EFFICACY OF MULTI-LEVEL EXTENSIVE READING IN YOUNG LEARNERS’ READING MOTIVATION

Abstract

Reading has always been open to research and development of new theories in the field of English language education. Many language teachers find it hard to tailor the level of any reading text to a common level that can appeal to every single L2 learner and each language level in the classroom. The hard-copy reading materials or the course books at hand are mostly unbreakable or unable to provide the teachers with the ease of editing the content to tailor it for each individual student. The present study, therefore, aims to investigate the effect of extensive reading lessons through the use of tablets and designed on the grounds of differentiated instruction (DI) on students’ motivation and comprehension skills. The participants were 24 fifth grade Turkish EFL learners studying in a private k-12 school in Turkey. Data were collected from two questionnaires, Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997) and Favourite Book Types (www.raz-plus.com) as well as semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that there was a positive relationship between a students’ motivation for reading and multi-level extensive reading lessons. Besides, there was an improvement in the comprehension skills of the participants as well. Keywords: differentiated instruction, extensive reading, reading motivation, using tablets.