Implementing Sustained Silent Reading in a Japanese School Library for Second-Year Junior High School English
Abstract
This article reflects on how the English department and the library staff in a Japanese school collaborated to implement sustained silent reading (SSR) for second-year junior high school students. Having experienced only limited extensive reading programs due to a lack of budget and the difficulty of keeping books, the English department decided to work with the library to establish a structured program. In addition, a weekly 50-minute English class which had been initially designed explicitly for intensive reading was divided into two segments per term: the intensive reading part in the classroom and the SSR part in the library. Teacher and librarian interviews revealed that students’ engagement towards SSR was beyond their expectations, but challenges on feedback, evaluation and going a step further from SSR became explicit. I conclude with a discussion on the implications of this work for further implementing extensive reading into junior high school English.
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