Students’ Exchange of Extensive Reading Programs in Japan and Vietnam

Abstract

This paper introduces a cooperative arrangement between two educational institutions which try to improve students’ English skills based on Extensive Reading (ER) programs conducted in each institution. English has been and is a major barrier for engineering students from Asian countries such as Japan and Vietnam, where they have little exposure to the target language outside the classroom. With the aim of breaking through the situation, an ER program has been conducted in a Japanese college of technology and has been successful in improving their language skills. However, the ER program needs a long term to find improvement in student skills. Also, it’s not so easy to foster their productive skills, including writing and speaking, within ER classes. The situation is even more challenging in Vietnam since ER is a totally new approach there and demands great effort from both teachers and learners who are often familiar with conventional methods. Therefore, it is an essential task for ER practitioners to substantially motivate the students during the long period of ER programs. The two ER programs in Japan and Vietnam have provided the students with the opportunities for exchange activities based on the common reading materials to make ER more effective. The combination of ER and students’ exchange activities is expected to improve their language skills in a more comprehensive way, which might not be achieved by an independent ER program or a single student exchange program.