The Extensive Reading Foundation

Just a quick note to let you know that the IATEFL Literature, Media and Cultural Studies Special Interest Group hosted a fielded discussion on extensive reading and graded readers at the end of October with Philip Prowse as the special guest. The compilation of the discussion is now available at the Files section of the LMCS SIG Discussion List at

Our first poll may seem to be asking all of you a quite obvious question; after all  if you are visiting us here, you are very likely to believe in the importance of extensive reading. However, in practical terms many teachers around the world have to face time and institutional constraints to use graded readers in their language courses.

When we talk about  Extensive Reading our major focus is always on the learner, as we firmly believe it can promote literacy and language improvement. So far so good, but it seems to me that we are unliley to succeed in motivating students to read if their teachers don't do it themselves.