Research-y Evidence Supporting Extensive Reading in an ELF Setting (-1)

 

For a recent presentation on the importance of students’ stories and feedback in implementing an extensive reading program, I also put together this table, just in case people might be a little more comfortable with hard data/numbery kinds of stuff.  The table is an expansion of the one found in Bamford and Day’s (1998) indispensable Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom. It is in no way meant to be definitive and was put together with my fellow English teachers in Japan in mind. That being said, I would be happy to add to it to make it more inclusive.  There is also a downloadable PDF version available here: evidence of positive ER impact

Report Title	Authors & year	Population	Results
The long-term effects of a book flood on children’s language growth	Elley, W. B., & Mangubhai, F. (1981)	EFL; primary; Fiji	Gains in reading and general proficiency, including listening and writing; growth in positive affect
Extensive Reading vs Skills Building in an EFL Context	Robb, T. N. & Susser, B. (1989)	EFL; university; Japan	Gains in reading comprehension comparable with skills-based procedure. Positive affect.
Graded readers as an input medium in L2 learning	Hafiz, F.M. & I. Tudor (1990)	EFL; primary: Pakistan	Gains in both fluency and accuracy of expression
The effect of a summer reading course on reading and writing skills	Lai, FK. (1993)	EFL; secondary (JHS); Hong Kong	Quantity of reading positively correlated with reading comprehension gains and reading speed
Extensive Reading in English as a Foreign Language	Mason, B. & Krashen, S. (1997)	EFL; university; Japan	Gains in reading proficiency (measured by pre- and post- cloze test); positive affective gains; writing
Extensive Reading: Speed and Comprehension	Bell, T. (2001)	EFL; professional adults; Yemen	Gains in reading comprehension; proficiency as measured on cloze test; reading comprehension
Developing reading fluency in EFL: How assisted repeated reading and extensive reading affect fluency development	Taguchi, E., Takayasu-Maass, M., & Gorsuch, G.J. (2004)	EFL; university; Japan	Self-reported gains in positive affect: increase in willingness to read and enjoyment in reading long passages. Improved ability to deal with unknown words.
Learning L2 vocabulary through extensive reading: a measurement study	Horst, M. (2005)	ESL; adult learners; Canada	This study showed gains in incidental vocabulary acquisition.  More importantly, it highlights some of the difficulties in how to measure such acquisition through ER.
Extensive reading and development of different aspects of L2 proficiency	Yamashita, J. (2008)	EFL; university; Japan	Significant improvements in general reading ability.
Developing reading fluency: A study of extensive reading in EFL	Iwahori, Y. (2008)	EFL; secondary (HS); Japan	Improvement in reading rate. (note: no control group in this study)
The effects of 10-minute extensive reading on the reading speed, comprehension and motivation of Japanese high school EFL learners	Fujita, K. & Noro, T. (2009)	EFL; secondary (HS); Japan	improvements in reading speed (note: no control group in this study)
The impact of a 4-year extensive reading program	Nishizawa, H., Takayoshi, Y., & Fukuda, M. (2010)	EFL; university; Japan	Strong correlation between TOEIC Test scores and amount of reading done by students in an 4 year ER program
The effect of pleasure reading on Japanese university EFL learners’ reading rates	Beglar, D., Hunt, A., & Kite, Y. (2012)	ELF; university; Japan	Gains in both reading comprehension and reading rates.
Effects of extensive reading on reading attitudes in a foreign language	Yamashita, J. (2013)	EFL; university; Japan	Positive gains in affect around comfort, and intellectual value as well as a decrease in anxiety