A One Semester Research Study on the Effects of Extensive Reading on Students’ Receptive Vocabulary Size

Abstract

Extensive Reading has been touted as beneficial for improving students’ reading fluency, speed, confidence, and vocabulary. This paper examines whether some of these claims are true for a group of students over a 14-week semester. Administering vocabulary level tests at the start and end of the semester does not indicate that there is a greater positive correlation between Extensive Reading and an increase in receptive vocabulary size compared to a control group. However, student surveys suggest that using the website mreader.org to keep track of Extensive Reading may be responsible for boosting students’ confidence in their vocabulary growth, which feeds into a self-propelling virtuous loop: reading leads to improved confidence, which leads to more reading. These findings should reaffirm the virtues of using Mreader with Extensive Reading, and convince teachers who are not yet familiar with the website about its virtues.



Author Information
Joel Weinberg, Meiji University, Japan

Paper Information
Conference: ACE2019
Stream: Foreign Languages Education & Applied Linguistics (including ESL/TESL/TEFL)

This paper is part of the ACE2019 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon