This research was inspired by the phenomenon of binge-watching Korean television drama series (K-dramas) among Taiwanese university students. K-drama fever may provide an impetus for sustained English-subtitled K-dramas viewing, which may serve as an alternative to extensive reading of graded readers that English teachers often encourage their…

In this article, Charlie Taylor offers a commentary on Yang et al.'s 2021 "Reading in a Foreign Language" article, "Text Difficulty in Extensive Reading: Reading Comprehension and Reading Motivation." In their study, Yang et al. analyzed the effects of text difficulty on the reading comprehension and motivation of high school…

An intact 10th grade English as a Foreign Language vocational business junior college reading intervention class (n = 52) received 16 weeks of integrated reading strategy instruction with extensive reading while an intact traditional class (n = 48) received traditional intensive reading instruction with extensive reading. The intervention class…

This study investigates the effects of the text difficulty of extensive reading materials on the reading comprehension and reading motivation of English as a foreign language (EFL) vocational high school students in Taiwan. Two experimental groups were assigned, on an individual basis, to read graded readers at either one level below ('i-1') or…

This study explored whether second-language (L2) less proficient adult learners can become skilled readers by investigating the effect on students' attitudes to strategy use when explicit instruction of metacognitive reading strategies is combined with an extensive reading approach. Studies have shown that proficient learners employ a wider range…

Taiwan's National Development Council recently announced plans for the country to become bilingual by the year 2030. However, the Council did not lay out a clear road map for how this major accomplishment is to be achieved, and the curriculum presently in place does not seem to meet the challenge. This article will review the current status of…

The effects of extensive reading on EFL context have been examined with a variety of studies. This study examined the impact of extensive reading on reading proficiency while the participants were taught reading strategies. Furthermore, this study explored whether there were any differences between intervention and control groups on the reading…

Extensive reading for second language learners have been widely documented over the past few decades. However, few studies, if any, have used a corpus analysis approach to analyze the vocabulary coverage within a single-author story series, its repetition of vocabulary, and the incidental and intentional vocabulary learning opportunities therein.…

Current literature points to the importance and benefits of extensive reading. Extensive reading provides contextualized clues for better reading comprehension (Krashen, 1982), and substantial linguistic input (Bell, 1998) needed for language development. Several studies have found a correlation between extensive reading and specific linguistic…

This study investigates the effects of extensive reading of e-books on tertiary level EFL students' English reading attitude, reading comprehension and vocabulary. Eighty-nine participants were assigned in two groups, with 46 students in the experimental group and the other 43 students in the control group. In addition to a traditional curriculum…

The purpose of this study is to describe an online community-based English extensive reading contest to investigate whether the participants' intrinsic, extrinsic, and interpersonal motivations and learning results show significant gender differences. A total of 501 valid questionnaires (285 females and 216 males) from Taiwanese high school…

The study aims to explore in-service teachers' epistemological beliefs about the following five critical paradigms in second language education and their corresponding practices: (1) inductive/deductive grammar instruction, (2) intensive/extensive reading, (3) looking up unknown words in the dictionary/guessing from context, (4) focusing on…

This study investigated (1) the extent of vocabulary learning through reading and listening to 10 graded readers, and (2) the relationship between vocabulary gain and the frequency and distribution of occurrence of 100 target words in the graded readers. The experimental design expanded on earlier studies that have typically examined incidental…

The study aims to verify whether extensive reading (ER) is able to promote senior high school students' English reading motivation and foster positive attitude towards reading in English. It further explores the teachers' perceptions of and the challenges faced in the implementation of ER activities. An ER activity was held for 12 weeks with 258…

E-book reading is generally considered suboptimal because people engaging in e-book reading tend to browse through digital texts. As a result, studies concerning students' e-book preference in academic contexts have shown that students less prefer using e-books than hardcopy books when engaging in academic reading which is considered intensive…