Innovation in Language Learning
Epoch-Making Extensive and Intensive Reading Material on the Web
Naoshi Kanazawa, National Institute of Technology, Nara College (Japan)
Yukio Konishi, Konan University (Japan)
Abstract
An epoch-making reading material has been developed on the world wide web. It is the very effective, rare and unique material to students. 14 students finished this reading material. 8 students out of them took the TOEIC-IP as the pretest in April, 2015 before starting the material, and the same students took it as the posttest in April, 2016. The results of each student show the average, which is 90 points higher than the pretest. Especially, 7 out of the 8 students, who got 5 points more than the pretest, show 102.9 points higher than the pretest as their averages.
Extensive reading in English has become much more popular in Teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages than ever. Facilitators recommend and promote their students to extensively read books in English, but it is very difficult for facilitators to monitor the following factors in their reading English books extensively such as;
how effectively each student got his/her new vocabularies,
how effectively he/she got his/her new English grammar knowledge, and
how correctly he/she comprehended contents of books.
This paper does not only solve the above concerns with this new reading material, but also shows you
how effectively this newly developed reading material works for the students,
how well they learn intensively in the same extensive reading material,
how effectively the facilitators work in class for that sake, and
how well they are satisfied with the program.
Moreover, in order to accelerate their extensive reading in English, the extensive English reading material on iPodTouch is developing in class. It is easy for you to imagine how effectively this application works with about 40 students in class at the same time.
Thus, studying with the extensive and intensive reading material by themselves and the application of iPodTouch in class, the students has become highly motivated in this program. As they saw their scores on the standardized posttest, their intuition they had felt during the program turns into their own confidence. This research has been supported with the “Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research” (KAKENHI) (15K04531) of “Japan Society for the Promotion of Science” (JSPS).
