Differentiated instruction in L2 teaching: two extensive reading programmes conducted during COVID-19 pandemic

This study is based on the recognition that EFL students in the context of a Korean university not only had limited exposure to English but also were reluctant to actively participate in their own learning; thus they needed a useful reading program. Acknowledging the situation, the current study initiated an extensive reading (ER) program incorporating the approach of active learning and applied the ER program to a regular EFL reading class for a semester. The reading class was small with nine students and taught by one of the co-researchers. The exploratory study aimed to examine how students engaged in the ER program and how the participants perceived their new experience of the program. To this end, students’ book reading reports over eight sessions of the ER program and post-task interviews were qualitatively analyzed. The data analysis suggests several findings. First, the analysis implied that students eagerly engaged in their learning processes during the ER program. In return, their confidence and motivation in reading English texts improved. Second, it proposed that during the ER the students were responsible for their own learning and were autonomous learners. The study concludes with suggestions for pedagogical practice and for future research.

This study explores the impact of integrating Extensive Reading (ER) enriched with metacognitive strategies on ER skills and positive attitudes towards ER learning. The research employs a one-group pretest-posttest design involving 79 Arabic language students. The measurement of ER skills and positive attitudes towards ER activities was conducted using a questionnaire based on the ten principles of ER. Bayesian paired t-tests did not show a significant improvement in skills or attitudes towards ER activities post-intervention. However, Bayesian linear regression revealed a significant correlation between post-intervention skills and attitudes, with attitudes explaining most of the variation in skills. Although no direct improvement was observed, fostering a positive attitude towards ER may indirectly enhance reading proficiency. These findings underscore the necessity of addressing both cognitive and affective aspects in Arabic language teaching.

The Effect of Lockdown on Public Health and Economic System: Findings from First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic for Designing Effective Strategies to Cope with Future Waves

Mobile-assisted language learning and its impact on students’ learning outcomes have been examined as one of the attractive methods in English extensive reading (ER). Yet, studies investigating mobile-assisted extensive reading on students’ empowerment are scarcely reported. Grounded in a learning empowerment scale, this research aimed to assess students’ empowerment toward the enactment of mobile-assisted extensive reading in a private university in Indonesia. This case study involved students (n=27) from the Department of English Education at the university. All participants were voluntarily recruited according to the research protocol assigned by the department. All data were garnered from closed-ended questionnaires, reflective journal writing, and semi-structured interviews to get an in-depth analysis of university students’ lived experiences in extensive online reading. The findings revealed how the students felt empowered during their mobile learning engagement. The present study also demonstrates how self-driven reading tasks have engaged students in sharing information and values during the reading report tasks. Further, it was found that students’ self-regulated learning was shouted through students’ reading motivation and self-reflection, including satisfaction and impact. Pedagogically, this study implied that teacher educators need to consider a wide range of topics and materials related to the second essential principle ER. Therefore, for a successful extensive reading program to happen, the teacher educators should provide a continued reading schedule and incorporate it into classroom reading practice.

Informal article is one of authentic materials which may contain valuable informations and extensive input to develop the learners’ language proficiency. Unfortunately, most literature shows that informal articles are not widely used in Extensive Reading (henceforth ER) program. For this reason, in this micro-scale exploratory research, the writer would like to introduce the steps procedure in using informal articles in ERprogram for Indonesian EFL college learners and to investigate their perception toward the implementation of the procedure. The procedure is developed on the basis of the writer’s great interest in creating innovative way in teaching ER at Indonesian collegelevel. The procudure is then called as Reading-Writing-Speaking (RWS) cycle which comprises structured-steps. Although it has some shortcomings, the participants bestow positive perception and respectable comments toward the procedure. The proposedprocedure is expected to be an alternative pathway in teaching ER for English teachers particularly at a university level.

Reading is a complex process which strictly involves skills such as decoding texts read, making predictions out of those texts and asking questions upon successful reading of a text. Based on the pre-writing assessment of the students, a number of Senior High Students lack the capability to understand the basic rule of English Grammar. In relation to this, the integration of Extensive English Reading Activities to enhance the Senior High School Students’ writing skills in terms of Sentence Structure, Vocabulary and Word Forms, and Cohesion and Coherence was recommended. The study was conducted at the Oriental Mindoro National High School, located at the San Vicente West, Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro. The study used a one-group pretest-posttest design and a modified skills test as the instrument for the data gathering on 118 Grade 11 Humanities and Social Sciences students. The data were statistically treated using a paired sample t-test, resulting in a computed t-value |-30.602| (sentence structure), |-16.102| (vocabulary and word forms), and |-15.049| (cohesion and coherence). It is evident that the computed t-values of the three indicators exceeded the critical t-value of 1.980 at 0.05 level of significance resulting in the rejection of the null hypothesis. The intended output of this study is a reading program with the integration of a certain number of Extensive English Reading Activities to enhance their writing skills in terms of Sentence Structure, Vocabulary and Word Forms, and Cohesion and Coherence.

This article reports on an EFL reading programme that integrated extensive reading with task-based learning to promote L2 learners’ language development, increase their motivation in reading, and help them build reading habits. In this programme, students took an active role in selecting graded reading material relevant to their interests and participated in reasoning-gap, information-gap, opinion-exchange, and decision-making tasks in the classroom. Data were collected through interviews with students, classroom observation, students’ reading logs, and reflective journals. The results indicated that the combination of interesting reading materials and meaningful tasks created positive experiences in language learning. Comprehensible input from extensive reading and productive output in the follow-up tasks proved to be effective in facilitating language development. Most importantly, students reported feeling a sense of achievement when sharing what they read with peers and completing the tasks, which then motivated them to read more books and gradually develop reading habits.

Extensive reading has been shown to improve literacy, increase reading rates, aid vocabulary acquisition, and improve attitudes towards second language learning. The students in the lower-level PACE (Practical Applications in Communicative English) English classes at Hitotsubashi University often lack confidence in their English abilities, have lower motivation, may not have much exposure to English outside the classroom, are less automatic with vocabulary recall, and often make elementary grammar errors in their writing. At the same time, the majority of these students rate reading as their strongest English ability. To address their weaknesses while utilizing their strengths, it was decided to introduce an extensive reading program to the lower-level PACE English classes. These research notes will outline the steps involved in setting up the program, and may be of use to other educators interested in adopting a similar approach.

This research investigates the responses of both teachers and students to English language learning using a differentiated instruction (DI) approach. Data was gathered through surveys focusing on teacher planning, implementation, and assessment, as well as student preferences in learning autonomy. The study reveals that while teachers have a moderate understanding of differentiated instruction, there are significant gaps, particularly in conducting diagnostic assessments. The correlation analysis between content, process, and product suggests that students struggle with the autonomy provided in selecting learning materials and completing tasks, indicating a need for more structured support. The results suggest that while differentiated instruction shows promise in addressing diverse learner needs, both teachers and students face challenges in fully realizing its potential, particularly in the areas of student autonomy and diagnostic assessments. These findings highlight the necessity of teacher professional development and incremental student autonomy in successfully implementing differentiated instruction.

Many language courses now offer access to simplified materials graded at various levels of proficiency so that learners can read at length in their new language. An assumed benefit is the development of large and rapidly accessed second language (L2) lexicons. Studies of such extensive reading (ER) programs indicate general language gains, but few examine vocabulary growth; none identify the words available for learning in an entire ER program or measure the extent to which participants learn them. This article describes a way of tackling this measurement challenge using electronic scanning, lexical frequency profiling, and individualized checklist testing. The method was pilot tested in an ER program where 21 ESL learners freely chose books that interested them. The innovative methodology proved to be feasible to implement and effective in assessing word knowledge gains. Growth rates were higher than those found in earlier studies. Research applications of the flexible corpus-based approach are discussed.

A current issue in L2 reading research is whether extensive reading promotes vocabulary development. This study examined vocabulary acquisition in uninstructed silent reading of a short story with and without a vocabulary list followed by a story rewriting task. Time constraints of a public school setting prevented an extended period of study required for extensive reading research, but vocabulary learning strategies and outcomes of this study are applicable to extensive reading.This study also explored Hinkel’s (2006) recommendation to modify the goal of extensive reading programs to meet the pedagogical ideal of integrated skills learning, that is, reading and vocabulary learning. Questioning the traditional goal of extensive reading to read relatively quickly for general ideas, Hinkel (2006) also proposes that it should draw learner attention to some aspect of language such as vocabulary. Similarly, Nation (2005) emphasizes need for deliberate vocabulary learning in extensive reading which should form a substantial and obligatory part of language courses (p.15). Due to the assumption that uninstructed sustained silent reading encourages students to read widely, I will refer to research on “extensive reading,” using Hinkel’s (2006) and Day, Omura, and Hiramatsu’s (1991) operational definition of sustained silent reading as extensive reading for pleasure over time.

There are different ways to improve vocabulary knowledge and one of them is through extensive reading. This paper aims to identify benefits of extensive reading on some aspects of vocabulary learning and ways to conduct a successful extensive reading program. In order to answer the two research questions, the researcher collected and analyzed online journal articles which focus on the relationship between vocabulary development and extensive reading. The results show that extensive reading not only improves new vocabulary knowledge but also fosters previously met words. Moreover, some specific aspects of vocabulary learning are benefited thanks to extensive reading such as meaning, spelling and grammar. Finally, some recommendations on how to carry out an extensive reading are raised at the end of the result section based on various researchers’ opinions.

This paper starts a discussion of the process of extensive reading (ER) program implementation in schools from a functional perspective.It discusses some considerations that may have hindered the spread of ER into the public school systems of many countries.It makes an argument for a top-down approach being required for widespread implementation as well as the need for materials other than graded readers, which while being the gold standard for ER, cannot realistically be purchased by and managed in a large school system.The impact on student choice of what to read is also discussed.The paper ends with suggestions for a way forward.

One of the challenges for the successful implementation of extensive reading (ER) programmes, especially in Asian contexts, stems from curricular factors where class time is often prioritised for tasks requiring the presence of a teacher. This paper investigates the role of extensive reading online (ERO), an alternative approach to traditional ER, in enhancing first-year university students’ reading fluency and their attitudes to reading in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. Seventeen English learners from a university in Vietnam participated in the 10-week study. The findings revealed that the ERO programme had a generally positive impact on the development of learners’ reading fluency with conservative analysis methods showing increases of around 20% in reading speed. Evidence from qualitative data gathered through questionnaires and interviews showed that there were positive changes in participants’ attitudes toward ER and provided insights into implementing ERO.

This study explores university students’ motivation for extensive English reading and examines their preferences for hardcopy and softcopy textbooks. In the era of digital learning, understanding these motivational factors is essential for designing effective reading programs. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory and reading motivation frameworks, the research investigates how accessibility, convenience, tactile experience, and perceived learning effectiveness influence students’ choices. The study employs a qualitative research design using semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with 12 purposively selected undergraduate English language learners from a public university. Data collection focuses on students’ personal experiences, attitudes toward traditional print and digital formats, and the role of motivation in sustaining extensive reading habits. Thematic analysis is applied to identify emerging patterns and categories related to intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors, reading engagement, and format preference. Preliminary insights suggest that students’ motivation is shaped by multiple factors, including the perceived authenticity of the text, ease of notetaking, portability, and reading comfort. While some students favor hardcopy materials for deeper concentration and reduced eye strain, others prefer softcopy formats for accessibility, cost-effectiveness, and integration with digital tools. This research contributes to understanding how motivational dynamics intersect with format choice in extensive reading practices. The findings provide pedagogical implications for language instructors and curriculum designers to balance print and digital resources, promoting learner autonomy and sustained reading engagement in English language learning contexts.