Only by discovering the rewards of reading through actually engaging in it will students become people who both can and do read. As Eskey's metaphor implies, skills-based and other traditional foreign language reading instructional approaches appear to have their priorities the wrong way round. The primary consideration in all reading instruction should be for students to experience reading as pleasurable and useful. Only then will they be drawn to do the reading they must do to become fluent readers. And only then will they develop an eagerness to learn new skills to help them become better readers.
Extensive reading is a prime means of developing a taste for foreign language reading.
All it requires is a library of suitable reading material. As to the form that extensive reading takes, this will vary according to student needs and institutional constraints. An extensive reading approach introduces students to the dynamics of reading as it is done in real life by including such key elements of real-life reading as choice and purpose. Richard Day and Julian Bamford, in their forthcoming book Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom identify ten characteristics found in successful extensive reading programs. Students select what they want to read and have the freedom to stop reading material that fails to interest them.