PLEASURE READING AS a TOOL TO IMPROVE EFF EARNERS’ WRITING PROFICIENCY

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI MAI LE

PLEASURE READING AS A TOOL TO IMPROVE EFF
EARNERS’ WRITING PROFICIENCY

MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION

Vinh, 2017

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI MAI LE

PLEASURE READING AS A TOOL TO IMPROVE
EFL LEARNERS’ WRITING PROFICIENCY

Major: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION

Supervisor: Dr. Tran Thi Ngoc Yen

Vinh, 2017

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ABSTRACT
The objective of the present study is to investigate the impacts of pleasure
reading on EFL learners’ writing proficiency. To achieve the aim, an experiment
that involved 24 students at a language centre was carried out. Twelve of the
participants were ascribed to the experimental group and the other twelve were
assigned to the control group. The data were collected within a four - week
period via a pre-test and a post-test designed for comparable groups. The
experimental group was asked to read extensively besides following the same
English course as the control group. Both groups did a general English test and
pre-test before the treatment and post-test after the treatment. It was found that
pleasure reading helped the students to improve fluency and accuracy in writing.
Based on the findings, implications for enhancing the effectiveness of teaching
and learning the writing skill have been put forward teachers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Tran Thi Ngoc Yen,
who directly supported and encouraged me during the preparation of this study. I
am truly grateful to her for her professional advice, invaluable support and
guidance she offered to help me carry out the study.

I wish to express my sincere thanks to the students of the two classes I worked
with in order to gather data for my study.

I would also like to thank my classmates for their invaluable comments and
criticism.

Last but not least, I owe special heartfelt appreciation to my parents, without
whose unceasing support, patience and understanding I could not have been able
to complete my study.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..............................................................................i
ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS..................................................................................iii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION......................................................................1
1.1. Rationale...................................................................................................3
1.2. Aims of the study......................................................................................4
1.3. Research questions....................................................................................4
1.4. Scope of the study.....................................................................................5
1.5. Organization of the thesis.........................................................................5

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW............................................................6
2.1 The reading skill........................................................................................6
2.1.1 Definitions of reading.............................................................................6
2.1.2 Types of reading.....................................................................................8
2.1.2.1 According to manners of reading.........................................................9
2.1.2.2 According to purposes of reading ........................................................12
2.1.3 The roles of reading in learning..............................................................17
2.1.4 Reading motivation and reading interest................................................19

2.2

Reading for pleasure............................................................................20
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2.2.1 Definition

20

2.2.2 Benefits of pleasure reading....................................................................21

2.3 The writing skill.........................................................................................23
2.3.1 Definitions...............................................................................................23
2.3.2 Assessing writing ability.........................................................................25

2.4 Fluency and accuracy in language performance........................................26
2.4.1 Fluency....................................................................................................27
2.4.2 Accuracy..................................................................................................27
2.4.3 Fluency vs. accuracy................................................................................28

2.5 Teaching EFL writing.................................................................................29
2.5.1 Approaches to teaching the writing skill.................................................29
2.5.2 EFL learners’ difficulties in learning to write.........................................33
2.5.3 Developing EFL writing proficiency.......................................................34
2.5.3.1 Factors affecting EFL writing proficiency...........................................34
2.5.3.2 Methods and techniques to develop writing proficiency......................37

2.6 Reading in writing proficiency development.............................................40
2.6.1 Receptive vs. productive in language learning.........................................40
2.6.2 Connecting reading and writing...............................................................43

2.6.3 Benefits of pleasure reading for writing development

45

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY.......................................................................47
3.1 Research questions.....................................................................................47
3.2 Participants.................................................................................................47
3.2.1 The control group....................................................................................48
3.2.2 The experimental group...........................................................................48
3.3 Instruments.................................................................................................49
3.3.1 The general test........................................................................................50
3.3.2 Pre - test...................................................................................................50
3.3.3 Post - test.................................................................................................50
3.4 Procedures....................................................................................................51

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS...............................................53
4.1 Results and findings...................................................................................53
4.1.1 The general test results............................................................................53
4.1.2 Pre -test results........................................................................................54
4.1.3 Post -test results.......................................................................................57
4.1.4 Comparison of pre-test and post-test result..............................................60
4.1.5 Comparison of the experimental group and the control group.................63
4.2 Discussions and summary..........................................................................65
5.1 Pedagogical implications............................................................................66


CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS

66

5.2 Conclusions................................................................................................66
5.3 Limitations of the study..............................................................................66
5.4 Suggestions for study..................................................................................67

REFERENCES..................................................................................................69
APPENDIX A....................................................................................................74
APPENDIX B....................................................................................................79
APPENDIX C....................................................................................................80
APPENDIX D....................................................................................................81


CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The English language has rapidly become the most popular foreign language in
Vietnam, especially at schools, colleges and universities. For learners of English,
the English language surely brings about a better career prospect. Frankly, writing
is among the most prominent skills that EFL learners need to learn as an essential
component of their academic practice and later in their professional life. Teaching
and learning how to write successfully gets even more complicated and challenging
for both language teachers and students when it comes to ESL/ EFL environments
compared with teaching L1 writing. For many Vietnamese students, presenting
written work is a substantial challenge. They may have little experience of writing
after leaving schools, and may be very anxious about having to write essays. They
have a lot of mistakes about vocabulary, syntax, semantics, etc.

Of the four skills, writing, in general, is considered the most difficult one for every
student. The four language skills (reading, speaking, listening and writing) are
taught regularly at most of schools now, among which the writing skill is very
important because it is a productive skill. It is also because of the fact that besides

speaking, people frequently have to communicate with each other via writing. The
ability to write in English for various purposes of communication is becoming
increasingly more and more essential in our modern life. Writing is known as an
important skill for multifarious reasons in education and business.

According to Brown (2004: 218), writing is a skill that is the exclusive domain of
scribes and scholars in educational or religious institutions. Writing is important as
teaching speaking, reading, and listening because the learners can express their
ideas, feeling, and experiences in certain place, time and situation in written form.
According to the Zemach and Rumisek (2005: 54), the teaching of writing is
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important because of the reasons: the first reason is writing reinforces the
grammatical structure, idiom and vocabulary that teacher has been working within
the class. The second reason is when the student writes, she or he has a chance to
be adventurous with the language. Finally, the student becomes involved with the
language, with himself or herself and with his or her readers.
However, most language learners realize the learning to write fluently and
expressively are difficult. It is because writing needs simultaneous control of
number variables. This argument is supported by Zemach and Islam (2004: 12),
that there are some aspects included in writing such as control of content, rules of
syntax, format sentence, grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and spelling.

Unfortunately, the students’ skills in writing are still far from what is being
expected. Many students cannot write grammatical sentences, spelling,
punctuation, and limited vocabulary. It makes the students fell bored and they do
not interest in joining the lesson. In fact, many students fail to reach the standard
score for the midterm tests and final tests in a course.

These problems are caused by some factors, such as: first, the implementation of
teacher central learning. Students have a little chance to express their opinion
because the teacher only speaks all the time. They get knowledge just from the
teacher’s explanation. The students focus all attention upon the teacher and
discourage communication among students. All that they have to do is just listen to
their teacher and take notes for useful information. The students only receive the
knowledge from their teacher; they do not explore the knowledge themselves.
Second, students still lack of vocabularies which make them difficult to compose
any writing text. Third, the students have lack interest in English. Therefore, many
students consider it as the hardest subject to learn.
Because of those problems, researchers have found many techniques and methods


for both learning and teaching writing skill. Many previous research mentioned to
how extensive reading affects writing skill. They pointed out the connection
between reading and writing. This thesis explores the effects of pleasure reading on
writing and examines two factors’ development in students’ writing ability:
accuracy and fluency after a month reading their interesting texts.

1.1 Rationale
With the phenomenal spread of English as global lingua franca, the need for a
master of this language has heightened. With four skills of English, writing has
always been seen as an important skill in language acquisition. In both English as a
foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL) programs, the
students’ development of writing skills is now emphasized. However, many
elementary EFL students often struggle with their writing accuracy and fluency.

English has been run like blood through the veins of nations all over the world. To
have good communication skills in English is burning desire for most people.
Communicative competence in the target language is more demanded now than

ever before. The ever growing need for good communication skills in English has
created a huge demand for English teaching around the world. The worldwide
demand for English has created an enormous demand for quality language teaching
and language teaching materials and resources (Rechards, 2006, p5).

The worldwide increasing demand for good communication in English language
has increased the responsibility of the English language teachers. The application
of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has faced problems and resistance in
the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context (Ellis, 1996).


As a teacher of English with nearly 5 years of experience at an English centre, I see
that my students are facing difficulties in writing skill about vocabulary,
expressions and grammar. Although they have learnt English since they were at
grade 3, most of them are still unconfident in writing tests. Despite their
considerable knowledge of grammar, the students fail to use the language they have
learnt to communicate in real-life situations or write an accurate sentence or
paragraph. It may be that most of them lack vocabulary, grammatical knowledge
and structures. The purpose of this study is to provide readings to an experimental
group at an English centre so as to find out whether pleasure reading is effective in
helping these EFL students develop their writing skill. It was expected that the
teachers in this centre will be able to use this method to help students improve their
writing ability.

All the aforementioned reasons urged the author to carry out the study entitled
“Pleasure reading as a tool to improve EFL learners’ writing proficiency”.
Hopefully, the results will serve as a useful source of reference for those who are
concerned teaching and learning English writing skill.
1.2 Aims of the study
The aim of the study is to explore the effect of pleasure reading on EFL students’

writing accuracy and fluency.

1.3 Research questions
This study was designed to answer the following two research
questions: 1. Will pleasure reading enhance EFL learners’ writing
fluency?


2. How does pleasure reading affect EFL learners’ writing accuracy?
1.4 Scope of the Study
This research examined on the effects of pleasure reading on the EFL students’
writing ability. However, it only focused on accuracy in grammar, punctuation,
spelling and speed of students’ writing. Due to the limitation of time, the study
only involved twenty four students in two solutions 8 classes at an English centre
in Vinh city, Nghe An province.
1.5 Organization of the thesis
The thesis includes five chapters as follows:
Chapter 1 is the introduction, which provides a brief introduction, rationale, the aims
of the study, the scope of the study and the research questions.
Chapter 2 is the literature review, in which the previous studies about the writing
skill and pleasure reading related to the thesis and some concepts as theoretical basis
for the study will be discussed.
Chapter 3 presents the experimental study, which describes the research
methodology, participants, instruments, procedure for data analysis.
Chapter 4 mentions to results of pre-test, post-test, general test, discussions after the
results and last summary.
Chapter 5 contains implications, conclusions, limitations of the research and some
suggestions for further studies.
This chapter focuses on the literature review and theoretical background of the
study. It presents a brief review of the literature on the topics that are generally

related to the research in this thesis. Previous studies on reading and writing skills
will be mentioned.

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CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 The reading skill
2.1.1 Definitions of reading
So far, the term reading has been defined quite differently according to its various
aspects such as criteria, features and functions. For many learners, reading is a very
essential skill, particularly in English as a second language. Concerning the role of
reading, Carrell (1988, p.1) states that “Without solid reading proficiency, second
language learners cannot perform at levels they must in order to succeed”. Anderson
(1999) also confirms that “The more exposure a student has to language through
reading, the greater the possibilities that overall language proficiency will increase”.
Reading plays such a significant part in the success of second language learning and
it is essential to understand what reading really is. However, the act of reading is
neither completely understood nor easily described. In a general term, reading is
defined as “An active, fluent process which involves the reader and the reading
material in building meaning” (Anderson, 1999, p.1).

According to Aebersold and Field (1997, p.15), “reading is what happens when
people look at a text and assign meaning to the written symbol in that text. The text
and the reader are the two physical entities necessary for the reading process to start.
It is, however, the interaction between the text and the reader that

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constitutes actual meaning”. These interactions, in their opinion, are the
interactions between purpose and manner of reading and through reading strategies
and schema. Purpose determines how people read a text. People may read the text
to understand it (reading for full comprehension), or simply to get the general idea
(skimming), to find the part that contains the information they need (scanning).
Readers also use some mental activities that are often referred to as reading
strategies to construct meaning from a text. In addition, readers base on their
previous knowledge that they bring to the text to assist their reading
comprehension. This prior knowledge is known as schema. Research in reading has
shown that schema plays an important role in helping the reader to comprehend a
text.

Moreover, Rubin, J and Thompson (1994, p.91) offer another definition of reading:
“Reading is an active information-seeking process in which readers relate
information in the text to what they already know”. From this point of view, the
reader’s knowledge of the language and knowledge of the world is of importance to
their reading success. Goodman (1971, p.135) states that reading is “a
psycholinguistic process by which the reader- a language user, reconstructs, as best
as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display”. For
Goodman, this act of reconstruction is considered as cyclical process of sampling,
predicting, testing and confirming.

Additionally, Walker (1992, p.37) defined reading as an active, problem solving
process that involves predicting or guessing what the author says, based on
expectations about story events. He believes that reading involves recalling an
individual’s life experience and trying to understand what is written. He also
confirms that reading is comprehending and developing of human learning. In

other words, reading is more than just receiving meaning in a literal sense.
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From a cognitive attitude, Smith defines reading that “Reading is to understand
author’s thought” (Smith, 1985, p.102). This means that the meaning of the text
depends on the context in which appears. The more the readers conceive the
author’s thought, the more he is aware of the writer’s intention.

Taking an interactive attitude, Nutall (1982:4) expresses “Reading means getting
out of the text as nearly as possible the message the writer puts into it”. He also
emphasizes the interaction between texts and readers in the reading process. In his
opinion, “Text is full of meaning like a jug of water; the reader’s mind soaks it up
like sponge”.

To sum up, it can be said that there is a variety of perspective. Therefore, no
definitions can possible apprehend all the characters and opinions what reading is.
Each author defines reading in his own point of view. In order to understand clearly
about the nature of reading, it is necessary to take a closer look at the actual process
that really takes place in the reader’s mind.

2.1.2 Types of reading
One of the most important points to keep in mind when teaching and learning
Reading skill is that there is a large number of reading types and readers have to
base on one’s purpose for reading. Both teachers and learners will never be good
readers if they do not know how to adapt their reading skill to their aims when
reading. According to the reading process, it is essential to distinguish the reading
activities depending on manners and purposes of reading.
2.1.2.1 According to manners of reading
Reading, according to manner, is divided into reading aloud and silent reading.

Doff (1988, p.67) supposes that “reading aloud involves looking a text,
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understanding it and also saying it”. Although reading aloud is considered a way to
convey necessary information to the others, it is unpopular activity outside
classroom. For the teachers, reading aloud is more of a speaking exercise of
pronunciation.

In fact, reading aloud proves itself to be advantageous for the learners because it
helps them make the connection between sounds and spelling of letters and words
and assists the teachers to check learners’ pronunciation. It must be recognized that
reading aloud is primarily an oral matter so that for those who teach and learn
foreign languages, it is closer to “pronunciation” than it is to “comprehension”.
While it is perfectly proper to try to develop the skill of reading aloud, it clearly
cannot be done using an unfamiliar text the content and language of which
stretches the linguistic capabilities of the learners to the utmost. Therefore, it must
be accepted that the usefulness of reading aloud is limited. As Doff (1988, p.58)
articulates that reading aloud is not a very useful technique for some following
reasons. Firstly, “reading aloud is not an activity we engage in very often outside
the classroom” (Doff, 1988, p.67). Indeed, in the daily life, few people are required
to read aloud as a matter of daily routine, radio newscasters, clergymen, perhaps
actors. To the huge majority, its importance is minimal. Secondly, the readers are
often merely mouthing meaningless language because of lack of rehearsal and time
to comprehend what he has to read aloud. It means that when reading aloud, the
readers’ attention is focused on the pronunciation, not on the understanding of the
text. Furthermore, in the classroom, only the reading student is active at a time,
others are either not listening at all or listening to bad model. Finally, some
students’ reading speed is very slow so it takes a lot of time in class.
By whispering the word while reading, reading aloud slows the reader down and

forces him to read every word so it can distract him from understanding the text.

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Moreover, several researchers claim that reading aloud has not only disadvantages
but also advantages. Anderson (1985) considers that “the singer most important
activity for building knowledge for their eventual success in reading is reading
aloud”. Reading aloud to students, regardless of their reading competence, provides
them with the comprehension that impression has meaning. Learners can become
familiar with the phrasing, expression, and flow of sentences in stories or text that
are read aloud to them.

Therefore, reading aloud can be applied for those who begin learning a foreign
language to establish the connection between sound and spelling. On the other
hand, their main object of learning reading is farther than improving vocabulary,
pronunciation of fluency. Learners focus on understanding the text and doing
comprehension exercises which cannot be completed perfectly by reading aloud
because asking a student to read aloud means that he may lack concentration on the
meaning. He may read correctly but after that he will not be able to remember the
main content he has already read. It is difficult to read aloud and understand the
text at the same time of reading. Thus reading aloud might be a good way to
practice pronunciation. It might not correspond with larger purposes.

Besides, silent reading is the activity we usually engage when we read books,
newspapers, advertisements, etc. Silent reading is widely used in both real life and
classroom; silent reading is defined as “the simplest method of reading, frequently
forgotten by language teachers. It is the method we normally use with our native
language, and on the whole the quickest and most efficient” (Lewis and Hill, 1985,
p.110).

It is obvious that by far the greatest amount of reading which is done in the world is
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silent. A reading room is a silent room. Silent reading is the interpretation which is
most likely for the term “reading”. It is perhaps the nearest approach to the essence
of reading. Silent reading can be applied effectively to teaching and learning a
reading comprehension text because reading a text silently helps students
concentrate on understanding its meaning. With silent reading, we can have the
best understanding of the reading materials in the shortest possible time because we
do not need to read all the words in the text, we can read at our own speed and if
we do not understand what we are reading, we can read ago or slow down for
intensive reading. Doff (1988, p.67) states that silent reading or reading for
meaning “is the activity we normally engage in where we read books, newspapers,
road sign, etc. it involves looking at sentences and understanding the message they
convey, in other words, making sense of a written text”. According to Doff, we
know that silent reading is of great help in developing reading skills. Students do
not have to pay attention to the exact pronunciation of words; they will spend most
of time on focusing on the main ideas of the text. Therefore, they can cover the
greatest possible amount of the text in the least time. Furthermore, through silent
reading, learners can control the time they read. If they do not understand the
sentence or an opinion, they can go back and read it again. So silent reading is a
very effective way of the reading comprehension process.

For the teachers, silent reading is helpful for controlling the class. In silent reading,
students are in fact concentrating on the text, obtaining the meaning and extracting
what they need. Therefore, it is a useful technique in a reading skill applied to
learners to develop reading lesson. Silent reading is sometimes considered as

recreational reading or independent reading as in silent reading something is read
in a relaxed mood and only a single individual remain concerned about it. Reading
silently improves students’ understanding because it helps them concentrate on
what they are reading rather than the pronunciation of words. When teachers
encourage students to read silently, this means that students have opportunity to
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develop the strategies they need for reading fast, and with better comprehension.

In short, silent reading is the most useful and practical way to develop the students’
reading ability. However, it is more beneficial when the teacher sometimes
combines it with reading aloud to improve students’ pronunciation and intonation
because reading aloud has its own advantages.

2.1.2.2 According to purposes of reading
According to the purpose of reading, researchers categorize reading into skimming,
scanning, intensive, and extensive.

Skimming is a quick reading to get to know the general meaning of a passage, to
know how the passage is organized, that is, the structure of the text and to get an
idea of the intension of the writer. Skimming is a tool in which the author’s
sequence can be observed, unlike scanning in which some predetermined
information is sought after.

According to William (1984, p.96), skimming means glancing rapidly through a
text by “merely dipping into it and sampling it at various points” to comprehend its
general content. He also emphasizes that the purpose of skimming is to briefly
summarize what the text is about. He believes that one of the reasons for practicing

skimming is that it helps learner to acquire a study technique, to organize his
thoughts and also to specify what information he can get from a book.

Skimming is used to quickly gather the most important information, or “gist”.
Grellet, F. (198, p.19) presents that “When skimming, we go through the reading
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material quickly in order to get the gist of it, to know how it is organized, or to get
an idea of the tone or the intension of the writer, but not to find the answer to
specific questions”. Due to its nature, the key to skimming is to know where to find
the main idea of different paragraphs and to be able to synthesize them by the way
of generalization.

Hedge, T. (2000, p.195) states that “skim receding is used to get a global
impression of the content of a text. An example would be previewing a long
magazine article by reading rapidly, skipping large chunks of information, and
focusing on headings and first lines of paragraphs”.

Skimming can also help readers make decision about where to place their greatest
focus when they have limited time for reading. Skimming is a useful reading skill
which is often applied for the first reading stage of reading teaching so that the
students can have an over view of what they are reading.

Skimming and scanning are two very different strategies for speed reading, they are
each used for different purposes. Scanning is another useful tool for speeding up
your reading. Readers concentrate on a specific fact or piece of information without
reading everything.
Scanning occurs when a reader look quickly through the text searching for a

specific piece of information or to see if the text is suitable for a specific reading
purpose. Hedge, T. (2000, p.195) points out that “scanning involves searching
rapidly through a text to find a specific point of information. For example, the
relevant times on a timetable, items in a directory or key points in academic text”.
Scanning is the reading skill we use when we want to find the answer to a specific
question. Like skimming, scanning is an advantageous reading skill that may at
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first strange to a learner who is used to reading everything in a foreign language
with the same degree of attention. Scanning is a quick reading, focusing on locating
specific information. It involves quick eyes movements, not necessarily linear in
fashion, in which the eyes wander until the reader finds the piece of information is
required, such as a name, date, symbol, formula or phrase, is required. The reader
knows what the item looks like and so, knows when he has located what he was
searching for.

Scanning is another useful skill to locate a specific item of information that we
need. William (1996, p.100) defines “scanning occurs when a reader goes through a
text very quickly in order to find a particular point of information”. He explains
that the purpose of scanning is to find the answers to particular questions, ignore
unrelated information. In contrast to skimming, scanning is far more limited since
it only means retrieving needed information. This kind of reading is widely used in
reading comprehension.

Although these two reading techniques are important for quick and efficient
reading, they should not be selected separately. In order to understand a text
effectively, the readers should not use these ways isolate. They must know how to
use suitable ways to achieve their reading purpose. Davies, F. (1995, p.137) asserts

that “it is difficult to draw clear boundaries between the types of reading termed
skimming and scanning; in real life, scanning inevitably involves some skimming
of large selections of texts, and skimming, reciprocally, must embrace some
scanning”.

Besides, intensive reading (IR) occurs when the learner is focused on language
rather than text. Intensive reading means reading every detail to certify everything
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in the text. Intensive reading involves a close study of texts and an examination of
the features of foreign language at the various levels of word, sentence, paragraph
and whole text.

According to Nuttall (1996, p.38) defines that “intensive reading involves
approaching the text under the guidance of a teacher or a task which forces the
students focus on the text”. Brown considers intensive reading as “a classroomoriented activity in which students focus on the linguistic or semantic details of a
passage” (Brown, 1999, p.297). In other word, Grellet, F. (1981, p.4) also states
that “intensive reading means reading short text to extract specific information.
This is an accuracy activity involving reading for detailed”. The objective of IR is
to achieve a full understanding of the text, not only of what it means but also of
how the meaning is produced. Through IR, the reader must arrive at a profound and
detailed understanding of logical arguments, purposes of the writer and his
linguistic means to achieve his purposes. In other words, IR is reading for accuracy
which is essential to the students’ comprehension.

Intensive reading has these following characteristics: Firstly, the reading materials
may not be relevant to learners’ ability and interest as they are chosen by teachers
not learners. Secondly, in doing IR, the actual amount of time spent on reading is

little as a lot of procedures such as listening to the teacher’s instruction, reading
comprehension questions, discussing the content of the text. Thirdly, reading speed
is usually slower than faster as learners have to stop at some moments during their
reading in the classroom to look up new words in dictionary, ask the teachers for a
definition or analyze the text by reading it word by word or sentence by sentence.
Finally, reading in intensive approach is not individual as learners are assumed to
interact more with the teacher than with the text.

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Intensive reading is the most typical method of teaching reading. In comparison
with intensive reading, extensive reading approach is argued to be more beneficial
to learners in foreign language acquisition in general and reading ability in
particular.

In addition, extensive reading (ER), on the other hand, means reading some
materials for pleasure outside the classroom. Some researchers like Krashen, Hill
and Holden consider extensive reading as “free voluntary reading”. Hill and
Holden (1990,p. 91-93) claim that students who read for pleasure are better readers
and have more advanced vocabulary since “free voluntary reading” is
comprehensible input in a low anxiety situation, and students never fell pressured
while reading outside the classroom.

According to Nuttall (1982, p.168), “the best way to improve your knowledge of a
foreign language is to go and live among its speakers. The next best way is to read
extensively in it”. ER is a language teaching procedure where learners are supposed
to read large quantities of material or long texts for global understanding, the
principal goal being obtaining pleasure from the text. The reading is individualized,

what means that students choose books they want to read, they read it
independently of the teacher and they are not required to do any tasks after reading.
Moreover, they are encouraged to stop reading whenever they consider the material
not interesting or too difficult. Extensive reading is used to obtain a general
understanding of a subject and includes reading longer texts for pleasure, as well as
business books. Use ER skill to develop our general knowledge.

Extensive reading is considered to be useful for students’ self learning. Their
reading habit and passion for reading are also formed through ER. Students can
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choose the topics they like and read for their own purpose for pleasure or
entertainment. However, it is more effective if students’ extensive reading is
followed an instructional program with the help of the reading teacher. In fact, most
of ER is done silently and out of the classroom and it give the students
opportunities to use their target language knowledge for their own purposes.

In short, reading is necessary to every learner and undeniably an important skill in
comparison with others. In addition, it is notable that intensive and extensive
reading should not be seen as in being opposition but need to be paid equal
attention for the sake of students. For foreign language learners, both intensive and
extensive readings are of great importance as they act as a means to gain
knowledge.

2.1.3 The roles of reading in learning
Reading plays an inevitably important role in comprehending a text and using the
foreign language appropriately and fluently. “A person’s future opportunities for
success and prosperity will be even more entwined with skill reading abilities. It is

therefore an important societal responsibility to offer every person the opportunity
to become a skilled reader, and in many cases, this means becoming a skilled L2
reader” (Grabe, 2009, p.6)

It is possible for us to claim that reading has a very important role to play in
language learning as it can bring benefits to learners. William (1984, p.13) suggests
some advantages of reading to learners including: First, learners can have further
practice in the language that they have learnt. This means that learners will have
many opportunities to gain further knowledge of the target language. Second,
learners can practice language in order to reuse it in other skills such as speaking
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and writing. Learners cannot understand anything if they cannot read. Third,
learners can learn how to get benefit from the texts to extract the information they
need. The more comprehension learners conceive the more major intelligence they
receive.

Reading has a large number of major benefits that help learners study language
faster and more successfully. Reading is one of the most essential skills for
language learners. When learners’ reading skill improves, their listening, speaking,
and writing also advance. There are some specific reasons why learners are
encouraged to practice reading. For instance:

The constant repetition of words and patterns in reading helps you leam and
remember vocabulary and grammar structures. Reading plays an important part in
providing vocabulary and structure types. Learners can understand the usage of
structures better when they catch the meaning of sentences.
Reading is something you can do your own. Learners can spend much time on

reading by themselves. Language learners are able to practice reading skill
whenever they want. The skill does not extremely depend on others.

2.1.4 Reading motivation and reading interest
Researchers and practitioners have become increasingly aware of the importance of
reading motivation in explaining literacy behavior. Cramer and Castle (1994) even
suggested that attention to the affective aspects of reading, such as motivation, may
help combat the increasing disaffection from reading.

Indeed, motivation for learning is thought to be one of the most critical
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