Welcome to our fifth episode, the first one after a long summer break. In this episode we interview Paul Goldberg, creator, founder and owner of X-Reading, an online subscription-based graded-reader library that allows students unlimited access to more than 600 books on their computers, tablets or mobile devices any time they feel like doing a bit of ER. Paul tells us extensively about his project, including how and why he created X-Reading, how he managed to get the publishers on board (Macmillan, Cengage, Oxford, Cambridge, ELI, Atama Ii and more), all that the project has accomplished and what it will look like in the future.
The Extensive Reading Podcast 
Thanks for this: I really enjoyed hearing more about X-Reading and only regret that it isn’t available in Spain and that I no longer teach having retired two years ago. However, I am still interested in extensive reading.
I, too, am looking at improving the reading levels assigned to readers. I used to use the EPER system moderated by student feedback on both level and quality, eliminating poor performers. I am not satisfied with the ER Foundation scale or the Mreader Kyoto scales.
Recently I’ve been examining the possibility of using TextInspector http://textinspector.com/ to give me a more reliable measure of reading levels. I contacted them about some slight inconsistencies I had observed with long texts like a complete reader and they have promised that they will update their website with an improved system that should make it better at rating very long texts. I’m looking forward to experimenting with this further.
Chris Fry
Barcelona
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Thanks for your comment, Chris. Paul tells us that he’s trying to go global soon so that X-Reading is available anywhere in the world. Maybe it will be available in Spain some day.
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