INFLUENCE OF L2 EXTENSIVE READING INTERVENTION ON UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS: AN ACTION RESEARCH

Reading is one of the required skills in the acquisition of a second language (L2). However, for some learners and teachers, it is difficult to get domain in this skill. Many students find it challenging to read with a good fluency and comprehension while some teachers feel time is too short when trying to include reading in their current English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Courses. Some authors suggest that providing sufficient reading material to students plus the explicit teaching of strategies and techniques help learners to be more fluent in L2 reading while improving comprehension. The purpose of this action research was to describe the perceived impact of an extensive reading programme on EFL students. The extensive reading programme was designed based on the review of literature and had the following characteristics: provision of enough material on the proper level of the learners, a relaxing atmosphere where they were able to choose what and when to read, and the explicit teaching of strategies to speed their reading rate and increase comprehension. The participants were ten undergraduate students of a Latin American University who voluntarily agreed to attend six weekly sessions and to follow the instructions of the intervention programme. Data were collected from initial and post-intervention inventories, observations, reading rates, comprehension scores and diaries of the participants. The analysis of the data informed the description of the impact of the extensive reading programme while triangulation played an important role to add validity to this qualitative study. This paper proposes the implementation of extensive reading intervention to:
a) increase EFL learners’ motivation,
b) develop positive reading habits and attitudes,
c) improve reading rate and comprehension, and
d) foster vocabulary acquisition and overall language performance improvement.