Program Features to Nudge Students to Read More

Abstract

This paper reports on best practices gleaned from an extensive reading (ER) program in a liberal arts department at a university in Japan, now in its third year (see Van Amelsvoort 2016 and 2017 for reports on the first two years). Since its inception, the program has deployed various tools to achieve more and richer engagement by students. These include ways of encouraging students to read in greater volume to meet product goals for the program (word counts) in order to see tangible improvements in reading speed and scores on standardized tests. At the same time, the program has attempted to maintain a focus on process goals of facilitating rich interactive experiences with both texts and other students, and fostering enjoyment of reading in a foreign language. This article shares best practices learned through literature reviews and trial implementations in this program. In particular, this article focuses on how process goals can be achieved by providing activities that focus on content, including Book Talks, a system of presentations and discussions in class about books, and Book Clubs, an extracurricular system for scaffolding students who are interested in attempting ungraded books, by making use of audiobooks, movie adaptations, group discussions, and manga notebooks.