ELT Journal Advance Access published online on August 20, 2008
ELT Journal, doi:10.1093/elt/ccn041
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
Why and how textbooks should encourage extensive reading
Dale Brown has worked in ELT for ten years both as a teacher and as a full-time materials writer and editor. He is now a member of the Nanzan English Education Center at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan, where he teaches a variety of courses for non-English majors. His main interests lie in extensive reading, vocabulary teaching, and materials development
Email: dbrown{at}nanzan-u.ac.jp
 |
Abstract |
|---|
Extensive reading is believed to have considerable benefits for learners both in terms of learning gains and motivation and seems to be becoming ever more popular in the ELT world. So far, however, there seems to be almost no integration of extensive reading and textbooks.
This article argues that textbooks should be encouraging extensive reading, since this will confer further legitimacy on extensive reading and may ease many of the practical difficulties that adopters of extensive reading face. The article then shows how textbooks could encourage extensive reading: directly, by including material involving extensive reading; and indirectly, by approaching textbook reading activities in ways more in tune with extensive reading. A number of proposals for each of these approaches are discussed.