Stuart McLean’s discussion on The importance of supporting inferences with evidence: Learning lessons from Huffman (2014) in the hope of providing stronger evidence for extensive reading

The strength of the inferences and conclusions that Huffman (2014) makes regarding the effectiveness of extensive reading (ER) relative to intensive reading (IR) at developing reading rate is excessive, and not valid considering the limitations of the methodology of his study. Huffman provides evidence of the effectiveness of ER in developing learners’ reading speed. When measuring reading speed, Huffman reports the participants’ self-reported time on task, provides evidence of participants’ comprehension of timed reading passages, and utilizes the standard word unit (Carver, 1982): six letter spaces including punctuation and spacing. Huffman should be commended for these achievements in his publication. However, the validity of the inferences made within the paper is limited. Thus, the strength of Huffman’s conclusions is excessive considering the limitations of the methodology of Huffman (2014).