This study examined the effects of extensive reading on the development of L2 reading attitude. A total of 92 Japanese EFL university students read SRA reading laboratory for 12 weeks and completed a reading attitude questionnaire twice. The major finding was that cognitive components were easier to change.
Previous studies that have verified the usefulness of extensive reading for the improvement of L2 reading affective factors have generally shown positive results (e.g, Dickinson, 2017; Ro, 2013). However, these studies have not clarified how extensive reading improves students' affective factors, especially for unmotivated learners in an English as a foreign language (EFL) environment. Yamashita (2007) developed a questionnaire composed of 26 items to measure readers' attitudes. The constructs were (a) comfort, (b) intellectual value, or the belief that one can develop intelligence through reading English passages; (c) practical value, or the belief that it is beneficial to one's future to be able to read English (d) anxiety, and (e) linguistic value, or the belief that one can develop linguistic skills through reading English passages. The purpose of this study is to clarify how the attitude of Japanese EFL learners' toward reading English (L2) develops through extensive reading. Participants were 92 Japanese university students majoring in engineering and economics. Although they had learned English for at least six years, they had difficulties in understanding basic areas of the language; in fact, they had never read a large quantity of English and disliked reading in English. The participants read SRA Reading Laboratory 1b (Parker, 2005) for 12 classes. In addition, the participants were divided into two groups: one wrote their impressions in L1 and the other wrote down a definition and a sample sentence using one unknown word in each story. All students completed the questionnaire developed by Yamashita (2007) to measure their reading attitude before and at the end of the semester. The major finding was that comfort, intellectual value, practical value and linguistic values improved significantly, while anxiety did not. The presenter discusses how extensive reading should be introduced for unmotivated learners in an EFL environment.
