Last August we went to Kyoto Sangyo University to interview Professor Amanda Gillis-Furutaka. She has been teaching there for over twenty years, contributing to establish and maintain a large extensive reading programme at this university. Over the last few years, she has been carrying out qualitative research on the thought processes that occur when we do ER in a second or foreign language. In this episode, Professor Gillis-Furutaka tells us about some of the most interesting insights that she has obtained through her interviews with students of different ages and levels. Listen and learn about the various factors affecting graded reader readability besides the number of headwords, about the many ways in which the L1 is involved while reading in an L2, and about the interplay between working memory and the practice of extensive reading.
Resources:
In this 2012 article you can find information about the ER programme at Kyoto Sangyo University.
Here is an article that Professor Gillis-Furutaka wrote for the Journal of Extensive Reading that focuses on graded readers’ readability.
http://jalt-publications.org/content/index.php/jer/article/view/7/1
http://jalt-publications.org/content/index.php/jer/article/view/7/1
And finally, here is her most recent article, which focuses on working memory and the use of the L1 by students doing ER.
https://687a7f01-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/neuroelt/publications-journals/1%20MindBrainEd%20Journal%20Vol%201%20May%202018.pdf
The Extensive Reading Podcast 