Take Aways from the 9th IERA Talk: Prof. Paul Nation

Speaking in the 9th vERtual Talk ( Extensive Reading) Series on Saturday ( 7/25/2020),  Prof. Paul Nation shared some  key points where extensive reading is THE major contributor to the language proficiency. This claim, he said, is based on strong and extensive studies. In answering the question, “what is the relationship between vocabulary and extensive reading?”, Prof. Paul Nation said that foreign language learners would extensively benefit from graded books. He believed that graded readers improve L2 learners through repetition and quality (deep and thoughtful) meetings with vocabulary.

Furthermore, he said that in order to get good quality meetings, students could practice the three layers of activities:  Noticing (Guessing from contexts, dictionary use), Retrieval (recalling the meaning of a previously met words), and varied meetings (or varied retrievals, meeting words in varied contexts). Here is another screenshot from an entirely captivating webinar. Enjoy! ( Ed.)