The impact of a4-year extensive
reading program
Hitoshi Nishizawa
Toyota National College ofTechnology (Toyota Kosen)

Takayoshi Yoshioka
Toyota National College ofTechnology (Toyota Kosen)

Momoyo Fukada
Toyota National College ofTechnology (Toyota Kosen)

Reference data:
Nishizawa, H., Yoshioka, T., & Fukada, M. (2010). The impact of a 4-year extensive reading program. In A.
M. Stoke (Ed.), JALT2009 Conference Proceedings. Tokyo: JALT.

This study reports the impact of a long-term extensive reading (ER) program on reluctant EFL learners.
The ER program consisted of sustained silent reading (SSR) classes, 45 minutes a week, for 120 weeks
over 4 consecutive academic years. Thirty-seven students, ranging in age from 20 to 22 years old, finished the program. A comparison between three groups of students in the ER program showed a strong
correlation between their TOEIC scores and the amount of reading. The most critical factor for success
was reading at least 300,000 words, which was found to be the enabling threshold for the subjects tofeel at ease while reading English texts. To ensure the students were reading this amount, the program
needed scheduled reading time and easy English texts, especially in the first year. The readability levels of
the English texts for our students were far easier than the ones recommended by the Edinburgh Projecton Extensive Reading.
英語に苦手意識を持つ学習者に対する長期多読授業の成果を報告する。授業は毎週１回45分の授業時間内多読で、年間３０週を４年間継続させた。全期間受講したのは、２０〜２２歳の学生３７名である。受講学生を読書量で三分割して比較したところ、群別読書量とTOEIC得点に明確な関係が認められた。多読授業の正否を分ける要因は、最低30万語以上の累積読書量であり、定期的な読書時間の確保と、特に初年度の図書のやさしさが大切である。本校学生に適した本は、エジンバラ・多読プ
ロジェクトで推薦されるものよりも、かなりやさしいものであった。

BackgroundReading amount and readability of reading materials
Day and Bamford (1998) described ten characteristics of successful extensive reading programs, two of which were “students read as much as possible” and “reading materials are wellwithin the linguistic competence of the students in terms of vocabulary and grammar” (pp.
7-8). However, we felt that both the expected reading amount and the optimum readability ofthe materials were not stated clearly enough to design an effective ER program for Japanese
EFL learners. In the late 1990s, Sakai (2002) proposed 1,000,000 words as a milestone for Japanese EFL learners to feel they can read independently. He also suggested using much easierbooks than those that were being used in contemporary ER programs. These proposals were
supported and promoted by the Starting with Simple Stories (SSS) English Study Group and
the Japan Extensive Reading Association (JERA).

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Nishizawa, Yoshioka, & Fukuda • The impact of a 4-year extensive reading program

These proposals led to numerous extensive reading studies
within the Japanese context. Sakai and Kanda (2005) proposed a
detailed methodology for conducting ER programs based on the
proposals, and Kanda (2009) suggested focusing on the joy ofreading, based on a case study of a university student who hadtaken a 3-year ER program. Takase (2008) confirmed the positiveeffect of reading very easy-to-read books, and pointed to it as
one of the two most critical features of a successful ER program.
Furukawa et al. (2010) compiled a list of 13,000 easy-to-readreading texts, and evaluated their readability as an index called
the Yomiyasusa Levels (YL), specifically designed for Japanese
EFL learners. Nishizawa, Yoshioka, and Itoh (2006) compared
the readability levels proposed by the Edinburgh Project on
Extensive Reading (EPER) (Hill, 1997, cited in Day & Bamford,
1998, pp. 173-194) with the YLs. They found that the easiest
books recommended by Furukawa et al. were not in the EPER
list, and the books in the EPER starter, beginner and elementarylevels were very difficult for low-level Japanese EFL learners toread without translating the English texts into Japanese. They
recommended that Japanese EFL learners should read far easierbooks than the EPER recommended.
The ER program described in this paper used the YL readability scale as its guide, and the subjects started their ER withbooks far easier-to-read than those indicated by the EPER scale.

English education at Toyota Kosen

age high school students of the same age (Kameyama, 2010).
The kosen students in the fourth or higher grades however,
have lower proficiency in English than university students ofthe same age, even though they are promising engineering
students (Kameyama & Ozawa, 2002). For example, the national
average TOEIC score of seventh grade kosen students was 373
in 2007, which was 40 points lower than the national average offourth year university students majoring in engineering, science,
and agriculture, in the same year (ETS, 2008, p. 9, 11).
The poor performance of kosen students in English issometimes explained by them not needing to pass severe
entrance examinations at the age of 18. Another reason is thatthey have fewer English lessons compared to high schools and4-year universities (Kameyama, 2010). However, graduating
students were dissatisfied with their low performance evenafter some kosen employed native English-speaking teachers,
or were equipped with language laboratories, or even had set
up computer-assisted language laboratories with cutting edge
technology (Nishizawa et al., 2004).

Since 1995, the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Toyota Kosen has made several attempts to improve
the situation for their engineering students. Both vocabularybuilding exercises and ondoku-hisha, a technique aimed at increasing the volume of reading and listening, were unsuccessful.
The ER program described in this paper was the Department’s
third attempt to improve the English ability of the students.

Toyota Kosen (a college of technology), where the ER program
described in this paper was conducted, is a small but specialized Research questions
institution for engineering education. In Japan, kosen typically
The research questions in this study were:
accept graduates from junior high schools, and educate them
1. How much reading do typical engineering students needin a 5-year foundation course and a 2-year advanced course.
to do to increase their TOEIC scores from 370 to 500, which
Usually 20% of the 5-year course students go on to the advancedis the national average of fourth grade university students
course. First-year (age 16) kosen students are usually excellent
in all majors? And how much ER should be included in ourin mathematics and science, and are as good in English as aver-

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Nishizawa, Yoshioka, & Fukuda • The impact of a 4-year extensive reading program

genres. The logbooks were collected one or two days before the2. What are the other critical factors apart from the volume of lessons, and then returned at the beginning of the lesson withadvice from the teacher added to them. The logbook, designed
reading?
by the SSS English Study Group (2005), has 320 slots for read3. What are the possible obstacles for implementing and runing records, each of which stores the date of reading, serial
ning an ER program?
number of the record, title and series-name of the book, its YL,
the length of the text, the cumulative amount of reading, theirpersonal evaluation of the story, and the reader’s comments on
The ER programeach book. The data from the YL and accumulated words read,
The ER program started in April 2004 in six classes in the Deshowed if the students had read easier or more difficult books
partment of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. The departrelative to their peers. The evaluation and comments section
ment has one class in each grade, and all the classes from second
allowed the students to tell us their favorite genre or type ofto seventh grades joined the program at the same time. The
books. Because the main role of the teachers was to introduce
students also attended compulsory English lessons during thelevel and age appropriate books and genres, the teachers weresame years. In the 2007 academic year, 37 students completed
expected to read the books themselves, and to know them well.
their fourth year of the program.
curriculum to achieve this amount of reading?

Most of the lessons took place in the college library, which in
March 2008 had about 15,000 easy-to-read English books and
2,000 audio CDs. There were three kinds of books: picture books
for young English-speaking children; graded readers, which arereading materials for EFL learners; and story books for Englishspeaking children and young adults.
In the lessons, students selected their reading materials, withguidance from a teacher if needed. The teacher’s main role wasto help students select appropriate books and they avoided
teaching about English so as to ensure as much reading time as
possible during the ER lessons. Students were strongly recommended to do out-of-class reading as well. The students read attheir own pace, without referring to dictionaries, and recorded
their reading histories in logbooks. Some of them listened tothe stories on audio CDs while reading because listening-whilereading helped them to avoid translating into Japanese (Sakai &Kanda, 2005). The logbooks were a valuable source of information for the teachers to know which books the students had
already read and helped them to learn the student’s favorite

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Reading histories and examinations
After 3 years of the ER program, 50% of the students had read
450,000 words, and 75% of them had read more than 300,000
words. At this point, according to Nishizawa et al. (2006), students typically were comfortable reading easy English texts, had
increased their reading speed, and reported that they mainly
used English instead of Japanese to comprehend the stories.
After 4 years, 50% of the students had read 690,000 or more
words, and the percentage of the students who had read morethan 300,000 words had increased to 84%.

From their reading logs, we analyzed the students’ average
YL by their reading amount, and confirmed that the students
gradually increased the YL they were reading at as the amountof reading increased. Representative books they read by year are
shown in Table 1.

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Nishizawa, Yoshioka, & Fukuda • The impact of a 4-year extensive reading program

Table 1. Typical books students read during the program Increased TOEIC scores
Time in the
programReadingamountThe beginning offirst year

YL

Typical book series

0.3

Oxford Reading
Tree Stage 3

The early monthsof second year

250,000
words

1.4

Cambridge English
Readers Level 1

Third year

400,000
words

2.0

Oxford Bookworms
Level 1

Fourth or fifth
year

800,000
words

2.8

Macmillan Readers
Level 3

As we had been expecting an increase in their reading levels
over the long term due to the ER program, we set and modified
the expected readability level of term-end examinations in lightof this. For example, the target was YL 1.2 for the first year students, YL 1.8 for the second years, YL 2.2 for the third years, andYL 2.4 for the fourth year students, in the 2009 academic year. In
the examinations, students were required to read an unfamiliar
English text in a limited time. The time allowed was calculated
assuming a reading speed of 100 words per minute. Students
were not allowed to take any notes during the reading time. After the reading time, they had to answer ten questions about thestory. They could easily answer 6 of the 10 questions if they read
the whole story in the set time and were able to grasp the basic
meaning of the story, but they needed to understand criticalevents and some details of the plot in order to answer the otherfour questions. In the first year of the program, they were required to read a 3,000-word YL 1.2 text in 30 minutes. From ourpast experience, we believe this would have been challenging
for an average graduate from a Japanese engineering college.

JALT2009 CONFERENCE
PROCEEDINGSONLINEWe evaluated the effect of the ER program on their TOEIC
scores because TOEIC measures the ability to comprehend
spoken English, the ability to read quickly and the ability toconcentrate in English and they all depend on an ability to process large amounts of language quickly and accurately (GrahamMarr, 2010).

Figure 1. TOEIC score distributions of groups whoread different amounts
In Figure 1, we compared the TOEIC score distributions of
the four groups of students listed in Table 2. The students in thethree groups (A, B, C) belonged to the ER program and were
doing their fourth year of the program in 2007. Seven students,
who had stayed in English-speaking countries for more than

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Nishizawa, Yoshioka, & Fukuda • The impact of a 4-year extensive reading program

3 months during the 4-year duration of the reading program,
were excluded from the groups. The remaining 30 students weredivided into three groups by their cumulative reading amount.
Group A consisted of nine students whose median reading
amount was 310,000 words, group B consisted of 13 students
whose median reading amount was 660,000 words, and group
C consisted of eight students whose median reading amountwas 1,800,000 words. The 69 students in group D had not participated in the full ER program. They were third grade kosen
students in the academic years 2006 to 2008 who had studied in
English-speaking countries for 10 months. Some of them had ER
lessons, some before and some after their studies abroad, but the
duration was less than one and a half years.

Table 2. The four groups of students shown in Figure 1
Group N

A

9

B

13

C

8

D

69

ER
program

Yes

No

Students’ grade
and academic
year

Reading amount(Median) Min.-Max.

(310,000) 280,000390,000
5th to 7th grade(660,000) 490,000in 2007
820,000(1,800,000) 1,100,00012,000,000
Students who studied
3rd grade in
in English-speaking
2006-2008
countries for 10
monthsThe mean TOEIC score of group A (435), was 15 points higher
than the national average of fourth grade university students
majoring in engineering, science, and agriculture in 2007 (420)
and was 62 points higher than the national average of seventh

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grade kosen students (373) (ETS, 2008, p. 9, 11). The mean TOEIC score of group B (498) was as high as the national average offourth grade university students in all majors in 2007 (499). The
TOEIC scores of group C (604) and D (605) were the same, andthe score distributions of both groups were quite similar too.
Even though the sample size is small, we can roughly estimate
the increase in TOEIC scores from the amount read by comparing the average TOEIC scores and the median reading amountof three groups. These data show a gain of about 18 points per
100,000 words between groups A and B: (498-435) / (660,000310,000), and 9 points per 100,000 words between groups B and
C: (604-498) / (1,800,000-660,000).

The data show the potential of a 4-year ER program. Even
Group A, who read only in class, showed significantly higher
average TOEIC scores than their fellow kosen students. The
mid-range readers (group B), who read about the same amountin and out of classes, achieved TOEIC scores equivalent to thenational average of university students from all majors, including English. The top readers (group C), who read large amounts
outside class on their own, reached TOEIC scores as high as students who had had their engineering education at kosen for twoand half years, and then studied in English-speaking countries
for 10 months. This means it is possible for engineering students, who are generally reluctant to learn English, to improvetheir proficiency in English by participating in a long-term ER
program without sacrificing their engineering education.

To examine the effect of reading more than Sakai’s (2002) suggested 1,000,000 words, we selected 19 students who read morethan 1,000,000 words and who had taken several TOEIC tests inthe academic years 2005 to 2008, and examined the relationshipbetween their TOEIC scores and the cumulative reading amount(Figure 2). Students who had stayed in English-speaking countries for more than 3 months were excluded from the analysis.
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Nishizawa, Yoshioka, & Fukuda • The impact of a 4-year extensive reading program

idly at around 1,000,000 words, although such rapid increases
did not continue in the long term. The other students weredivided into three groups, based on their TOEIC scores when
they reached 1,000,000 words.

increased their TOEIC scores by 4.1 points per 100,000 words.
They needed to read 2,000,000 words to score 500. Remarkably,
the long-term gain rates for TOEIC scores were very close among
the three groups, although the students’ competency at the startdiffered widely. This shows the applicability of ER at various
proficiency levels, including elementary levels, in EFL settings.

Critical factors for success
The results show that the most critical factor for success in an
ER program is the amount of reading. We could not find significant differences in mean TOEIC scores of classes when the students’ reading amount was around, or less than, 100,000 words.
A reading amount of 300,000 words was the threshold where
many students started to show significant increases in TOEIC
scores. To achieve this volume of reading, we need to have atleast 2-3 consecutive years of SSR and a guaranteed scheduled
reading time. Students will read from 100,000 to 200,000 words
in a year if the length and frequency of SSR lessons are the sameas our program.
The second factor that led to the success of the reading pro-

Figure 2. TOEIC score and reading amount of selected gram was to start with simple stories: SSS. When students readvery easy-to-read books, they can avoid concurrent translation
students (see also larger version on final page)The most competent three students (1-3) scored 590 on
average when they had read 1,000,000 words and increased their
TOEIC scores by 4.6 points per 100,000 words. Two of them (1,2) further increased their scores at the same rate until 800, by
when they had read 6,000,000 words. The least competent three
students (4-6) scored 375 at 1,000,000 words and had an increasein TOEIC score of about 4.0 points per 100,000 words. From thedata, we estimate the least competent students need to read
4,000,000 words to score 500. The other five students (7-11), whowere of middling competency, scored 460 at 1,000,000 words and

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from English to Japanese and comprehend directly from English
texts. If they avoid translation, they can relax and enjoy thestories without loss of comprehension. If they have to translate,their reading changes into decoding. When they decode English
text, students think hard in Japanese but they do not use English (Nishizawa et al., 2006). There is no joy of reading either.
Because the joy of reading is the main motivating factor for the
students to continue ER for a long period, it is important forthem to avoid concurrent translation in the ER program.
Displaying the appropriate readability levels of books isanother important factor, and our ER program uses far easier- PREVIOUS PAGE

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Nishizawa, Yoshioka, & Fukuda • The impact of a 4-year extensive reading program

to-read books than the ones recommended by programs suchas EPER. For example, we found in the first year of our trial
ER program that Penguin Readers Easystarts (YL 0.8) were noteasy enough for some of our fifth grade students. In our ER
program, we suggest our students read about 1,000,000 words,
or more, before they start to read Macmillan Readers Level 3 (YL
2.8), which is set at EPER level D (lower intermediate) and isrecommended for learners with a TOEIC score of 300. Our experience suggests that Japanese EFL learners with a TOEIC scoreof 300 are not able to read a book at this level without concurrent translation. The easy-to-read books for these students are
the first seven stages of Oxford Reading Tree (YL 0.0-0.7), or the
first three levels of Cengage’s Foundations Reading Library (YL
0.6-0.8).
We found that if we could satisfy the above two critical factors: SSR and SSS, motivating reluctant students to read English
books was not so difficult because the fun of reading motivatedthe students. Some teachers may think that easy-to-read books
are too childish for college students, but the reading histories ofour students contradict that claim. If they can avoid concurrent
translation, even male students who play rugby are delighted
to read the Rainbow Magic series: fairy stories that are popularamong first grade school girls in the United Kingdom.
The third factor is the reading experience of the teachers.
To aid the success of an ER program, we believe that teachers
themselves have to read at least 1,000,000 words of the books
that students are reading. Without this reading experience, theteachers could not share the joy of reading with the students,
nor have the knowledge to recommend books at the right leveland genre for each student, and recognize the improvement of
their students. The teachers must have flexible minds to enjoy
children’s picture books and language learner literature.

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Possible obstacles
Short-term ER programs do not seem to demonstrate the effectiveness of ER to students. Even if students feel the joy ofcomprehending easy-to-read English texts at an early stage, theytend to lose confidence when they don’t make significant gains
in their English test score. According to our experience, typicalJapanese teenage students need to read at least 300,000 wordsof comprehensible English texts before they reach the thresholdwhen the average TOEIC score increases significantly. The frequency of reading in our program suggests it will take from 2 to
3 years of regular SSR lessons to do this. An ER program of one
year or less may not overcome this threshold and may become
an obstacle to both perceived and actual success.
Another possible obstacle is the lack of people who are experienced with extensive reading in foreign languages in Japan.
Very few Japanese adults, including English teachers, have had
the experience of reading English texts fluently without Englishto-Japanese translation, and few native English teachers read
non-English texts fluently. As a result, most students have no ER
role model around them. It is therefore natural that curriculum
designers hesitate to include ER in their curriculums when they
have no experience of ER themselves. Promoting ER among
adult EFL learners and trainee educators might be a necessary
preparation for starting an ER program.

Conclusion
This study reports the impact of a long-term ER program on reluctant engineering students learning English. The program was
45 minutes a week of sustained silent reading (SSR) in which
students started reading simple stories (SSS). The students reada median 690,000 words of easy-to-read books and increased
their average TOEIC score to 507 by their fourth year. These
data suggest it may be wise to include 4 credits of ER lessons

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Nishizawa, Yoshioka, & Fukuda • The impact of a 4-year extensive reading program

into the English curriculum of any educational institution so as
to improve the students’ reading/listening fluency. We conclude
that a successful ER program for Japanese EFL learners needs
long-term SSR and SSS, built on the rich experiences in ER of
their teachers and supporters.

Acknowledgement
This study was supported in part by Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C),
19520540.

Bio data

References
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Furukawa, A., Kanda, M., Mayuzumi, M., Sato, M., Nishizawa, H.,
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eigo kyouiku no genjou to kadai [English education of colleges oftechnology and its issues]. Research report for Grant-in-Aid for Scientific
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Hitoshi Nishizawa is a Professor of the Department of Electrical
Kameyama, T. (2010). Kosen ni okeru eigo kyouiku no genjou to kadai
and Electronic Engineering at Toyota National College of Tech[The situation and perspective of English language education at colnology. His research interests include computer-assisted learnleges of technology]. Journal of Japanese Society for Engineering Educaing in mathematics and extensive reading/listening in English.
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He is the project manager of extensive reading/listening in the
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college. <nisizawa@toyota-ct.ac.jp>
Takayoshi Yoshioka is an Associate Professor of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Toyota National
College of Technology. His research interests include computeraided educational technology and extensive reading/listening
in English. He started the ER program in 2002 at the college.
<yoshioka@toyota-ct.ac.jp>

Stoke (Ed.), JALT2008 Conference Proceedings (pp. 1201-1211). Tokyo:
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Nishizawa, H., Noda, K., Yamashita, S., Yamada, K., Hamachiyo, I., Shimizu, T., & Andoh, H. (2004). Sotsugyo-sei ankehto ni yoru kyouiku
hyouka to kyouiku kaizen heno katsuyo [Graduates’ assessment ofeducational outcomes and improvement]. Journal of Education in theCollege of Technology, 27, 555-560.
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kougaku-kei gakusei no eigo unyou-nouryoku kaizen [Improvementof engineering students’ communication skills in English throughextensive reading]. Transactions of the Institute of Electrical Engineers ofJapan, 126A-7, 556-562.

Momoyo Fukada was a Professor of the Department of General
Education at Toyota National College of Technology until March
2010. She completed her MA TEFL at the University of Reading. Sakai, K. (2002). Kaidoku hyakumango [Toward one million words andbeyond]. Tokyo: Chikuma shobo.
Her research interests include Communicative Language Teaching and extensive reading/listening in English. <m7fukada@
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one million words in the English classroom]. Tokyo: Taishukan.

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SSS English Study Group (2005). Mezase 100-mango eigo tadoku kirokutecho [Toward one million words reading record book] (2nd ed.). Tokyo:
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Takase, A. (2008). The two most critical tips for a successful extensive
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Figure 2. TOEIC score and reading amount of selected students
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