A Practice of English Extensive Reading

The Foreign Language Center(FLC)of Jissen Women\u27s University offers an Integrated English course required for the first-year students. The aim of this course is to enhance motivation for the students to acquire English and help the students to be autonomous learners. On a trial basis, a practice of English extensive reading project was adopted in 2006 and has been improved year by year. The reason whywe focused on reading was that reading is both a thinking process and a productiveactivity. It is more than just receiving meaning in a literal sense. It involves bringing a greater thinking ability or cognitive effort. In our previous studies(Jones et al. 2009, 2010), we examined the significance and effect of extensive reading in learning English. The result suggested that extensive reading is an effective way to enhance students\u27 positive attitude toward learning English. In the first semester of 2011, all students who took the Integrated English course participated in the project. The total number of the students was 701,and the students\u27 majors were Japanese Literature, English, Food and Health Science, and Humanities and Social Sciences. In extensive reading, students do selfselected reading with only minimal accountability, writing brief summaries orcomments on what they have read. This paper will show how we managed the project and analyzes the data obtained, which demonstrated that extensive reading had a good influence on learners\u27 sense and attitude toward learning English