End-of-Course Questionnaire
This questionnaire provided an evaluation of the course and questionnaire recommendations for future courses. No specific questions about course components were asked, but there was a space for students to make comments on ways in which the course had made them more independent learners. A number of students took this as an opportunity to comment on the Language Learning Centre, but five mentioned reading, with the following comments.
There was also a question asking students to indicate the effectiveness of the course in leading to improvement in seven skill areas. The results appeared to indicate that students perceived least improvement in grammar, and most in listening and vocabulary. All areas, however, were reported on positively. At the end of the course the co-teacher was asked to provide a written contribution to the class report. These reports are an administrative requirement, and at a minimum include the class profile, details about the programme taught, and an evaluation of the class performance. No comment on the extensive reading programme was requested from the co-teacher, but she remarked that ‘The students appeared to enjoy this part of the morning particularly. By the end of the course most were engrossed in their books’. The co-teacher’s comments endorsed the class teacher’s own observations. There never appeared to be any reluctance about reading, only occasionally did a student forget to bring their reader to class, and students actively exchanged readers when finished.
The inclusion of extensive reading as a component of an EAP programme was positively received by the learners and at least in some cases created positive attitudes towards reading. While it is not possible to measure the direct impact of extensive reading on language proficiency development in a teaching programme such as this, it was certainly not the case that the dedication of 16-17 hours of’class time’ to extensive reading impacted negatively on student performance. In light of the research that demonstrates the benefits of extensive reading, this is a positive endorsement of making a place for it in the EAP teaching timetable. Perhaps, indeed, it is sufficient to accept the benefits of extensive reading that have been shown in controlled experiments, and focus instead on ensuring the acceptance of extensive reading in higher education and EAP courses. Merrell Shoes on Sale
One consideration, however, is the nature of the implementation of an extensive reading programme. Day and Bamford (2002) have proposed ten extremely sound and well-grounded principles for teaching extensive reading but there must also be flexibility in approach, as Green (2005) has also suggested. Interestingly, though, while this action research project shared some of the same features as the Hong Kong Extensive Reading Scheme in English that Green criticized, it produced different results. The: main similarities with the Hong Kong scheme were that the extensive reading component described in this article was not integrated with other components of the programme, and that the reading was individually-oriented. There were differences between the Hong Kong scheme and this programme, however, and these may have contributed to the different results. The principal differences were in the teacher’s attitude to, and possibly modelling of, extensive reading as a classroom activity, and in the learners’ responses, which suggested that they regarded the reading as contributing towards their language learning needs.
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