Friday, June 27, 2008

Extensive reading project with first-year students

This semester is winding down, and I was getting the data together to present to students about their extensive reading habits. Here is a brief report.

There are 97 students in this class. They were given the task of checking out and reading a graded reader from the library each week for most weeks. They read a total of 368 books for an average of 3.8 books per learner. The average level of the books chosen, based on the level that the publishers assigned to the book, was 1.35. The most popular book was Marcel and the Shakespeare Letters, published by Penquin. And the most popular series of readers were the Penquin readers with 175 check-outs, Oxford with 100, Macmillan with 90, and Cambridge with 53.

2 comments:

Galo Tmn Bebdakl said...

Hi there. I´m Galo Periscol, EFL teacher. I want to propose an extensive reading project to the principal in my K-12 school. Can you help me with information and help?

Bye

Galo

5330 said...

Galo,
Sure enjoy hearing from other teachers. The most informative site that I have seen about extensive reading is Rob Waring's site at
http://www.extensivereading.net/er/materials.html
Good comprehensive coverage of the topic.

Two books that I recommend are Day and Bamford's "Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom," and Krashen's classic "The Power of Reading".

In interviews with my students recently, many of them commented that the most valuable activity that they participated in this semester was their reading.

All the best.