Effective extensive reading outside the classroom: A large scale experiment

We report on a large-scale implementation of extensive reading (ER) in a university setting in Japan where all students were required to read outside class time as part of their course requirement. A pre/posttest comparison between the 2009 cohort of students who read outside of class and the 2008 cohort who did no outside reading shows that the implementation of ER resulted in highly significant gains. A plug-in module for Moodle called “MoodleReader” was used to hold the students accountable for their reading. A new distinction between replacement ER and additive ER is introduced.