source - the YouTube video of my presentation to the JALT ER Sig, which is below.

It is a bit over the top in its praise for me, but it encapsulates well what I said in only 8 minutes. There are a couple of places where it gets details wrong, but I've added in an * in the subtitles and a note in red at the top of the screen when these occurred.

Here is a shortlist of graded readers at about B1 for a girl of fourteen

 I was looking for contemporary stories related to women, love or music rather than classics like Pride and Prejudice.

I checked that they were all available on Come in. Everything in English! - Librería online de idiomas en Barcelona

I DO NOT get anything in exchange for adding links to these readers

Penguin Readers Level 5 B1: Boys Don't Cry - Penguin Readers

Penguin Readers Level 4 A2+: How to Give Up Plastic - Penguin Readers

 

Penguin Readers Level 4 A2+: The Kissing Booth - Penguin Readers

Penguin Readers Level 5 B1: The Pursuit of Love - Penguin Readers

Burlington Activity Readers 4^th ESO  A2+: BAR - Extraordinary Women 4º ESO - Burlington Books Spain

Burlington International Readers B1: BIR - Music Makers B1 - Burlington Books Spain

 

HOEPLI Level B1: The Beatles - Scott Wheeldon | Hoepli Editore

Oxford Bookworms Factfiles 3 B1 The USA – Oxford Graded Readers

 

Padlet can be used to display catalogues of readers by level and genre - two examples to demonstrate the concept

I decided to experiment with alternative ways to display information about readers at A1-A2 level from Oxford Reading Club. My original way was using Word:

• 
  
  Oxford Dominoes - Level 1 (A1-A2)

 

• 
  
  Oxford Bookworms – Level 1 (A1-A2) 

 

But after seeing someone else using Padlet to display information about readers I simply copied and pasted the information into a couple of Padlets

• 
  
  Oxford Dominoes - Level 1 (A1-A2)

 

• 
  
  Oxford Bookworms – Level 1 (A1-A2) 

Access to a Google drive folder with all the work I've done on Extensive Reading is here:

https://bit.ly/42SBkNS

It includes genre catalogues for all levels of Dominoes and Bookworms on Oxford Reading Club and a few PowerPoints I have used for talks on Extensive Reading in the past.

A Playlist of my videos on Extensive Reading on YouTube is here:

Extensive Reading 

Extensive Reading improves every skill, even speaking. Try it!

I recorded myself rehearsing for my talk at #IATEFL2024 in Brighton but realized afterwards that I had skipped a slide that I needed to include as it was about how ER improves even speaking. this is what it said:

Why do Extensive Reading? "When EFL students read extensively, they become fluent readers. But there is more. Studies have established that EFL students increase their vocabulary and become better writers. We also know that reading extensively helps increase oral fluency—listening and speaking abilities. Finally, students who read a lot develop positive attitudes toward reading and increased motivation to study English. So, there are some excellent reasons for having EFL students reading extensively."

(Dr Richard R. Day in Bringing extensive reading into the classroom, OUP 2012)

You can watch the 25-minute video here: 
Extensive Reading improves every skill, even speaking. Try it! IATEFL Brighton 2024

 

Reading your way to Proficiency

 This is just to prove that I also post about other subjects than #SpeechtoText! This is about #ExtensiveReading

Nearly ten years ago I used a PowerPoint presentation to try to motivate my students to read as much as possible. I recorded myself as I used the slides, but the recording wasn't very good quality, so I got a transcript by using https://speechtonote.com/ and recorded myself using the PowerPoint slides and the transcript from ten years ago and made a video of it.

Here is the video:

https://youtu.be/wdACs1n1iGs  

If you would prefer to show your students the PowerPoint slides and explain the advantages of Extensive Reading yourself, you can find the slides here along with other material related to Extensive Reading.

https://bit.ly/42SBkNS

Further experiments with students recording themselves, getting a transcript and getting AI to tidy it up

I want to be able to suggest a series of steps language learners can follow using just their mobile phones to get feedback on their speaking. 

Over the last four days I have been practising the steps using our granddaugher as a pre-intermediate learner of English. The procedure involved combining two of my obsessions: getting students to do extensive reading and getting them to record themselves retelling stories. 

1. I asked her to read an Oxford Bookworm Starter level reader on the Oxford Reading Club app
2. She then told me the story in her own words without recording herself
3. She then recordered herself retelling the story using 'Voice Capture' on Microsoft 365
4. Voice Capture generates a transcript automatically. I Shared the recording (and transcript) as a Word document
5. I copied and pasted the transcript into three AI webpages and asked for the transcript to be tidied up
6. I copied these 'improved' transcripts back into the Word document where with 'Read Aloud' she could listen to the suggested changes.
7. She selected which of the improved transcripts was the best and I copied and pasted it into WhasApp for her.
8. I then used WhatsApp to record 'Read Aloud' and add that so she could listen to it again.

Here's a short video I made and posted on YouTube:

My original idea was that this sequence would be followed by a repetition of the task of retelling the stories. However, I didn't use this idea, partly because my granddaugher's original recordings were about 9 minutes long, which is much much longer than my students' typical recordings of two to three minutes, but also because I was beginning to think that the exposure to up to five versions of her own story might be of sufficient benefit. I'm still open to suggestions on this.

Here are two of the AI suggestions - (with the Microsoft Edge browser you can select and right-click and choose 'Read Aloud' to listen to these versions)

ChatGPT suggested:

"The Mystery of Manor Hall" is about two brothers visiting their uncle's dark and mysterious house, which is very big. The brothers visit their uncle's house while their mother is buying a new house and getting everything in order. When they arrive at their uncle's house, he allows them to explore and enter all the places, except for the music room, which makes them curious.

During supper, the uncle points out the new moon and tells them they can't leave their room that night. Later, the sister wakes up and hears a strange sound. The brother listens and convinces his sister to go to the music room. They think they hear their uncle singing, but upon entering, they see a picture of a pirate. The pirate notices them, and they become frightened and attempt to leave the room, but the pirate prevents them from doing so.

The pirate explains his story to the brothers. He used to have a magic picture that allowed him to go sailing with his ship every new moon, but now the house is far from the sea, so he's unable to do so. Meanwhile, the uncle arrives and reveals his story. He had bought the house from an old man who warned him not to enter the music room due to a ghostly presence. The uncle had been afraid and avoided the room ever since.

Eventually, the two brothers move with their mom to the new house, which is located near the sea and took the magic picture. Every new moon, the pirate can now sail and sing quietly. And this is the end of the story.

Bing suggested:

The story is about two brothers who go to their uncle's house. The uncle's house is very dark, mysterious, and big. The brothers go to their uncle's house because their mother is buying a new house and needs to get everything in order. When the brothers arrive at their uncle's house, their uncle tells them that they can look for things and enter all the places in the house, except for the music room.

The brothers are confused because they can't go to the music room. Their curiosity gets the better of them and they try to enter the music room, but their uncle sees them. In the evening, while they are having supper, their uncle tells them to look at the new moon and that they can't leave their room that night.

In the middle of the night, the sister wakes up and tells her brother that she hears a strange sound. The brother listens and they both go outside their room. They don't want to, but they finally go to the music room. They think it's their uncle singing, but when they enter, they don't see anyone. When they turn on the lights, they see a picture of a pirate.

The pirate sees them and comes out of the picture. The brothers are very afraid and want to leave the room, but they can't because the pirate won't let them. Finally, the pirate explains his story to the brothers. He tells them that one day an old woman painted a picture of his ship and said it was a magic picture because every new moon he can come out of the picture and sail with his ship.

He could only do this if the picture was near the sea, but now the house isn't near the sea and he is sad because he can't sail. Then their uncle arrives and explains his story. He bought the house from an old man who told him not to enter the music room because 

My talk on Extensive Reading - the solution for everything! at InnovateELT2023

I really wanted to take advantage of the fact that I was going to give a presentation at a conference for the first time in a long time to try out some proofs of concept for an idea I got while watching some sessions from TESOL Spain 2023 which were available to watch live online. My original idea was to try to create a live (audio) podcast using Podbean, that was soon superseded by the idea of livestreaming it as a video using Vimeo. That turned out to involve paying for a premium account. So, in the end I opted for the idea of recording my PowerPoint presentation with only audio. But what could I do about the website I wanted to demonstrate? I downloaded ‘web-viewer’, an add-on for PowerPoint, but it didn’t allow me to show the pop-up windows.

In the end I decided to use Vimeo to create a recording of my slides and my demo of the website by recording my screen and I rehearsed doing it at home a couple of times.

 

Not wanting to waste the opportunity I bought a wireless clicker and a pair of wireless mics. The price of two mics was so little more than the price for one I thought it was worth it.

 

Sadly, on the day of my talk I didn’t complete all the steps to set up the screen recording using Vimeo, so at the end of my presentation I discovered that I hadn’t recorded it. So, my first proof of concept was a failure with the warning that it takes time and calm to set up screen recording when doing a live presentation.

The second ‘proof of concept’ was to see if I could share my slides and other documents I showed with everyone who came to my session, everyone who would have liked to come but chose a parallel session to go to, anyone in the organisation who wasn’t able to attend the conference and eventually anyone in the world who was interested.

I created a folder on my Google drive and shared the folder and its contents read only and created a short link  https://bit.ly/42SBkNS and a QR code using Bitly and created a folder with the name of my session. What I wanted to suggest was that presenters could be asked to copy their presentation materials into folders created by the conference organisers even if they were working on them up until the last minute.

In the folder for my talk, I put: the PowerPoint presentation, the catalogues of readers grouped by genres of a number of levels, a list of the genres I used and the ones OUP use, a questionnaire for students about their favourite genres and a link to Oxford Graded Readers Catalogue 2023, which is what I used to classify the readers on Oxford Reading Club by genres. The labelling with genres only applies to Domino and Bookworm readers.

I promised that I would include a link to the recording of my presentation on YouTube as well. Unfortunately, as I explained above, this will not be possible. However, I have a number of dry runs that I recorded to try to judge the timing right (unsuccessfully, as it turned out!) and I have added a link to the last of these. I also recorded a number of versions of my PowerPoint presentation and I have created another video including the slides I decided to eliminate to get the length down to 45 minutes. I have put a link to this in the folder, too.

My talk on the day didn’t attract as many people as I had hoped, but at least more that I had feared! I hope those who came, felt they had benefitted in some way. For my own part, preparing for and giving the talk was a wonderful learning experience. I researched more about extensive reading than ever before and learnt a huge amount, some of which I was able to share. But, in addition, I discovered how PowerPoint has evolved and now offers coaching (it seems I speak at the right speed – 125 words per minute and say ‘um’ and ‘er’ too often). I also learnt that it was possible to insert commentaries in the form of audio or video on any slide as you practise the presentation or afterwards.