All levels Implementing extensive listening and reading using authentic texts with students’ career goals in mind more

Sat, Aug 6, 22:30-23:15 Asia/Tokyo

Despite a lifetime loving, learning, teaching, and researching language learning, one question remains—how is it possible to study a foreign language for years, excel in the classroom, complete university degrees in said language, and yet struggle to communicate? This outcome is more common than we would like. Without studying abroad, students learning a foreign language lack adequate input, limiting their ability to comprehend others or express themselves when the opportunity finally appears. For most students, however, study abroad is not possible, which leads to two questions. 1. Could authentic digital books at the right level be used to provide students more opportunities to develop oracy skills? 2. Could these same authentic digital books be useful for building vocabulary specific to their personal interests and goals? Nation & Waring (2020) point out two factors that suggest Extensive Listening and Reading could be implemented with broader goals in mind, describing 1) “reading aloud as a useful activity in its own right – people gain pleasure from listening to stories and talks and from reading stories to others” (p. 69), and 2) pointing out that “vocabulary learning from extensive reading occurs as a result of repeated meetings with words, word families, and lexical phrases in context, and as a result of the quality of these meetings” (p. 72). In this session, the presenter will examine how an Extensive Listening and Reading could be implemented considering the future career goals of students and the need to develop language for specific purpose.