The Impact of Extensive Reading on the Improvement of Language Skills of Iranian Major Students Learning English as a Foreign Language

This paper investigates The Impact of Extensive Reading on the Improvement of Language Skills of Iranian Major Students Learning English as a Foreign Language. Research in extensive reading has been undertaken to demonstrate that language gains of many types occur from exposure to simplified second language texts. Research by Elley , Hafiz and Tudor , Krashen and Cho , Lai , Lituanas, Jacobs and Renandya (to appear) and Renandya, Rajan and Jacobs among others, report linguistic gains as a result of extensive reading. Writing ability is said to improve as a result of extensive reading. Reading extensively has also been reported to increase motivation to read and the development of a positive attitude in reading in the second language. Oral proficiency was to have improved after reading large numbers of texts. There are a considerable number of vocabulary studies that report gains in vocabulary from extensive reading. Therefore an extensive reading program was established for 43 university level language learners at the Islamic Azad University of Ardabil Branch. They were assigned into two groups: experimental group and control group. The experimental group received a certain number of texts. The control group, on the other hand, received the ordinary teaching materials during the same period of time. At the end both groups were given a general proficiency test. The results of the second proficiency test signified that the extensive reading- based program had helped to the improvement of building reading fluency and reading speed, developing lexical access speed, building reading confidence and motivation.

Keywords:

Extensive Reading , Language Skills , Foreign Language