Benefits of ER

Specific benefits of Extensive Reading are:

• increased exposure to English. Extensive Reading encourages students to read anywhere and anytime
• opportunity for individual work in even the largest of mixed-level classes
• enhanced quality of exposure to English. Much like how we acquire our first language, the ER student becomes so absorbed by a book - and if she isn't, she should switch books! - that English is assimilated without the need for explicit attention
• evidence of progress. Indeed, for the student who has just gotten through an actual English book on her own enjoyably or who develops the confidence to progress to the next graded-reading level, the positive can-do feeling that this engenders might go a long way in stemming the distaste for school English that seems to arise here after the jr high first-year honeymoon is over

Some broader educational aims that ER can also accomplish:

• to encourage reading as a lifetime skill. Some students will find in ER a wonderful way of occupying time, and thus ER is often considered to be synonymous with reading for pleasure
• to increase general knowledge. ER provides a wealth of topics. Students learn to read round a topic to gain general ideas and an overall perspective, to be aware of current events in the world, matters of travel, history and politics, to be aware of social trends and to extend one's knowledge of human nature
• to improve reading skills in general.The ability to read a text comfortably at a good speed makes it easier to slow down to concentrate intensively on a passage or to speed up and skim for general gist