Practice and Effect of Extensive Reading Marathon at a Japanese Engineering University: Teacher-Student Collaboration for Autonomous Reading

Abstract

This paper discusses a learning project that aims to foster students’ autonomous English learning, called the Extensive Reading Marathon (ERM). The project establishes extensive reading (ER) as a foundation to encourage students to learn English outside the classroom through teacher-student collaboration. ER was adopted as part of the author’s English class, and an English reading circle was created for students who wished to practice ER outside the classroom, under the initiative of student leaders. Thus, ERM is a practice that links teacher-led in-class ER to student-led out-of- class ER to form autonomous English learning habits for Japanese EFL students. A total of 173 Japanese engineering university students participated in the in-class ER, and 521 students participated in the out-of-class reading circle during the nine months of the project. Despite some issues in fostering autonomous learning habits for all students, this collaborative initiative was effective in promoting autonomous English learning; specifically, there was an increase in average reading amount compared to the previous year, and four students met the goal of 300,000-words ER, which had not been achieved in the previous year.