Journal 2: Selecting ER materials

Introduce an example of ER materials with basic information, strengths and weaknesses.

Hafiz and Tudor (1985) describe the goal of extensive reading as 'to flood" learners with large quantities of L2 input with few or possibly no specific task to perform on this material'. In a tension and task-free environment, reading extensively is the most effective way of improving vocabulary to achieve fluency in reading -especially for EFL readers who often experience obstacles overcoming difficulties of lexis. Furthermore, as Day and Bamford (1998) suggest that when observing students reading authentic texts, teachers can become more aware of each student's strengths and weaknesses as a reader, and thus better al to give students individual support.

Extensive reading offers the learners many ways of working independently towards autonomous learning. It also offers learners 'great exposure to English and can be particularly significant where class contact time is limited' (Hedge, 2001). English, as an EFL to Korean students, is learnt in a language classroom with artificial textbooks with rather limited teaching/learning hours, often using L1 as the main mode of English instruction. Students' exposure to English language is far from interesting let alone, sufficient.

Nuttall (1996) suggests that ' to become an effective reader, it is far more useful to read a lot of easy books than a few difficult ones', especially when students are at the intermediate level. Authentic materials for the students at this level are of various kinds, which range from easy to difficult, for example, train timetables, advertisements, weather reports or newspaper articles. Students should read various types of authentic materials extensively for the purpose of L2 proficiency and also for the experience of English-speaking cultures.

There is a set of criteria for choosing extensive reading materials as suggested by Nuttall (1996). She uses the acronym SAVE to indicate selection criteria for ER materials:

S - Short

A - Appealing

V - Varied

E - Easy

An optional selection criterion should be to consider students' current language proficiency and their preferences, especially when choosing authentic materials from the internet.

There are some obstacles of using authentic materials in extensive reading, for instance, how to allocate time of reading authentic materials extensively with the tight classroom teaching schedules in schools and at language institutes; and the problem of less access to authentic materials for students in an EFL country, than that in ESL countries, etc.

The ultimate goal of teaching English at the intermediate stages is to enable learners to communicative effectively-to use language appropriately. To achieve this goal, we need to bring the outside world into the classroom, not to idealise it conveniently from within. Thus authentic reading materials in extensive reading should act as necessary supplements to coursebooks by enlarging learners’ authentic L2 input, generating and maintaining learners' spontaneous interest. Increase in both qualitative and quantitative authentic materials may greatly improve our knowledge about factors which facilitate the learning of English language.