LITSIG - in-person PCE: A window to the world: Extensive reading to unlock students’ curiosity

Join the IATEFL Literature Special Interest Group for their 2025 in person Pre-Conference Event on 7 April:  ‘A window to the world: Extensive reading to unlock students’ curiosity’

Scholars generally agree that reading is an effective way for students to improve, not only their ability to read, but also their vocabulary, knowledge of how grammar works, and even their listening comprehension. Yet in order to bear fruit, we first need to get them excited about reading.
In this PCE we will examine the qualities that make a book compelling based on the experiences of published authors, and then consider what strategies we might employ to get our students to read more.

Morning: The qualities of well-designed literature
Published authors will share their bag of tricks for creating stimulating stories that will enchant the learners’ mind. Each session will include time for Q&A as well as an activity. 

Afternoon: Towards effective practice
Once you have a stimulating set of books available, the next step is to get them to read them! Sandra Healy will describe methods to encourage them to read, which in turn, may turn some of them into self-directed readers. She will describe her university’s own reading program with over 30 teachers following the same curriculum.
Thomas Robb will address the needs of those who do not work in a context that precludes the introduction of a regular extensive reading program. He will provide suggestions for encouraging students to read and foster a reading habit in them. The participants will receive a list of links to other resources, including free reading material and additional guidance on how to run a successful program.

Speakers:

Ashley Hickson-Lovence is a novelist, poet, literary critic and Lecturer in Creative Writing. His debut novel The 392 was published by OWN IT! in 2019. His second novel Your Show, published by Faber in 2022, was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Awards. His third book, a young adult novel-in-verse called Wild East, was published by Penguin in 2024. He is a former secondary school English teacher, and received his PhD from the University of East Anglia.

Jane Cadwallader is the author of many Primary EFL coursebooks, having written for Oxford, Macmillan and Richmond over a long career. She is also a teacher trainer, and above all a teacher convinced of the importance of extensive reading. She began writing readers in earnest in 2008 and has written over 40 titles for ELI Publishing. Her stories have been mentioned in the EFL LLL awards many times and have come first in their category 6 times. At the same time, she has increasingly combined her writing with work on children’s rights, particularly the right to social development and the right to education. She now spends half the year in Uganda teaching, writing and working with the local government to improve the lives of children in a rural District in Western Uganda.

Herbert Puchta holds a PhD in English, with a focus on ELT pedagogy. He has been a Professor of English at the Teacher Training University in Graz and is a past President of  IATEFL .As a writer and international teacher trainer, he has given talks, seminars, and workshops to teachers in over 50 countries. Each classroom he visits makes him see how brilliantly creative teachers can be and how hard they work. It also teaches him a little more about students’ hearts and minds.

Thomas Robb, Ph.D., University of Hawaii, is Professor Emeritus, Kyoto Sangyo University. He is a valued member of the LitSIG committee. He is Chair of the Extensive Reading Foundation and has created a number of websites and applications for Extensive Reading, including the free MReader.org quiz program used by some 60,000 students. He has held numerous leadership positions in International TESOL, JALT (Japan), PacCALL and is also the Editor of TESL-EJ, the first online journal for ELT.

Sandra Healy is a professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan. She grew up in the South West of England and did her undergraduate degree at Exeter University. She holds an MSc in TESOL from Aston University in the UK and is presently doing a PhD at Coventry University in Global Education. She lived and worked in Troon, Scotland, before heading off to travel around the world, eventually settling down in Japan. She has been engaged in extensive reading for twenty years and runs an extensive reading programme at a STEAM-focused university for 700 students. Her other research interests include applied linguistics with a focus on using technology in education to improve intercultural communication and learning outcomes.

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