It’s not surprising that student engagement in compulsory English eduction is often very low. This Exploratory Action Research study investigated student engagement with the XReading program over a full academic year in a compulsory general English class at a Japanese university. Early investigations found huge gaps in students’ basic skill levels and many students were not able to articulate how or why they could study English effectively. This research shows how addressing students' language awareness of several key concepts resulted in improved engagement levels with extensive reading tasks and the impact on their general English test scores.