Participants
Participantsin the study were 49 Vietnamese government officials who were inSingapore for a two-month intensive English course. Two students did notreturn the questionnaire, and were excluded from analysis. They allspoke Vietnamese as their first language. About an equal number of male (47%) and female (53%) participants were represented in the sample. Theyoungest participant was 21 and the oldest 55, with the majority (62%) falling in the 36 – 45 age bracket. A small majority, 55%, had takenEnglish at school or university, with the rest having studied Russian orFrench. Those who reported taking English were mostly the youngerparticipants. As to their university education, 64% held only a bachelordegree, about 20% held a doctorate, and the rest had completed adiploma or masteral degree. Most participants had fairly recently takenpart in some intensive English study, usually ranging from 2 – 3 months, in Vietnam. Participants’ proficiency in English ranged from low tohigh intermediate.
The Course
Thecourse in which participants were enrolled, entitled English forInternational Communication (EIC), was conducted at a centre establishedto meet the needs of language learners and educators throughoutSoutheast Asia. Course components included the following:
1. Speaking/Listening (8 hrs per week)
2. Reading/Writing (5 hrs per week)
3. Presentation skills (6 hrs per week)
4. Business writing (3 hrs per week)
5. Pronunciation (4 hrs per week)
6. Presentation software skills (2 hrs per week)
Onthe basis of their pretest scores (see Table 1), the 49 courseparticipants weredivided into two classes—one more proficient and theother less proficient.
Procedure
AnER programme was a key element of the EIC course’s Reading/Writingcomponent that the first author taught on. First, the benefits of ER forlearning a second language, discussed above, were explained to studentsin order to offer them a strong rationale for engaging actively in theprogramme. The key message here was that large amounts of Englishreading would likely result in greater English proficiency. Then, students were asked to read fiction and non-fiction graded readers oftheir own choice which they selected from the centre’s extensivecollection.
Theamount of reading students were required to do was arrived at throughnegotiation. Initially, we agreed on 20 books. But given the largevariability in the number of pages that the graded readers contained, ranging between 20 to over 100 pages, we decided to be more flexible. Students were allowed two options: (i) reading 20 books of their choice, or (ii) reading fewer than 20 books as long as the total number ofpages was not less than 800. The students were next briefed on how toselect books. They were told to choose ER books that they foundinteresting and were of no more than medium difficulty level. It wasstressed that while it was better to read books which were too easy thanthose which were too difficult, they should, whenever possible, readbooks which were neither too easy nor too difficult. They were alsoencouraged to read books of different genres, such as romance, adventures, science fiction, action thrillers, and biography. Allreading was done out of class.
Asa post-reading activity and to provide writing practice, students wereasked to write short (one or two-paragraph long) summaries of the booksthey had read. The instructor collected students’ summaries on a regularbasis and gave feedback which focused mainly on the content rather thanon the mechanics. These summaries formed the basis for in-classpost-reading activities which were done at least once a week. One ofthese activities wasBook Wheels, in which students in groupsof 4 or 5 first shared their summaries and then discussed their books ina game-like manner using higher order questions as prompts (see Jacobs, 1993, for further details). Students found this activity highlyengaging, as it gave them an opportunity to share not only the contentof their books, but also their cognitive and affective responses tothem.
Anotherpost-reading activity that students enjoyed was also based on summariesof the books they had read. Brown and Cambourne (1987) argue thatretelling is a natural form of language use, rather than an artificialclassroom exercise. Students worked in pairs in which one took the roleof a teller of their summary, and the other of listener. Then, listenersretold the story they had just heard to someone whose previous role wasthat of teller. This continued until listeners had had two or threeopportunities to recount the book summary they had heard. Students thenreturned to their original pairs, reversed their roles, and theretelling process began again. It was stressed that the pairs had towork together closely to carry out the task. Tellers had to make surethat their listeners understood the story; similarly, listeners had tobe active in order to understand the story. Listeners were encouraged totake notes and ask questions to clarify any misunderstandings
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