Potential Benefits of Extensive Reading and Extensive Listening Suggested by Survey Results

This paper explores the efficacy of extensive reading (ER) while listening. Participants of the study were thirty-one university students who experienced ER with and without audio in and outside the classroom for at least one semester. They expressed their favorable feelings toward ER with CDs compared to ER without recordings in a 6-point Likert scale questionnaire completed in the last lesson. A one-way analysis of variance was carried out utilizing their answers to the questions in addition to the number of words they read and their scores on the Edinburgh Project on Extensive Reading “Placement/Progress Test A” administered at the beginning and end of the semester. Statistically significant differences were observed in their responses to some survey statements between the students who read more than the mean amount and who read fewer as well as between those who scored higher than the mean on the post-test and those whose scores were lower. The outcomes implied that participants who accumulated more words than the average were engrossed in stories they were reading and listening to without thinking about English grammar and translating English to Japanese during ER with audio. Similarly, students who achieved a higher than the average score on the post-test seemed to have been reading English in English, forgetting about Japanese and remembering stories more when they were reading while listening than when they were just reading extensively