Top Ten Principles for Teaching Extensive Reading

Top Ten Principles for Teaching Extensive Reading1
Abstract
This article puts forward ten principles for an extensive reading approach to teaching reading. They deal with the nature of extensive reading and the conditions and methodology necessary for its success. In the interests of professional development, the authors encourage teachers to use the principles as a tool to examine their beliefs about reading in general and extensive reading in particular, and the ways they teach reading.

In an article published in 1986, Ray Williams discussed his top ten principles for teaching foreign language reading. He used his top ten to begin his reading seminars by asking participants to evaluate them and add new ones. His purpose, Williams wrote, was to get teachers to examine their own beliefs. The article had its desired impact on us. Now, years later, they remain as stimulating as when we first read them. Consider, for example, his first two principles: 1. In the absence of interesting texts, very little is possible. 2. The primary activity of a reading lesson should be learners reading texts--not listening to the teacher, not reading comprehension questions, not writing answers to comprehension questions, not discussing the content of the text (1986: 42).
Another that still rings clearly is Williams' fifth: 5. Teachers must learn to be quiet: all too often, teachers interfere with and so impede their learners' reading development by being too dominant and by talking too much (p. 44).
Williams' top ten principles relate primarily to one approach to the teaching of reading, viz., intensive reading. We would like to extend the discussion to extensive reading. Extensive reading, apart from its impact on language and reading ability, can be a key to unlocking the all-important taste for foreign language reading among students. After all, teaching