We are very honored to have this great opportunity to interview Professor Paul Nation for the TEFLIN Journal's themed issue on Extensive Reading. Professor Paul Nation is an Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His special interests…

Picture books engage young learners across the elementary curriculum and can effectively help teach about a variety of social studies topics. Social studies may be a neglected subject in many elementary schools, but purposefully incorporating it through children's literature provides an effective means of advancing both literacy skills and social…

This research explored the biliteracy experiences of three kohanga reo children as they started school in one of three school settings: a bilingual unit, a mainstream classroom, and kura kaupapa Maori. A Kaupapa Maori approach underpinned this research and guided the case study methodology employed. The children's literacy experiences were…

As a multi ethnic country, Malaysia consists of three major ethnic groups mainly Malays, Chinese, and Indians with unity as its building block. Although education is seen as the best medium for the three major ethnic groups to work together, contemporary research shows that there is lack of intercultural understanding among these three ethnic…

Forty families with four- to five-year-old Chinese children were chosen as experiment participants and equally divided into four groups for an eight-week parent-child reading experiment in different reading modes. (1) Groups A, B, and C read one of three kinds of Chinese-English audio bilingual picture books respectively: touch reading books,…

The main goal of this study was to investigate the effects of an experimental program designed to develop the phonological awareness (PA) skills of beginning readers in Turkish, an orthographically transparent language. We administered pre-, post-, and follow-up tests to assess the PA skills of 113 first graders and kindergartners in 2…

To evaluate the relative efficacy of two reading programs with and without adjunctive stimulant medication for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and comorbid reading disorder (ADHD+RD). Sixty-five children (7-11 years in age) were assigned randomly to one of three intensive remedial academic programs (phonologically or…

In this article we present a case study of a school community engaging in what we describe as educational praxis--a form of committed learning to meet the needs of poor and refugee students in a disadvantaged community in Australia. The school, part of the Catholic systemic school sector in Australia, shares its site with the local Catholic…

Averil Coxhead is widely known for developing the Academic Word List, a list of 570 word families associated with great frequency in academic texts. This list has been particularly useful to teachers of English as a Second Language as well as independent learners in tertiary education. She has also developed a Science-based word list (Coxhead and…

This paper is based on one of the first completed studies funded by the Educational Endowment Foundation (EEF). EEF was set up in response to repeated demands for clearer evidence on school improvement. The paper presents the results of an intensive 10-week literacy intervention called Switch-on Reading. This was trialled in England as part of a…

This National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) report has been produced for the Education Endowment Foundation and its evaluation of the Chatterbooks reading scheme. Chatterbooks is an extracurricular reading initiative, developed by the Reading Agency, that aims to increase a child's motivation to read by providing tools and resources…

According to Bandura (1986; 1997), perceptions of efficacy are based on four sources: enactive attainment; vicarious experience; physiological and emotional states; and verbal persuasion. The factors affecting Early Career Teachers' self-efficacy for reading instruction are closely related to these four sources. It is not difficult to imagine an…

The Young Readers Programme (YRP) motivates children to read for enjoyment by running a series of three literacy-focused events, teaching children strategies to choose books that are right for them, and showing them that reading can be enjoyable. One of the most effective ways of developing children's literacy skills is to engage them in reading…

REACH is a targeted reading support programme designed to improve reading accuracy and comprehension in pupils with reading difficulties in Years 7 and 8. It is based on research by the Centre for Reading and Language at York and is delivered by specially trained teaching assistants (TAs). This evaluation tested two REACH interventions, one based…

Accelerated Reader (AR) is a whole-group reading management and monitoring program that aims to foster the habit of independent reading among primary and early secondary age pupils. The internet-based software initially screens pupils according to their reading levels, and suggests books that match their reading age and reading interest. Pupils…