Gauging Extensive Reading’s Relationship with TOEIC Reading Score Growth

Abstract

This paper reports on a study relating the extensive reading achievement of an intact group of EFL learners at a Japanese university to the change in their institutional TOEIC reading scores after a period of seven and a half months. Similarly to other studies using inferential statistics to determine how extensive reading affects or relates to TOEIC scores, this study found almost no statistically significant relationship between increased reading and improvement in TOEIC reading scores. Likewise, the extensive reading group did not have significantly higher TOEIC reading scores than other similar proficiency groups at the same university who were not doing extensive reading. In response to this and other studies’ results, the paper includes an extended discussion regarding the plausibility of researching extensive reading’s relationship with TOEIC scores and important considerations for such research if it is carried out. The paper concludes with a call for more widespread collaboration among extensive reading researchers.