“When what we hear or read is extremely interesting or ‘compelling,’ we acquire language whether we want to or not.”
-Stephen Krashen
Extensive Reading and Listening
The experts all agree— free voluntary reading is one of the most important keys to language learning success. According to Stephen Krashen, author of Comprehensible and Compelling: The Causes and Effects of Free Voluntary Reading, we learn language when we encounter input in the target language that is comprehensible and compelling. Picturebooks lend themselves to comprehensibility because they awaken visual literacy as a support for reading. Some early readers are also comprehensible for readers who have begun to read sight words and to decode simple words phonetically. But what about compelling? What interests one reader will bore another to tears.
Free voluntary reading allows pupils to follow their own interests and engage with self-selected texts that motivate them to build language skills. Here are our top tips for bringing extensive reading and listening according to free voluntary reading principles into your classroom:
Start small. Even if you begin with just a ten-minute session once a week, you’ll be supporting stamina.
Keep it low-stress. After lunch, at the end of the day, or before a transition is a great time to add a little reading time.
Provide access to a variety of comprehensible texts. The “Extensive Reading and Listening” collection in our digital library includes books with plenty of visual clues, with decodable language, or with read-along components so that students can comprehend stories that interest them.
Model interest by reading to yourself while students are reading.
No quizzes, no projects, no assessments. Just read. Save the follow-up activities for more structured lessons.
Let learners decide what they want to read— that means no redirections if you think something will be too difficult. Readers grow by challenging themselves, and they can always choose something new if something proves too stressful.