Extensive Reading Project 

1. Introduction:

                     Extensive Reading Project (ERP) at YIC 2015-16 

The Extensive Reading Project (ERP) is implemented at ENG 001 and ENG 002 level at ELCY as it has a number of benefits:

1. The Extensive Reading Project can help our students to become more autonomous learners who are able to take the responsibility of their own learning process. That is, instead of responding to only immediate problems they encounter, they can consolidate their knowledge of vocabulary, fluency, and reading strategies in an ongoing and natural manner with the help of a book of their own choice.
2. Thanks to ERP, the students spend more time learning English at their own pace.
3. Naturally, each class has students who range in aptitude, learning styles and, without exception, in reading skills.  Extensive reading with graded readers makes it much easier to cater to learner differences in the class.
4. More importantly, the ERP aims to enable the learners to acquire a reading habit, which is a life-long skill that will continuously improve them both academically and intellectually.  

Stages of ERP

Effective reading will lead to the shaping of the reader's thoughts, which naturally

leads many learners to respond in writing with varying degrees of fluency. Students

may be asked to list new vocabulary, or record the main characters and events as a

summary.

(i) Keep Vocabulary Journals

In addition to the vocabulary you pulled out from the text in the first activity, you can

also keep a vocabulary journal for those words that you inevitably miss when you’re

skimming the text.A vocabulary journal doesn’t need to be fancy. When you see a new

word or phrase that you think is important, write it down in your journal. If possible, add

your own definition based on context clues and an example sentence. That way, when

you look it up later you can see it in context again.And when you’re all finished with

what you’re reading, go back and try to write a summary that includes all of the

words you recorded in your vocabulary journal.

(ii) Summary Writing

Summary writing is a valuable practice because it allows learners to assert full control,

both of the main factual or fictional content of a book, and of the grammar and

vocabulary used to express it. Writing summaries is important not only to provide a

means for teachers to check comprehension, but because the writing of summaries

improves comprehension. In addition, this practice helps students improve their writing

ability. Advanced students can be asked to write compositions, which, by definition,

are linguistically more demanding written responses to the reading material.

d) Student Presentations

Short presentations on books read by the learners play an absolutely crucial role in the

program as they demonstrate by themselves the essence and reach of their work. As

they are the outcome of the right preparation, encouragement, sense of ownership and

belonging, the presentations can be regarded as a large step in the promotion of student

independence and autonomy.