Extensive reading in a tertiary reading programme: Students’ accounts of affective and cognitive benefits

Abstract

This article reports on the extensive reading (ER) component of a reading intervention programme to improve first-year students’ reading proficiency. To make the intervention more practical and to accelerate improvement, an ER component was included in the programme. Two groups of first-year students (high-risk and low-risk) were required to read short stories and novels of their choice and to record their affective and cognitive experiences during the reading to submit as a portfolio. In addition, students answered pre- and post-intervention questionnaires on their reading habits. Students were selected based on their performance in a reading test and interviewed to gain more insight into their reading experiences. The questionnaires were analysed using the t-test, and the interview responses were analysed by content analysis. The findings show that students had benefited from ER. Questionnaire results show that students’ reading habits had improved significantly. The reports from the interviews and inventories show that students’ affective and cognitive reading levels, including reading speed, had also improved. Students also reported on the transfer of reading strategies from their ER to their academic reading. Based on the findings, recommendations are made for reading programmes at the tertiary level, specifically at this institution, to include ER in order to complement explicit teaching, instil motivation and accelerate the improvement of students’ reading proficiency.

Blogging in Extensive Reading: Students’ Voice in Blended Learning Classroom

“…In these activities, students can choose books according to their abilities of language and minimize the use of a dictionary on those activities (Delfi & Yamat, 2017). Boakye (Boakye, 2017) claims that extensive reading, along with the other kinds of reading, is conducted to help students increase their reading skills and develop their cognitive and affective abilities. The objective of extensive reading is to make students prefer to read in the target language and motivates them to get understandable texts to be read for pleasure (Pretorius & Lephalala, 2012).…”

The benefits of an extensive reading programme implemented in two Foundation Phase classrooms in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

“…In the South African context, there has been little research conducted with FP learners in particular on the effectiveness of ER. Research into ER has mostly focused on the teacher or university students as the unit of analysis (Boakye 2017a(Boakye , 2017bPretorius & Knoetze 2012;Pretorius & Machet 2004). The participants of the mentioned studies can read independently, with limited support from the teacher; therefore, findings from these studies cannot be extrapolated to learners participating in the current study.…”

“…There are a number of studies that have reported positive gains through the implementation of an ERP (Boakye 2017b;Clark & Rumbold 2006;Jacobs, Renandya & Bamford 2000;Krashen 2004). Almost every study conducted to investigate the effect of ER on literacy development has reported positively about this approach, despite different methodologies and contexts.…”

“…Reading for pleasure can contribute to positive attitudes and increase self-confidence. Boakye (2017b) included the ER component in her reading intervention programme to improve firstyear university students' reading proficiency who were registered for the Academic Literacy and Academic Reading modules. Her study points out that ER impacted on the students' affective and cognitive reading levels, including reading speed.…”

The Freshmenrs Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies

“…Many studies, report that feshmen tends to struggle during their first year in university in terms of keeping up with their reading loads and the difficulity of their tertiary-level reading materials [1], [6], [15]- [17]. This condition occurs because of the students do not pose a good reading habbit and strategies during their secondary level education.…”