Extensive reading under exam pressure: An ecological account of perception profiles and engagement in a Chinese senior high school class reader program

Extensive reading (ER) is widely recognized for enhancing L2 reading development. However, its implementation in exam-driven secondary-school contexts remains fragile due to time constraints, examination pressure, and competing curricular demands. Drawing on an ecological perspective, this convergent mixed-methods study examines how learners experienced ER engagement within a semester-long class-based program in a Chinese senior high school. Participants included 95 Grade 11 English as a foreign language learners across two intact classes and one experienced teacher. Quantitative questionnaire data were used to construct six profile indicators-general ER perception, perceived material fit, reading amount appraisal, perceived reading strategy, reading anxiety, and English reading motivation-and to identify perception profiles via cluster analysis. Open-ended responses, reading logs, and a teacher interview were used to contextualize the quantitative patterns. Two profiles emerged: an Aligned-Resourced profile (n = 69) and a Strained-Under-Resourced profile (n = 26). The former reported more favorable perceptions across the profile indicators and substantially higher perceived ER-related outcomes in reading comprehension, fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and English reading confidence. Qualitative findings highlighted lexical difficulty, time pressure, dictionary/translation use, contextual inferencing, socially meaningful activities such as role-play, and teacher adjustments to pacing, reading volume, comprehension support, and multimodal resources. The findings suggest that ER engagement reflects the relationship between reading demands, learner coping strategies, perceived value, and instructional support under examination pressure. Within the ecological framework, the value-cost interpretive mechanism demonstrated how ER may be experienced as more or less worthwhile and manageable across learners. The study extends ER research by combining person-centered profiling with an ecological perspective and value-cost interpretation to explain heterogeneity in learners' experiences of the same program.