15 Extensive Reading Activities for the EFL Classroom

Activities can help an extensive reading program or quietly kill it. A one-minute book recommendation sends pupils back to the shelves. A worksheet of twenty questions on every book teaches them that reading means being tested. This article gives fifteen light activities for before, during and after reading, with the time each takes and what it is for. It also names the activities to avoid, and reports what little research there is on checking pupils' reading.

What makes a good extensive reading activity?

A good extensive reading activity is short, needs no close study of the text, and leads to more reading. It helps pupils choose a book, keeps track of what they read, or lets them share a book they enjoyed. If an activity takes longer than the reading, or makes every pupil study the same page, it is no longer extensive reading.

Day and Bamford (2002) put it plainly. Reading is its own reward, so extensive reading is not usually followed by comprehension questions. They still accept follow-up activities, and they give five reasons for them:

• to find out what pupils understood and experienced;
• to monitor their attitudes to reading;
• to keep track of what and how much they read;
• to make reading a shared experience;
• to link reading to the rest of the curriculum.

Bamford and Day (2004) later gathered over a hundred activities from teachers into one handbook. It covers getting started, motivating, monitoring and evaluating reading, then links reading to speaking, writing and vocabulary. The fifteen activities below come mainly from the Extensive Reading Foundation's (2011) guide for teachers, and several also appear in the handbook.

15 activities at a glance

You will not use all fifteen in one week. One activity before reading and one after is plenty. The silent reading itself should take most of the time.

Before reading: help pupils choose

Choosing well is the most useful thing a pupil does before reading. A pupil holding the right book will read; a pupil holding the wrong one will not.

1. Reading beliefs chat. In the first lesson, ask the questions the Extensive Reading Foundation (2011) suggests. Is it best to read slowly and carefully, or quickly? Do you have to understand everything? Is it all right to use a dictionary? Who should decide what I read?
2. Book hunt. Write a short quiz that pupils answer by finding books. Which book has five stories? Which book is a love story? It gets every pupil handling covers and levels.
3. Cover and blurb browse. Spread many titles on a desk. Pupils discuss which covers look best and which they want to read.
4. One-page test. The guide asks pupils to read some of the book itself, not just the cover. For a beginner, more than one or two unknown words on the page means a different book (Day and Bamford, 2002). How to Match Students to the Right Graded Readers covers fit in more depth.
5. Class favourite stickers. Books that pupils recommend get a star or a 'class favourite' sticker on the cover, as the guide suggests.

During reading: protect the reading time

During reading, the best activity is usually none. Day and Bamford (2002) describe extensive reading as individual and silent. They also want the teacher to be a role model of a reader. So read your own book for part of the time.

• Quiet check-ins. While the class reads, move round and ask a few pupils the guide's questions: How is the book? Is the level OK? Is it easy for you? Is it enjoyable? Let a pupil change a book that is not working.
• Reading partners. The Extensive Reading Foundation (2011) suggests giving each pupil a partner to share books and troubles with. Two minutes at the end of a session is enough.
• One-line reading log. Title, pages, and one word on how it felt. Keep it to a line. A log that takes longer to fill in than the reading took will kill the reading.
• Reading-rate check. The guide's method is simple. A pupil reads a book at their level for three minutes, counts the words read, and divides by three. Repeat mid-course and at the end, and let pupils chart their own words per minute.

Rate checks track fluency; they do not build it on their own. For timed and repeated reading that does build it, see Building English Reading Fluency: Activities That Work.

After reading: one minute, not one lesson

After-reading activities should make pupils want the next book. Most of the guide's ideas involve talking about a book, not answering questions on it.

• One-minute book talk. Two or three pupils each tell the class about a book they enjoyed: what it is about, who would like it, and how hard it felt.
• 4/3/2 retelling. A pupil retells a story to a partner in four minutes, then to a second partner in three, then to a third in two. The guide includes this, and the handbook has a version too.
• Review card in the cover. A card inside each book where readers give stars and mark whether it felt easy, right or hard. The guide also asks pupils to judge a book's level, so you can move books that sit at the wrong level.
• Recommendation wall. Short reviews or covers posted on a wall or class web page. Change it often.
• Top ten vote. At the end of term, pupils vote on the ten best books. Buy more of the winners.

For beginners, keep the language demand low. The Extensive Reading Foundation (2011) suggests sentence frames such as 'My favourite character was ... because ...'. It also allows lower-level pupils to give their reactions in their first language.

Activities that turn extensive reading back into intensive work

Some activities look like good teaching but undo the method. Each one makes pupils read slowly, study the language, or dread finishing a book.

• Comprehension questions on every book. Day and Bamford (2002) say extensive reading is not usually followed by them. Pupils start reading for the test.
• Looking up every unknown word. Day and Bamford (2002) suggest discouraging dictionaries during extensive reading. The Extensive Reading Foundation (2011) adds that a pupil who looks up words often has a book that is too hard.
• Translating the story. The guide calls translation counter-productive here, because it sends pupils back to their first language.
• Reading aloud round the class. The guide notes that many pupils dislike reading aloud in class and fear embarrassment, and that their reading becomes slow and flat.
• Long written reports on every book. Robb and Kano (2013) point out that report-based checks add work for the teacher or take up class time.

Close study of language still has a place, in a separate lesson with a short, shared text. Extensive vs. Intensive Reading: What's the Difference? explains how the two fit together.

Do quizzes and checks spoil the pleasure?

Teachers do need to know who is reading. Chang and Renandya (2017) surveyed 119 language teachers in Asia, most of them at university. Nearly half (48.7%) said it was difficult to monitor whether students actually read.

The Extensive Reading Foundation (2011) argues that a pupil reading at the right level needs no comprehension test. It accepts that many schools insist on assessment, and suggests indirect checks: book reports or posters, grades for pages read or levels climbed, reading-rate measures, and informal conversations about the book.

Does a short quiz after each book harm attitudes? Stoeckel, Reagan and Hann (2012) compared extensive reading classes with and without quizzes. As Chang and Renandya (2017) summarise the result, anxiety, comfort and the value students saw in reading were not affected. Students who took quizzes felt slightly more intellectual benefit. It is one study, so treat it as reassurance, not proof.

Our reading is this: a brief check that a book was read is unlikely to do harm. Heavy work after every book is different, and nobody has shown that it helps. Robb and Kano (2013) add a practical test: a check works across a school only if it does not add to teachers' workloads. To set up records and checks from the start, see How to Start an Extensive Reading Program in Your School.

How iRead handles this

In iRead, a quiz runs after every session, and practice questions are available between sessions. Questions are generated from the story itself: real sentences, the grammar in the story, the plot and its moral. Four word games are regenerated every 24 hours from the story's vocabulary, with no teacher setup. Students keep a Reading Passport, one record of their reading, and teachers see retention per word, per game and per class.

Key takeaway

Pick one light activity before reading and one after. Keep the log to a line, talk about books instead of testing them, and drop any activity that makes pupils read less.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Day, R. R., & Bamford, J. (2002). Top ten principles for teaching extensive reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 14(2), 136-141. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66761
2. Bamford, J., & Day, R. R. (2004). Extensive Reading Activities for Teaching Language. Cambridge University Press. www.cambridge.org/9780521016513
3. Extensive Reading Foundation (2011). The Extensive Reading Foundation's Guide to Extensive Reading. Extensive Reading Foundation. erfoundation.org/guide/ERF_Guide.pdf
4. Robb, T., & Kano, M. (2013). Effective extensive reading outside the classroom: A large-scale experiment. Reading in a Foreign Language, 25(2), 234-247. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66870
5. Chang, A. C.-S., & Renandya, W. A. (2017). Current practice of extensive reading in Asia: Teachers' perceptions. The Reading Matrix, 17(1), 40-58. www.readingmatrix.com/files/16-4vj138u3.pdf
6. Stoeckel, T., Reagan, N., & Hann, F. (2012). Extensive reading quizzes and reading attitudes. TESOL Quarterly, 46(1), 187-198. doi.org/10.1002/tesq.10