Starting an Extensive Reading Program in Your ESL Classroom

Reading is one of the best ways for an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learner to improve his or her skills in English. Readers gain more than just new vocabulary. They learn how words are used by native speakers. Reading a novel can help students review previously learned grammatical structures and teach them to recognize rules being applied in a new way. Reading provides a way for students to practice and reinforce new material learned in the classroom, with the benefit of being portable for independent study.

A student's reading skills are often more advanced than their listening, speaking, or writing skills. Teachers can use this gap to their advantage by engaging students in extensive reading. An effective extensive reading program can develop a student's abilities and stimulate learners' interest in a variety of outside topics.

What is extensive reading? Also known as Free Voluntary Reading (FVR), extensive reading is the reading of materials, self-selected by students, at the student's pace, with little or no testing or evaluation to follow. Reading is done for pleasure without the added pressure of a comprehension test to follow. Students are also encouraged to read in greater volume. While the class may only cover a few pages of a textbook each week, the extensive reader may finish several chapters or even an entire short book.

A successful extensive reading program requires some initial work from the instructor. The first step is gathering appropriate materials to offer to students. Several ESL publishing companies offer sets of readers specially designed for extensive reading. These are often adaptations of classic stories and are collected by the vocabulary required to read. Some readers start with as few as 500 words, while more advanced readers require a vocabulary of several thousand. Some students may be ready for books that are not adapted.