‘Rakudoku’: Fostering the beginnings of extensive reading (with 5th and 6th graders) in a public elementary school in Japan.

Authors

  • Chris Cooper Himeji Dokkyo University

Keywords:

Extensive Reading, elementary school japan, beginner reading, assistant language teacher, homeroom teacher, young learners

Abstract

A study was conducted in a Japanese public elementary school with 38 5th and 6th grade learners, who took part in rakudoku (Yamanaka, 2009), reading graded readers from the Oxford Reading Tree (Oxford Owl, 2017) and Building Blocks Library (McDougall, 2010) series over a two month period during English lessons and in their free time. Many of the learners felt they could understand the books they read and found them interesting. To varying extents, all students enjoyed rakudoku and thought it was a useful part of their English education. It was concluded that this form of extensive reading could be considered for inclusion in the expanded English elementary school curriculum in Japan from 2020.

Downloads

Published

2018-08-09