What Should a Reading Pack Contain?

Schools buy reading material under many names: programs, schemes, levelled reading sets, packs. The names differ, but the coordinator's question is always the same. Is everything here that a teacher needs on Monday morning? This article lists the six parts a reading pack should contain and says what each one is for. It ties each part to research where research exists, and says plainly where a part rests on practice. It ends with a checklist you can use on any pack, from any source.

What a reading pack contains

A reading pack is a set of texts at one level of difficulty, together with everything needed to teach from them. A complete pack has six parts. They are texts the class can read with ease, enough texts for the term, a word list for each text, checks of understanding, audio, and a record of who read what.

Each part does a different job:

• Texts at the right level let pupils read for meaning without stopping at every line.
• Enough texts keep pupils reading in every week of the term.
• A word list for each text tells the teacher which words to bring back later.
• Checks of understanding show who followed the story and make pupils recall it.
• Audio helps slower readers keep pace with the text.
• A reading record shows who has read what, so nobody drops out unseen.

The parts are not equally well supported by research. The sections below take them in turn.

Texts the class can read with ease

The texts are the pack. Everything else supports them. The main test is how many of the words a pupil already knows.

Hu and Nation (2000) tested this with 66 adult learners on a pre-university English course. The learners read a fiction text with different shares of unknown words. When 80% of the words were familiar, no reader gained adequate comprehension. At 90% and 95%, some did but most did not. The authors concluded that reading fiction without help needs about 98% coverage. That is one unknown word in fifty.

Treat that figure as a guide, not a law. It comes from one study of adults, who read without a dictionary or glossary. Kremmel, Indrarathne, Kormos and Suzuki (2023) repeated the study with 104 adult learners in Sri Lanka. They could not fully replicate the original results. Neither study involved school pupils.

A simpler test works in class. Day and Bamford (2002) suggest that for beginners, more than one or two unknown words on a page may make a text too difficult. For intermediate learners they allow up to five. Ask three or four pupils to read a page of a sample text and mark the words they do not know.

A level label does not settle the matter. Nation and Wang (1999) analysed 42 graded readers from one series, seven at each of six levels. To know 95% of the running words at a level, a learner already had to know that level's own vocabulary. They note that learners who move up a level are likely to meet a high share of unknown words at first. How to Match Students to the Right Graded Readers covers placement.

How many texts does a term need?

Plan for about one short text a week for each pupil, then add spare texts for choice. For a 12-week term that means roughly 16 texts at each level you teach. The figure is an estimate, and the working is shown below.

Two papers give the starting point. Day and Bamford (2002) call a book a week probably the minimum needed to gain the benefits of extensive reading and to build a habit. They call it realistic because books for beginners are very short.

Nation and Wang (1999) reached a similar rate from their word counts. Learners need about one graded reader a week, they concluded, so that a new word returns before the last meeting with it is forgotten. They also recommend at least five books at each level.

Nation and Wang (1999) are frank that their calculation rests on many assumptions, such as how long the memory of a word lasts. Both papers offer guidance. Neither reports a trial that compared different amounts of reading.

Change the numbers to fit your school. At this rate a pack of six short texts will not last a term.

A word list for each text

A word list names the words from the text that pupils should still know next month. Its job is to tell the teacher what to recycle.

The case for recycling is strong. Webb (2007) studied 121 Japanese learners of English who met new words 1, 3, 7 or 10 times in context. Each increase in meetings improved at least one aspect of word knowledge. Ten meetings gave sizeable gains, and Webb concluded that full knowledge of a word may need more than ten.

Reading more texts at a level supplies some of those meetings. Nation and Wang (1999) found that words introduced at the early levels of their series kept returning in books written for later levels. That is one reason they advise reading several books at each level.

They add a piece of advice that a word list makes possible. When learners start a new level, they should study its new words directly for the first book or two. After that, unknown words are few enough for fluent reading.

The list itself rests on practice. No study cited here tests whether a pack with word lists beats a pack without them. The research supports repeated meetings, and the list is a tool for arranging them. How Many Times Must a Learner Meet a Word? goes through the numbers.

Checks of understanding

A check of understanding is a handful of questions after the text. It shows you who followed the story. It may also help pupils remember it.

Roediger and Karpicke (2006) had students study prose passages. Some then restudied the passages, and others took recall tests with no feedback. Five minutes later, restudying looked better. After two days and after a week, the tested students remembered substantially more.

That study concerned memory for prose in general. It was not a study of language learners or of school reading programs, so it supports the principle and not any one quiz format.

There is a tension here. Day and Bamford (2002) write that extensive reading is not usually followed by comprehension questions, because the reading is an experience complete in itself. They still accept follow-up activities. Their reasons include finding out what pupils understood and keeping track of how much they read.

A sensible reading of both is this. Keep checks short, keep the stakes low, and never let the quiz take longer than the reading. For length, see How Many Questions Should a Reading Quiz Have?.

Audio for readers who need it

Audio lets a pupil follow the text while a voice reads it. The most relevant evidence for schools comes from Chang and Millett (2015). Sixty-four Year 10 EFL students read 20 graded readers over 26 weeks, for 90 minutes a week. One group read silently. The other read while listening.

Both groups improved in reading rate and comprehension. The audio group improved substantially more, and the gains were still there three months later.

This is one study of beginners, so it does not show that every reader needs audio. It does support having audio in a pack for pupils who read slowly. Reading While Listening: What It Does for English Learners covers the research in more detail.

A record of who read what

A reading record lists each pupil, the texts they finished and the dates.

This part rests on practice, not on a trial. Day and Bamford (2002) name keeping track of what and how much pupils read as one reason for follow-up activities. None of the studies cited here compares classes with and without a record. The argument is practical. If the benefit depends on the amount read, you need to know the amount.

A useful record answers four questions:

1. Which texts has each pupil finished, and when?
2. Who has read nothing for two weeks?
3. Which texts do pupils abandon? Those may be at the wrong level.
4. What level is each pupil reading at, and when did it last change?

A checklist for judging any pack

Use this table on any pack, whether you buy it, download it or build it yourself. The last column says what each requirement rests on.

A pack that fails on the first two rows cannot be rescued by the other four. Good quizzes do not help a pupil who cannot read the text.

Once a pack passes, the next job is the first week. How to Launch a School Reading Program in One Day covers the decisions that remain with the school.

How iRead handles this

In iRead, a pack is a CEFR-levelled set of stories, and each story is a graded reader. Global packs ship with levelled stories, word lists, four word games and quizzes together, for A1 to C2. Many stories have an audio read-along synced to the text, which is optional per story. Students keep a Reading Passport, one record of their reading. School leaders see stories completed by class, grade and term.

Key takeaway

A reading pack needs six parts, but the texts decide whether it works. Check the level with real pupils, count the texts against your term, then look at the rest.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Hu, M. H.-C., & Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1), 403-430. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66973
2. Kremmel, B., Indrarathne, B., Kormos, J., & Suzuki, S. (2023). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension: Replicating Hu and Nation (2000). Language Learning, 73(4), 1127-1163. doi.org/10.1111/lang.12622
3. 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
4. Nation, P., & Wang, K. M.-T. (1999). Graded readers and vocabulary. Reading in a Foreign Language, 12(2), 355-380. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66966
5. Webb, S. (2007). The effects of repetition on vocabulary knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 28(1), 46-65. doi.org/10.1093/applin/aml048
6. Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
7. Chang, A. C.-S., & Millett, S. (2015). Improving reading rates and comprehension through audio-assisted extensive reading for beginner learners. System, 52, 91-102. doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.05.003