Not all reading is created equal—take it from Jeff Peterson, a Japanese professor who values consistent reading of easy material over tedious and difficult reading passages.
Before taking on any other subject, elementary-aged children learn to read—starting with the ABCs and working up to short, common words and eventually the Magic Tree House books. Regardless of a learner’s age, reading proves instrumental in the development of native language proficiency, a principle that Assistant Professor Jeff Peterson (Extensive Reading, Online Language Learning) believes extends to second language acquisition as well.
The Need to Read
Many students learning a foreign language know the perils of what many language teachers refer to as “intensive reading”; this popular practice exposes students to new vocabulary and grammar in advanced articles, classic books, or traditional poetry. While this method undoubtedly enhances learners’ language abilities, Peterson believes a newer approach—known as extensive reading—offers unique advantages worth pursuing.
“Extensive reading is an increasingly popular approach to teaching reading in the foreign language context in which learners read copious amounts of easy material of their choosing,” he explains, so “students should know almost all the vocabulary in the material they’re reading.” This approach has been the center of Peterson’s research for the last three years, with his current research examining extensive reading in two unique applications: audio-assisted extensive reading and extensive listening.
Research on Reading
Peterson’s yearslong study has sought to uncover how extensive reading, extensive listening (listening to books), and audio-assisted extensive reading (listening to books and following along with a hard copy) improve students’ reading rate and comprehension as well as their vocabulary size. Intermediate Japanese speakers participating in the study were randomly assigned to one of four research groups: extensive reading, extensive listening, audio-assisted extensive reading, and watching Japanese cultural videos in English.
At the beginning of the semester, participants in each group took a “vocabulary size test and also completed a reading rate test with a couple of comprehension questions,” Peterson notes. This provided researchers with information on students’ Japanese literacy prior to their involvement in the study and allowed them to recommend appropriate books for undergrads to choose from.
They then read faster, which leads to reading more, which leads to understanding better, and then they enjoy more.
Students took another similarly intense vocabulary and reading test at the end of the semester, giving Peterson an idea of the impact each extensive reading category had on Japanese learners. This practice was then repeated over the course of six semesters, allowing Peterson to gather data from 234 participants.
Read for Fun, Learn for Fun
Analyzing responses from the preliminary and concluding vocabulary and comprehension tests gave Peterson an inside look at how each type of reading benefits language learners. “The audio-assisted extensive reading group showed the greatest gain in reading rate and vocabulary gain,” he shares, noting that the extensive reading group was close behind.
Seeing this result consistently over the semesters has led Peterson to believe that the audio and visual stimulation in audio-assisted extensive reading “can reduce the cognitive load on students,” improving students’ retention of materials as a result. Though his research only included Japanese learners, colleagues in the field of extensive reading have found a similar pattern with native Japanese speakers studying English.
Peterson believes the three extensive reading approaches—extensive reading, extensive listening, and audio-assisted extensive reading—more closely mirror the learning process for native speakers, which starts from the basics and involves lots of practice. “Students will gain a lot from the autonomy that extensive reading provides, where students can choose what they want to read and read at a level that’s appropriate for them,” he explains. “They then read faster, which leads to reading more, which leads to understanding better, and then they enjoy more.”
Learn more about BYU’s Japanese program here.