One Year of Extensive Reading on Mobile Devices: Engagement and Impressions

Extensive Reading (ER) is a popular strategy to improve reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge and reading confidence. The process of ER, traditionally done with paperbacks, is a practice being transformed by smartphone technology. This paper introduces Xreading® (www.xreading.com), an online Graded Reader (GR) library and Learning Management System (LMS) devoted specifically to digital management of extensive reading. For language teaching faculty, Xreading provides a dynamic, ER management system that can negate a range of challenges teachers have faced when implementing an effective ER component. In this one year study at a private Japanese university, students were required to use their smartphone or PC to access the online library of GR's and read extensively on either of these devices. This paper reports on student engagement with this platform and shares feedback from a post-pilot questionnaire and focus group discussion to describe student impressions of this digital approach. [For full proceedings, see ED564162.]