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Distinguished Lecturers Series (Tokyo) "Extensive Reading in the Foreign Language Classroom"

by Dr. George Jacobs (Singapore)

Seminar Overview

This course will seek to encourage teachers to include extensive reading skillfully as a component of second language instruction. The seminar will cover the following topics:

1. The place of extensive reading (ER) within the larger paradigm shift in education generally and second language teaching in particular, including learner autonomy, individual differences, focus on meaning, and thinking skills.
2. Theoretical perspectives on ER: the Input Hypothesis, Interaction Hypothesis, Socio-Cultural Theory, and Output Hypothesis.
3. Research related to ER in L1 and L2.
4. The place of ER in the curriculum, including the balance of ER and intensive reading.
5. Finding materials for ER, including narrow reading and content-based reading, simplified readers, children's literature, Internet resources, and teacher-and-student-created materials.
6. Tasks to accompany ER, including cooperative learning tasks, and tasks in which students use class readers and in which they read individually selected materials.
7. Motivating students to read, including teachers as models, reading aloud to students, record keeping, and peer motivation.
8. Talking to colleagues about ER.
9. Possible research topics and controversies related to ER, including assessment of ER, the efficacy of follow-up tasks (including those involving peer interaction), learners' views of ER materials, the use of comic books and Internet materials, the efficacy of vocabulary glossing, and other aids to comprehension.