EFFECTIVE BREAKTHROUGH IN READING MATERIAL FOR TEACHING ENGLISH IN JAPAN

A new reading material has been developed on the World Wide Web, and changed dramatically in class. It is very effective, rare and unique to students. 194 students finished this reading material. They took the TOEIC-IP by Educational Testing Service twice as the pretest in April, 2016 and the posttest in April, 2017. Each student’s result shows their average, which is 73.5 points higher than the pretest. On the other hand, there is another group without learning through this epochal reading material. They took the same standardized test twice in April, 2015 and 2016. Their average score is 65.3 points higher than the pretest.

Extensive reading in English has been most common in class. Facilitators recommend and promote their students to extensively read books in English, but it is very difficult for facilitators to monitor some important factors in their extensively reading books in English. The factors are the following,
1. How much they build new vocabularies,
2. How much and correctly they learn the new English grammar,
3. How well and correctly they understand the content of the whole story.

These factors are so common for the facilitators in class, and these factors always distress the facilitators. To solve these problems, this new significant reading material on the Web has been developed. This paper does not show only the solution of the above concerns. Moreover, you will see how effectively the material works for the students, how well the students learn intensively on the same extensive reading material, how effectively the facilitators work in class, and how well they are satisfied with the program.

Thus, this reading material does not simply put the paper-based material into the web material. This material has been much unique, rare and effective. Studying with this extensive and intensive reading material by themselves, the students have become highly motivated in this program. As they see their scores on the standardized posttest, they will build their own confidence with this reading material. This research has been supported with the “Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research” of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science” (JSPS) (KAKENHI: 15K04531).