Guidelines or commandments? Reconsidering core principles in extensive reading

• Published in: Reading in a foreign language Vol. 27; no. 1; pp. 122 - 128
• Main Author: Macalister, John
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Honolulu University of Hawaii, National Foreign Language Resource Center 01.04.2015; Reading in a Foreign Language
• Subjects: College Students; Course Objectives; Curriculum Design; Foreign language instruction; Guidelines; High School Students; Language Proficiency; Pedagogy; Reading comprehension; Reading Habits; Reading Instruction; Reading Material Selection; Reading Materials; Reading Processes; Reading Rate; Second Language Instruction; Second Language Learning; Second Languages; Silent Reading; Task Analysis; Teaching Methods; New Zealand
• ISSN: 1539-0578; 1539-0578

Macalister offers clarification on the 10 principles of extensive reading (ER). Extensive reading is not a difficult concept but suffers at times from being differently understood by teachers and researchers, leading to some confusion in the literature surrounding it, and at other times suffers from attempts to over-complicate it. In this paper he attempted to de-mystify extensive reading, drawing onand reducing in numberthe principles proposed by Day and Bamford (2002) over a decade ago. These principles, and those proposed by Williams (1986) for teaching reading almost two decades earlier, continue to provide a sound basis for understanding and implementing successful reading practices in the language classroom.