Future-ready means life-ready. As well as skills in science and technology, our students need non-technical skills such as social emotional learning (SEL), critical thinking and cultural awareness. To be truly future-ready learners will need to display knowledge and sensitivity to other people, places, and cultures. Reading is essential to both language learning and understanding other cultures. 'China Showcase Library' (CSL) from National Geographic Learning is a graded reader series that showcases authentic content and high-interest topics that stimulate higher order thinking skills. In this session we will discover how CSL incorporates critical thinking, SEL, and cultural awareness to inform, engage and prepare students for the future.

This session will introduce the exciting new and upcoming World Heritage series of graded readers. The series taps into a wide-spread interest in world heritage sites and assets around the world. The series will be written as several levels from late beginner to early intermediate for both high school and university populations. These readers will be perfect for content based teaching and will raise the students' awareness of the world and their global competencies in order to become global citizens. The presentation will provide the details about the series, the number of titles and launch date, and so on.

Managing an ER program by myself for 105 students, without Graded Readers, I needed help developing my small book collection (100 titles), and therefore designed a few classroom activities to encourage reading, discussion and positive interdependence, while supporting the growth of the program at the same time. In this short presentation, I will introduce two interaction-rich group activities (“book recommendation” and “designing quizzes”) and one individual writing activity (“book review”), while presenting some examples and feedback from my students. By picking new books, designing quizzes and reviewing books for their schoolmates, many became more confident, as they saw themselves as members of a lively reading community.

I teach French as a foreign language in a Japanese university, to beginner to low-intermediate level students, but am confident that these activities will be useful in many contexts, and even with Graded Readers.

This study analyzed the impact of extensive reading (ER) on the TOEIC score among Japanese high school students. ER was administered for three academic years to three grades each with 250 students respectively. The individual reading amount and their TOEIC scores were recorded by the English teacher. The students were encouraged to read 200,000 words per year mainly outside of the classroom. Students read 5,000 words per week, which is 10 minutes per day for students who read 100 wpm, for five days a week, during 35 weeks of school, plus 25,000 words during the long vacations. The study showed that these students scored 650 or higher on the TOEIC test. The study also explains how to implement ER in a regular Japanese high school without eroding the fixed curriculum, and how the involvement of the school library supported ER and student motivation.

The Journal of Extensive Reading (JER) is a peer-reviewed online journal of research on extensive reading run by the Japan Association of Language Teaching (JALT) Extensive Reading Special Interest Group. The journal supplements what is already offered in the journal Extensive Reading in Japan (ERJ) by focusing on the publication of high-quality empirical research on ER. Please join our session to learn about our publication and how you can get more involved in the extensive reading research community by submitting a manuscript or becoming a reviewer yourself.

This presentation is on how one teacher taught a reading course online using Zoom during COVID-19 for nine second- and third- year EFL undergraduate students in Japan in three phases: (1) getting to know the students, (2) staying attuned to the students’ wants and needs, and (3) getting students to become autonomous learners. Challenges as a result of COVID-19 and a move from classroom teaching to online teaching included difficulties in having students borrow and purchase books and having students conduct extensive reading throughout the course. Implications for teachers teaching reading online and face-to-face in EFL contexts not limited to Japan are also provided.

This presentation will introduce a long-term research project on extensive reading jointly run by three different universities in Japan. We organized a reading circle in 2021, which is formed of 40 students from four departments in three different universities who volunteered to join. The project will last until 2023 and during the three years, the participants are recommended to read as many books as possible using Xreading and attend periodical meetings and group activities that are intended to raise or maintain their motivation to read. It is an educational practice as well as a research project. As an educational practice, we are interested in how we can manage the learning community to make extensive reading successful. As a research project, we are interested in what kind of psychological transformation will occur over the long term. The presentation will focus on the project scheme and the outcomes of the first year.

Join the breakout room for a discussion on Extensive Listening.

This presentation describes how to assess students’ performances in Japanese extensive reading. The presenter has been conducting standalone Japanese ER courses in a U.S. university since 2014. Unlike traditional-style language classes, the main activities in ER are individual readings; therefore, assessment has been challenging for the instructor.

Takase (2010) listed various ways to assess students’ performances in English ER, such as reading quantity, comprehension tests, and presentations. The presenter uses self-evaluations, where students reflect on their own reading and set their next goals. Students have other assignments such as reading journals, book reviews, and semester-final projects. The instructor does not evaluate students’ language skills in this course, and assessment is conducted only based on their attendance/participation and their submission of assignments on time. Because of these assessment criteria, students work hard, regardless of their typical grades. The presenter will discuss how ER is effective for cultivating autonomous learning.

Extensive Listening (EL) is a teaching approach that emphasizes the provision of authentic, comprehensible, and fun aural input for an extended time period in order to improve language proficiency, especially the listening ability, of L2 learners. This presentation provides 5 compelling reasons why EL should be implemented in L2 classrooms: no conclusive evidence regarding the benefits of listening strategy teaching has been found; some studies have found no significant effects of listening strategy teaching on listening ability improvement; my own experience as an EFL learner; EL is regarded as a fun and theoretically sound way to learn L2; and in-class EL should help create more autonomous learners. The presentation will also show how in-class English audio-visual watching (e.g., movies or TV series) with subtitles and/or captions can be implemented and how it can help improve learners’ listening ability as well as increase learners’ confidence, motivation, and self-esteem in their own English language learning outside the classrooms.

Incorporating extensive reading into digital-forward education opens the doors to new forms of engagement for students. However, applying new technology can create a myriad of struggles for educators who may be less familiar with educational technology. Nevertheless, using reading series’ such as e-Future’s Classic Readers to engage students in a physical space while expanding extensive reading into digital spaces creates a well-rounded educational experience. Traditional educational tools and new technology can develop an attractive blend of digital and physical content that will afford educators the freedom to create a robust classroom experience while being ready for any possible problem that might arise.

The emphasis in EFL Reading classes is often put on the production of comprehension rather than the processing skills. It makes the reading activities unpleasant and most of the times have to deal with the low reading comprehension. The present study attempts to maximize the students’ participation by actively involved in extensive reading activities, to find out the strategies they use in the reading process, and to see the students’ perceptions on Extensive Reading in order to enhance their reading comprehension. The participants of the study are 20 students of the English Education Study Program, Faculty of Teachers Training and Educational Sciences, Pakuan University, who were chosen purposively. This study applied qualitative approach with case study method. The data of this study were taken from documentation in the form of the students’ book report and book talk writing and presentation, questionnaire which were distributed to 20 participants, and interview which were conducted to 20 participants. The findings show the factors that maximize the students’ active participation in Extensive Reading activities are reading habit, motivation, and environment. The students use cognitive and metacognitive strategies in the reading process, and they have positive perceptions on Extensive Reading.

Extensive reading (ER) helps readers develop robust language knowledge (Hu & Nation, 2000) and build key connections with disciplines such as the sciences, goals that numerous international students hope to achieve in intensive English programs (IEPs). However, despite these benefits and instructors’ good intentions, IEP instructors often disagree on the specific approaches to integrating ER into reading and writing (RW) courses (Bentahar & Cranker, 2021). While many language instructors consider ER an underused technique (Watkins, 2018), some quiz students on their reading; other instructors “impose” one book on their students, while still others assign weekly reports, approaches which seem to contradict the essence of ER. The integrated-skill approach (ISA), where language skills and sub-skills are interwoven during instruction (Oxford, 2001), can solve this quandary. The presenter will share three effective ISA-based ER activities and demonstrate their benefits for learning, using student feedback. Implications for RW instructors will be discussed.

Extensive reading plays a critical role in creating an environment where teachers can nurture students’ motivation to love reading and in creating a safe haven for those who love reading. A closer look of two universities in East Java, Universitas Negeri Surabaya (UNESA) and Universitas Negeri Malang (UM) shows that they resemble in several ways. Both universities used to be teacher training institutes, have ER course in the curriculum, targeted freshmen, and subscribed to Xreading to support ER. This talk discusses the implementation of ER as a co-curricular program in UNESA and a curricular one in UM as well as the benefits and drawbacks of the different policies. This talk also discusses the implications of the ER programs in the two universities. Finally, the talk will be summarised with the suggestions for future studies.

Join the breakout room for a discussion on Writing Materials.

This session will introduce e-future’s exciting new phonics readers series Smart Phonics Readers. This series is specially designed for young EFL learners who are taking their first steps into the wonderful journey of reading. With imaginative stories, colorful illustrations, and systematic phonics practice with fun activities, young learners will build confidence and enjoy reading! Join the session to explore Smart Phonics Readers, the 2022 LLL award finalists!

Research into extensive reading (ER) has provided evidence of gains in fluency, vocabulary development, and improved motivation. However, since reading literacy is such a complex phenomenon, what about the performance gaps for our learners that go unaddressed with basic ER principles? This presentation briefly covers a four-stage framework for diagnosing foreign language reading skills (Alderson et al., 2015) — observation, initial assessment, hypothesis testing, decision making and feedback. The session then highlights three fundamental underpinnings—the science of how we read, individual differences, and bottom-up reading processes. With a greater understanding of these three, teachers can identify learner strengths and weaknesses to better support them in their reading challenges and development. Online links and various diagnostic tools will be shared and trialed for practical, ‘learning by doing’ in experiential learning. Participants should take away a broader sense of issues their learners may face with reading and resources to implement following diagnoses.

When an author writes a book, they create a new and unique world. Readers can enter that world, but they don’t typically have the opportunity to interact with its creator. With the aim of increasing students’ motivation to read, a series of events called Talk to an Author was organized. In each event, a specially invited author gave a short presentation about a book they wrote, including their motivation for writing it. Students attending, who had previously read the book on the Xreading website, were then given the opportunity to share their feeling about the book and ask questions directly to the author. In this session, the presenters will discuss the first two Talk to an Author events, including their experience organizing the events, feedback from both the students and authors, and finally their plans for future events.

Join the breakout room to ask and answer questions. Please watch the video before joining the session. The presenter will be available to take questions about any of the topics brought up in the video. Participants will also have chances to add their own idea.

“Reading for fun” isn’t a common practice for high school graduates in Palestine, where interest in reading typically centers on high school exam results. How might ER improve students’ attitudes about reading and shape their identity as readers? Over one semester, to supplement intensive reading from an instructor, students at an intensive English program practiced in-class speed reading (Nation, 2020) and regular self-guided ER through the Oxford Bookworms series, as well as free digital ER resources (Newsela, Ello, and English Through Story). Results suggest that consistent ER routines may have changed students’ perceptions about reading, heightened their awareness of their own progress, and stronger self-identity as “readers.” This is remarkable given a setting where unpredictable interruptions are the norm. This session and discussion will give the results of a reading inventory survey, lessons learned, tips for implementing ER, and its proposed expansion beyond the setting. The audience will contribute valuable feedback!

Geoff teaches English through the format of book clubs. How does he help to engage students in the choice of book? How does he help the setting, author and characters come alive? How can we create a programme structure that leads to inspired and motivated readers? Geoff will show how he provides an engaging and motivating start to a course by going outside the text to look at location and setting, the author’s background, and cultural or historical aspects to bring the text to life. He will show numerous practical examples of how he does this such as using Google Earth for location setting; using author interviews or movie clips; biographies, and of course the book itself. This session is aimed at teachers looking for ideas to ensure a motivating start to an extensive reading programme.

Join the breakout room for a discussion on Reading in an electronic age and ER without graded readers.

Much has been said and written about the benefits of ER for language learning, and vocabulary gains through ER have often been investigated. Vocabulary knowledge is obviously important; it is, for example, regarded as the single greatest predictor of comprehension. Vocabulary is also essential for communication for, as was said fifty years ago: “while without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. Yet, while vocabulary gains have received much attention, learning grammar through ER has been largely overlooked. In this talk, I want to focus on the problems that unfamiliar grammatical constructions can cause in ER, and the grammar learning that is possible from ER. I will be doing this with examples from my own experience as a French language learner (not that you will need to know French to understand the examples!). After considering the extent to which grammar learning is possible, I will then discuss how the language teacher and other forms of instruction can facilitate this learning. The talk will suggest gaps in our current knowledge and so will conclude with some thoughts about future research directions.

Join the breakout room for a discussion on Classroom issues.

Many language teachers implement Extensive Reading in their classes in the knowledge that it will benefit learners’ language development. However, it can be difficult to create entire courses around ER, and some institutions require a compulsory textbook for each course. This presentation describes the development (and completion) of a four-skills coursebook seamlessly integrating an ER program through Xreading.com. The book is designed with a task-based approach and features engaging and relevant topics for learners.

When young learners are finally able to read their own books in the target language learned, it definitely is not merely an instant process of alphabet recognition or spelling. Long before the day arrives, they should have been enduring a process which should be a complete discovery of meaning and cultural values in which they are brought upon. It is linear to Ki Hajar Dewantara—Indonesian’s Father of Education—strong belief that exposure to dolanan (game), tembang (song/chant), drama or play, dongeng (stories) with local and culturally rich content are ideal tools to facilitate young learners. This practice-based findings reveal cultural value awareness and immersion as learners are exposed to poster stories, puppet show stories, children pictorial books, and articles with local content. Several methods applied and discussed are: reading aloud, story telling, comparing and analyzing cultural values within stories and learners’ local culture, and also opinion giving.

Second language Literature Circles (L2-LCs) are useful as a way to help students onboard to ER. However, in the post-pandemic era, traditional face-to-face classrooms are but one setting for managing second language (L2) extensive reading (ER). Due to the variety of new contexts, an agenda-based system is suggested as an alternative to role-based LCs. Agenda-based meetings are authentic, intuitive for inexperienced teachers, and logistically simple. Agenda-based worksheets simultaneously scaffold learners’ responses to a reading during the reading phase and provide a plan for sharing learners’ inner experience with ER for students and teachers alike. This presentation aims to elucidate relevant pedagogical stylistic features of L2-LCs and show how teachers can quickly and easily develop worksheets in the agenda-based format. The addition of a separate pre-discussion stage for learners to focus on language and facilitation skills makes L2-LCs more effective for supporting simultaneous orientation to ER and building self-efficacy for discussion.

Join the breakout room to ask and answer questions. Please watch the video before joining the session. The presenter will be available to take questions about any of the topics brought up in the video. Participants will also have chances to add their own ideas.

This presentation will look at how teachers and educators can create high-quality extensive reading materials that can also work for extensive listening. Attendees will learn how to create graded readers by recording natural speech in the form of narrations, stories, and interviews. The presentation will then show how to use various free tools, such as Canva, PowerPoint and Google slides to transform audio into engaging and even interactive audio books and lessons. In addition, teachers will learn how students can create works of art to share with other students around the world. Lastly, the presentation will briefly show how educators can crowd source creation by recording audio and video of people (friends, family, coworkers, etc.) around the world and then transforming it into extensive reading and listening materials, particularly graded readers.

When teachers read extensively in a second language, we can gain insight and an appreciation of the task we ask our students to perform. After briefly describing his own reading program, the presenter provides an overview and recommendations of graded readers published in German language. To broaden the discussion, the audience is welcome to share its experience of reading in a second language. Through sharing our experience, we can consider how it can inform our pedagogy.

Join the breakout room for a discussion on XReading.

The Extensive Reading Foundation defines graded readers as texts that utilize “syntax and lexis that are controlled in order to make the content accessible to learners of the language” (Extensive Reading Foundation, 2022). It is true that many beginning and intermediate level students find the comprehensible input provided by graded readers useful for reading fluency and vocabulary development. However, advanced learners often find that they have difficulty employing effective reading strategies when transitioning from the controlled texts in graded readers to college level readings assigned in first year courses. Advanced students are faced with the reality that many of the texts used in English medium universities are not written taking the needs of L2 English learners into account. This presentation will explore transitional reading strategies that have been utilized in a college foundation program in Qatar. Strategies that will be explored include vocabulary development, reading fluency, and text comprehension strategies.

Bibliobattle refers to a social book review game where presenters introduce their favorite book to the audience in a group, and the participants decide the champion book by votes (Taniguchi, 2013). Mini-Bibliobattle is a variation of it with a shorter presentation and discussion period (see Oda, 2018, for the procedure). The study aims to examine the students’ perceptions toward Mini-Bibliobattle and analyze the changes of their scripts throughout the presentations. Approximately 40 university students participated in an 8-week online ER class holding two Mini-Bibliobattles in the L2. Consequently, similar to the previous study by the presenter, participants showed generally positive reactions toward Mini-Bibliobattles and shared interesting books with others. Also, improvements in the presentation were found regarding use of devices such as asking questions. Thus, Mini-Bibliobattle can facilitate learners to read more books and present a favorite book in an attracting manner to the audience.

The Extensive Reading Foundation (ERF) has created a wide array of resources, and houses and publicizes resources created by others. This presentation reports on one of these ERF resources: the ER-MOOC (https://er-mooc.org). The MOOC is a course that engages educators in thinking about major aspects of Extensive Reading Approach. Those who register and complete the course receive an official certificate of completion from the Extensive Reading Foundation. The course was facilitated by Helene Demirci and Tom Robb, with help from many other contributors. It consists of 13 modules on topics such as “getting started with extensive reading,” tracking and assessing students’ reading,” and “introduction to websites for extensive reading and listening.” To help educators complete the course, 13 weekly 50-minute sessions are held online, one for each module in the MOOC. Five people from five different countries who participated in these sessions will share about the MOOC and the sessions.

Students will tell you that they don’t like reading, but this is simply not true. On social media and through instant messaging students are reading (and writing) all the time – more than any other generation before them. They do not think of this as reading. Moreover, they are following engaging narratives about people, and responding to what they read on various important cognitive, emotional and social levels. Our classroom practices must and can be adapted now to connect with this very positive reality. So, if we introduce reading which is easy, in contexts learners understand and enjoy, they will be more motivated and will develop essential 21st century life skills alongside natural, meaningful language development. This session looks at ways to implement this with young adults, encouraging them to see how reading leads defining and redefining our values by exploring the lives and cultures of others.

In February 2022, the Thailand Extensive Reading Association (TERA) in collaboration with Sakdibhornssup Foundation launched a project called “Building a Nation of Readers”. The project provides an opportunity for secondary school students across Thailand to have hands-on experience of extensive reading outside of class through a reading marathon event. 200 students participated in the project and were divided into 20 teams with one teacher supervising each team. Xreading.com was used as the platform for the participants to read graded readers of their own choice and to assist the organizing team to keep records of their reading. A webinar on tips for improving reading skills and vocabulary through reading graded readers and a workshop on online extensive reading via Xreading were conducted to prepare the participants for the marathon. This presentation will reveal participants’ opinions and experience of online extensive reading and highlight what needs to be done to keep their love of reading growing.

Peer reading has been widely practiced for fluency improvement and has implications for the language learners of all ages. It often involves reading loudly in a low-pressure context. In India, schools are present with a wide amount of cultural diversity. Culture exchange through extensive reading is found to be rarely practiced in Indian schools and requires a serious and immediate attention from the teacher community. This study sets out with the belief that there are linguistic and motivational benefits for Indian learners through peer reading activities. The method of this study is designed to have an experimental and control group. The study follows the theoretical framework of the socio-cultural approach to learning and cognitive development and compares the level and quality of interaction and motivation among the learners of two groups.

Join the breakout room for a discussion on Young Learners.

Xreading is digital library that gives students access to over a thousand graded readers from major publishers such as CUP, Cengage, and Macmillan. Students have unlimited access to all books as well as audio narrations, ratings, and quizzes. In addition, the system tracks students' reading progress (books read, words read, reading speed, quiz scores, etc.) so it makes management and assessment much easier for teachers. The system is constantly evolving and growing in terms of the number of books and features. In this presentation, the founder of Xreading will explain the new functionality that has been added over the past year, including the speed-reading and journal components, and what is planned for the future. Current users of the system are encouraged to provide feedback and suggestions based on their experience.

Inspired by the book flood studies, the project aimed at providing more input to a group of high school French learners in the U. S. since they rarely have the opportunity to read a coherent text or to see language used in context. Twenty-one high school students in the U. S., having studied French for two years in middle school, participated in an experiment where they were guided to read stories in French for twenty minutes each day, twice a week, for three months. Materials used included simplified stories as well as children’s stories for native French speakers. Pre- and post-study questionnaires were used to see if the experiment had an impact. The results showed that although there was no significant improvement in terms of reading rate or vocabulary size, students showed improvement in pronunciation, and they reported being more confident in their reading ability, and more motivated to read.

Join the breakout room for a discussion on Library Management and Reading Spaces.

Studies indicate that extensive reading has given considerable benefits for language learners (Nation, 1997; Yamashita, 2013; Suk, 2017; Wang & Ho, 2019). However, the major challenge to do extensive reading in an EFL setting is book availability (Renandya et al., 2020). In addition to that, students in the digital age nowadays are strongly dependent on activity-related technology, causing reading to lose its attraction. In the effort of proposing an alternative solution to this challenge, extensive reading needs to be simultaneously implemented with technology. One encouraging way is using Interactive Virtual Library (IVL), which is a contextually-designed free reading resource created by a teacher to support students’ ER practice interactively. In this presentation, we would like to share an Indonesian teacher’s best practice in encouraging students’ ER using IVL. Specifically, we would like to describe how the IVL is created, how it looks like, and how it is implemented in the classrooms. In addition, we will also discuss some opportunities that the IVL offers, including how it can be adopted and/ or adapted in other EFL contexts, and how it solves the issue of limited book availability at schools. Furthermore, we will describe some potential challenges from creating and implementing the IVL, and what we can reflect in order to better implement it in the future.

Community sharing and empowering on extensive reading can be supported and done through various means. Starting from early 2020, free online workshops and webinars on extensive reading have flourished to help the community to stay updated, enriched, and connected due to COVID-19. Indonesian Extensive Reading Association (IERA) took this opportunity to create an online platform for ER community in the form of a podcast. A podcast is an open source that provides varied series of discussions on certain topics. The podcast that we are going to share is “satERdate with” podcast which focuses on extensive reading and literacy. “satERdate with” invited ER experts, practitioners, and enthusiasts to share theories, insights, and their best practices. This presentation emphasizes the possibility of using a podcast as an online community sharing and empowering on ER. In addition, we will also highlight how the podcast can be used as a free authentic extensive reading online resource for academic purposes.

Extensive reading and creative writing are two activities that can be both enjoyable and motivating for students. With the objective of combining the two activities, plus to add a competitive element, a graded reader writing competition was held among students at a junior/senior high school in Tokyo, Japan. In this semester-long project, students, under the guidance of their teacher, wrote and illustrated their own graded readers. Despite multiple challenges, the result was successful. Twelve student writers completed novels which were then made available on the Xreading website so they could be read and rated by hundreds of students around the world as well as a panel of volunteer judges. The presenter will discuss the process that was used, share some samples, and explain how the project will be expanded in the future.

Join the breakout room for a discussion on Global Issues and Intercultural Communication.

For Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL) teachers and researchers interested in Japanese ER, knowing what reading goals for learners are feasible, or whether learners do develop an awareness of and ability to evaluate whether a text is at their comprehension level can be difficult. Only a handful of studies address aspects of the first question, and none appear to explore the second. This presentation discusses the reading habits of nine JFL learners recruited for an exploratory project conducted in New Zealand. Nine readers read graded readers, children’s books, and websites written in easy Japanese for one to two semesters, recording what they read in weekly reading logs. Data collected contributes to clarifying whether learners display an awareness of appropriate difficulty levels and develop an ability to evaluate which reading materials are at their comprehension level, and also what volume of reading might count as “extensive” for Japanese learners.

The positive effects of Extensive Reading/Listening on language learners have been recognized and more and more institutions have been implementing ER/EL in many countries around the world. Meanwhile, some schools, which had once shown great success with their students’ improvement of their language proficiency, are now not as enthusiastic as before or have even reverted to their previous teaching methods, for various reasons. First, this presentation will explain why ER/EL is important for language learners. Second, it will provide some reasons why many schools are not implementing ER/EL. Then, some demotivating factors for learners which keep them from ER/EL will be provided. Next, useful tips, which motivate learners to keep reading and listening extensively, will be introduced by presenting the results of practical studies. Finally, the presentation will propose teachers’ roles: what they should do or should not do to succeed with an ER/EL program.

Each of the ERF's affiliates and forming affiliates will present their activities in the past year in a 2-3 minute presentation to the ERF Board. This might include officer changes, events held, constitutional changes and so forth. Each affiliate and forming affiliate should also present on their upcoming plans. The ER public encouraged to attend to see how these ER associations work behind the scenes and potentially use this information to start their own ERF Affiliate.

Join the breakout room for a discussion on ER in other langauges than English.

After 5 years of living in a Chinese speaking country and over 100 hours of class lessons, I failed to get a grasp of this language and communicate in my daily life. After discovering ER and the Mandarin Companion series, I began a serious quest into extensive reading for myself. Within weeks, my comprehension grew as did my “feel” for the language and for how to correct troublesome grammar points. In this talk, I describe the experiences of first getting into graded readers, where my reading was slow initially and how it improved quickly, how this helped my grades, and the difficulties that arose. Additionally, I found ER is beneficial for those at advanced language level. This talk is to help teachers better understand their students’ extensive reading experiences and encourage teachers to write graded readers in their own languages.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an increasingly hot topic across various fields and levels of education, and it is not unusual to see them used as a framework or a reference for curricula that engage with social change as early as elementary school. Yet for many students, the SDGs are often just abstract concepts whose issues are perceived to be only related to communities and/or countries rather than ones that impacts their own lives. We discuss how SDG-based extensive reading programs can promote both local and global engagement by educating students with a passion for reading, and through that platform learning about the significance of the SDGs not only on a global scale, but also on a national level. Furthermore, we demonstrate how extensive reading can be a stepping stone to critical thinking about the SDGs and issues they can see in their everyday lives. In addition, the readers encourage students to make connections between the goals and encourage students to see social issues in that way as well. In conclusion, we introduce the process of creating locally engaged SDG-inspired extensive reading programs, student reactions to these materials, and conclude with a discussion of feedback from our students to reveal how your students can benefit from them.

This presentation describes a project that involved senior high school students in Malaysia in an English class where they did extensive reading in preparation for educating younger students about actions everyone could take to reduce climate change. In groups of 4-5, guided by cooperative learning principles, students chose their own environmental topics, researched them (mostly online), and prepared posters and other materials. The technique Gallery Tour was used in which the groups of older students stationed themselves and their materials around the classroom, and the younger students visiting from another class circulated among the various host groups who explained their ideas and fielded questions and comments. Extensive reading was involved in the initial preparation of the materials, in their refinement, and in responding to the questions and other feedback from the visiting class.

English should be learnt not only from the textbooks, but in the daily life. ER is a must for all people who want to learn the language. There are many obstacles to practicing ER in China although all people agree it is important. We are trying to help teachers and parents of young kids to overcome some problems by using the Fanreading platform and AI devices and make ER a ritual like brushing teeth. It is too difficult for kids to choose books by themselves when they have little knowledge of English and most parents also can't help. Fanreading provides an easy-to-use graded reader database to choose books by levels, series, and key words on Mobile and webpage. There is no school time for ER, while it is easy to lend books to kids to read at home, most parents are unable to help them. Fanreading allows teachers to record their lessons on the platform and push it to the kids automatically. Little kids don't have smartphones, and many parents also don't want their kids to use them in case kids are not learning on them. The Fanreading platform is connected to AI devices that are portable, and can be synchronized with a smartphone so kids can have their own English learning tool while parents can observe the students' activity.

Xreading News is an exciting new feature recently piloted on Xreading. Each week there are 5 graded news articles. Stories are short and cover a wide range of topics, such as Science & Technology, Health, and World News. The team of story writers and the series editor will discuss various aspects and perspectives on the process of bringing news stories to Xreading. They will discuss sourcing and selecting stories, writing graded text, and simplifying complex issues. They will also talk about using the stories in the classroom.

This paper reports an on-going study of an introductory extensive reading program for 62 undergraduate students of Thai Language Teaching and Physical Education Teaching majors who rate their English language proficiency low. The participants were assigned to six weeks 30-minute and another six weeks 40-minute online weekly reading assignments. Weeks thirteenth to fifteenth were voluntary. Besides data collected weekly from both close and open-ended questions, the participants were asked to express their impression towards extensive reading after six weeks. After twelve weeks, they were asked to decide whether to continue reading. Motivating techniques trialed along the twelve-week extensive reading program, and the motives behind the choices to continue and discontinue reading after the twelve weeks will be presented and discussed. The findings are hoped to serve as a stepping-stone to develop an effective extensive reading program for other undergraduate students with low English proficiency in Thailand

The application of extensive reading as pedagogy in tertiary education can greatly enable learners to build confidence in reading long-form texts and better equip them for the realities of higher education and the prevalence of high level English texts. However, the development of reading skills seems neglected with students expected to sink or swim regarding handling the reading load in higher education contexts. This presentation will consider how extensive reading skills can be developed within a content-led setting to improve student extensive reading skills in a multi-proficiency setting, while also being able to fulfil course objectives in terms of content delivery. This will include classroom strategies that enable students to digest content through cooperative learning and critical reading skills, to allow accessibility to content for lower-proficiency students, and confidence building in higher proficiency ones.

“If you want to make the most positive change that you can to your language course, set up an extensive reading program” (Nation & Waring, 2020, p. 182). In 2018, the Foreign Language Division (FLD) was established at Wayo Women’s University in Japan and tasked with managing a multi-departmental English program for 700 first-year students. The above advice was heeded and the process of creating an ER program for the university began. After a small-scale trial in 2019, the ER program started in 2020 amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. This presentation will report on the development and implementation of the ER program through Xreading. It will detail how it is managed, the challenges posed by the pandemic, students' achievements, the perceptions of students and teachers in the program, and how it helped create cohesiveness between colleagues and foster a positive change in the FLD’s English program at the university.

The session will explain how remote online extensive reading (ER) groups were created using Zoom video conferencing for after school activities and summer camps. Teachers of Arabic in local schools in the UAE were invited to join the project and interested teachers were provided access to the Arabic ER website that contains links to online Arabic reading materials and the Arabic M-reader site.

The project aimed to introduce ER in the home in an attempt to encourage families to embrace and normalize reading. The Arabic version of M-reader was used to track students' reading and to facilitate a competition. Feedback on reading achievements and the competition was provided in the Zoom meeting activities by volunteer undergraduate students. They also assisted in supporting students' ER practices in Arabic by reading aloud to children in the reading group.

The outcomes of the project will also be explained so that online reading groups can be implemented in any ER setting.

Join the breakout room for a discussion on Motivation.

In the busyness of life. Extensive Reading sounds boring for some Students. A lot of Secondary students Minh Duc Secondary School in District1, in Hochiminh City Vietnam are not happy when they are asked about reading and especially when they are mandated to read. There are three purposes of this paper. The first is to elucidate the theory and principle of Vietnamese Teachers underlying their extensive reading beliefs. The deep-rooted principles will be discussed in light of practical classroom and contextual consideration in the parts of the students of Minh Duc Secondary School. Secondly, a critical summary of current research on extensive reading that has been conducted in English as a Second Language and English as a Foreign Language contexts and has been tested for this school year 2021-2022. By giving importance to the immeasurable benefits of extensive reading in improving many aspects of L2 learners’ language proficiency, I hope to encourage great implementation of extensive reading in educational institutions in District 1,Hochiminh City. Vietnamese Teachers will also be acquainted with future directions in the practice of implementing extensive reading programs such as how to make use of the online resources, and available books at the library and be potentially equipped on making use of the internet to assess students 'potential And progress in reading extensively. Thirdly, the paper provides directions for steps that can be used for future Public Schools teachers on how-to conduct an extensive reading with Vietnamese students which I believe might fill in the gap in knowledge for Extensive Reading. The conducted research was conducted using goggle forms and goggle classroom to evaluate the difficulties met in expensive Reading .thus, it gives light to the joyfulness of extensive reading on the parts of the students and leads to the analysis of the importance of Extensive Reading.

When we let students choose stories on topics they like and choose, and can read easily, then we have so many opportunities to get them speaking. They can discuss characters and narratives, but they can also respond with opinions and feelings about messages, ideas and conflict in narratives. They can use illustrations as prompts for mini-presentations or storytelling activities. They can compare them with film versions, re-enact scenes for drama and do many different role plays. And above all, they can interact together with the books in a meaningful way on their own terms, in a supportive and creative language learning environment. This workshop presents lots of ideas for using readers to get young learners speaking, and to see that reading is so much more than a series of texts for teaching language.