Extensive Reading by Jing Zhou

Aim and Structure of the BookThis book aims to discuss the theoretical backgrounds of extensive reading (ER), its effectiveness and implementation, and recent updates of the ER literature.It comprises seven sections in total.Section 1 briefly overviews the subsequent sections.In addition, the author suggests that the intended audience of this book includes pre-and in-service language teachers, graduate students, and ER researchers.In Section 2, the author first summarizes some ER definitions, particularly emphasizing the differences between ER and other approaches to teaching reading (e.g., intensive reading).After that, this section discusses Stephen Krashen's Comprehensible Input Hypothesis and a series of Charles Perfetti's lexical hypotheses/models (i.e., Lexical Efficiency Hypothesis, Lexical Quality Hypothesis, and Lexical Constituency Model), which the author believes theoretically justify or support ER practice.The author also reviews Day and Bamford's (2002) principles for teaching ER and emphasizes that not all principles have reached a consensus in ER research and practice, allowing some variability of ER programs depending on the number of the principles that ER practitioners employ.The author argues for the flexibility of ER practice that can be adapted in various teaching contexts.