Computer Assisted Extensive Reading: Incorporating the Internet with Language Learning

Yi-Chen Chen

《英語教學與文化》 3期 (2007/08) Pp. 16-25

https://doi.org/10.29721/ETC.200708.0003

並列摘要

The idea of extensive reading, which was made concrete by Day and Bamford (1998, 2002), points out that learners' expectancies of materials and values of attitudes would influence their motivation to read extensively. Common extensive reading program often implement graded readers as materials; however, the printed materials are limited in topics and genres, which might not be able to meet learners' expectancies. For learners with low proficiency and low motivation, limited choices of materials might impede their willingness to continue reading. Nevertheless, the emerging use of the Internet could make up the shortcoming by providing inexhaustible information about various topics.
Therefore, this study reports an extensive reading program which incorporates the Internet use, and illustrates how the Internet-based program helps motivate low-achievement EFL learners in Taiwan to read and learn English. Seventy three first-year students participated in the one-semester program at a university in northern Taiwan, and were asked to read authentic materials cited from online newspapers or magazines. They were encouraged to ”order” articles about certain topic that interested them. In addition, they were required to write double entry journals daily to record what they learned and how they felt about the readings. The results of pretest's and posttest's scores show that students' reading ability improved significantly. Moreover, the students who were originally at low proficiency with low motivation in learning English indeed enhance motivation on reading. The results of this study imply potential benefits of using authentic articles from the Internet sources in teaching English; also, the results also encourage teachers to integrate authentic materials in their teaching.