Three ways English students can learn to read at home

Kate Fitzpatrick
A woman reading outside with a book
Reading time: 4 minutes

Read more at home if you want to learn English faster: three ways to get into the habit

I can hear parents, ELT learners and teachers all over the world thinking to themselves: We know it helps if English students learn to read for pleasure at home, but how are we supposed to find the time? Who is buying these materials? What if a parent doesn’t speak English themselves?

That’s the beauty of reading at home, also called extensive reading: it’s completely autonomous and parents can be as involved as much or little as they like. There’s more good news as it’s never been cheaper to assemble a selection of extensive readers for your children or students, meaning that cost is no longer so much of a barrier to reading at home.

Is extensive reading really that critical to learning English?

Stephen D. Krashen’s [1]offers a marvellous summary and critique of extensive reading studies around the world, concluding that:

"When [second language learners] read for pleasure, they can continue to improve in their second language without classes, without teachers, without study and even without people to converse with.’"(Krashen 1993 p. 84)

Philip Prowse’s excellent article, “What is the secret of extensive reading?”[2]agrees with Krashen’s conclusion.

Prowse goes into more detail about efficacy studies at primary, secondary and adult levels. This body of evidence finds that reading for pleasure improves results in grammar, writing, speaking and fluency, as well as comprehension and vocabulary – both alongside and instead of traditional textbooks.

So, we know it works. As with so many education-related things, the question is how to implement them. Christine Nuttall talks about the virtuous circle of reading – once a learner begins to enjoy reading, they are more likely to read more and benefit more from it, so they learn to read more, and so on.

The reverse is also true. The questions then follow: how do we motivate our Instakids to read at home in English, if they won’t read in their first language? How do we carve out time between travel, work, school and homework? Here are three ways you can form the habit of reading at home:

1. Learners need access to extensive reading material at home to use it

Krashen establishes this common-sense fact based on five studies from 1983 to 2003.[2]It can be a reading app, an online library subscription or a pile of readers in the corner – whatever it is, it has to be the right level for the student and it has to be a topic they’re interested in, or they’ll never learn to read for pleasure.

Negative reading habits can happen simply because there isn’t much available to the learner: Worthy and McCool studied 11 sixth-graders in 1998 who "hated to read", and found a direct correlation between those students and the lack of reading material at home.[3] Thankfully, we now have more options than we used to:

For extensive reading online, the Extensive Reading Foundation offers good-quality, free materials, in audio and print, at its .These text resources and audiobooks tend to be quite basic and the stories are largely classics. You can choose by level and genre, and there is also a publisher directory.

  • You can purchase full app English Readers and other publishers’ Kindle editions on the Kindle store, iBookstore and Google Play, and read them on an e-reader, phone or tablet using the Kindle app. These are finely-graded, contemporary, relevant e-books with titles like , , , , , , and .
  • An e-book library subscription can be a cost-effective way to get access to a lot of e-books online through your browser. is a Japanese-run online library which offers hundreds of full-text graded readers, from reputable publishers, and charges about $19 per year.
  • For print readers, cost can be an issue. If you can't buy readers at your local bookshop from a publisher like app, you can buy first- or second-hand readers cheaply from Amazon or the Book Depository, or you can ask your school to let you know when they’re upgrading their readers library, as you may be able to take some of the older books home.

2.Make the most of the commute or the school run

The key here is routine – give it a try and see if it works for you. Reading doesn’t just happen on a page. Today’s English learners have multiple ways to read for pleasure on their various devices as well as in print, all of which are well-adapted for reading and listening on the train/on the bus/in the car/on foot.

I listen to podcasts on my commute by train and, to this day, I know my times tables thanks to a tape my mother used to play in the car on the way to primary school.

  • Download a podcast or audiobook. Ideally, an English learner would both read and listen, but one or the other is better than nothing. Audible.com has plenty of English extensive readers in audiobook format, and a year’s membership is $10 per month, or you can buy individual audiobooks. There are classic extensive reading podcasts available on iTunes for $4.99 each.
  • Never underestimate your public library.is an online service that finds your local library for you, wherever you are in the world. You can also search by title and see which libraries carry that particular book. Just think: you could create an instant, extensive reading library at your home for free that changes every month.

3. Consider the power of rewards

You can reward your child or reward yourself for building a reading habit. Remember, we are talking about starting a virtuous circle: persuading a learner to begin a new habit of reading in English for pleasure. Reward mechanisms can be very effective.

This idea should be explored on a case-by-case basis – it depends on what you or your child responds to best. In my opinion, starting a reading habit is well worth a glass of wine, a chocolate treat, or an extra half-hour playing video games.

References

[1]Krashen, Stephen D. (2004),p57

[2] Prowse, Philip: “”

[3] Worthy, J. and McKool, S. (1996): “” in Ibid, p61

Read our other posts 'Reading strategies for primary and secondary' and 'How can teachers encourage parents to get kids reading at home?'.

Learn more about our English Readers

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    Educating young learners: Making phonics fun

    Por app Languages

    For many young learners, reading and writing can be one of the most challenging steps in their English learning journey. Even native speakers often find it difficult to understand the connection between how English is pronounced and how it is written.

    Let’s explore how phonics can be a valuable and fun tool to help students and teachers understand this connection.

    What is phonics?

    Phonics is a method of teaching learners how to read by making the connection between sounds and letters. There are around 44 different sounds used in English, and around 120 different ways of writing them down.

    Children learn to identify and say individual sounds (phonemes) and what letter or groups of letters can be used to write that sound down (graphemes). This helps children to read and spell words. For example, the /k/ sound is frequently written using these letters:

    • k as in kite
    • c as in cat
    • ck as in back

    When children learn to read using phonics, the sounds are read out in isolation, for example, b-a-ck. Then they are blended together to form the whole word: back.

    How to teach phonics

    Other methods of learning how to read and spell rely on students memorizing every new word they encounter – that’s potentially thousands of new words! On the other hand, phonics gives students the tools and confidence to read and spell unfamiliar words autonomously. If they know the sounds, they can read the word.

    Simply drilling sounds and letters will quickly become dull for students, so here are some practical, fun phonics ideas you can try out in the classroom.

    1. Use music

    Music can create a positive atmosphere for teaching phonics, and it helps children to memorize sounds in a lively, enjoyable way. Furthermore, it can improve pronunciation and listening skills.

    • Use musical instruments or clap to help students break words into individual sounds.
    • Alternatively, use ‘robot talk’ – say the words in a robotic way, breaking up the words into their component sounds, for example ‘r-e-d’.
    • Tongue twisters are useful for working on the initial sounds in words. Try creating tongue twisters using known vocabulary and students’ names, e.g. Sara sings in the sun.
    • Many ELT courses provide phonics songs that practice new sounds. However, you can also adapt well-known songs to teach phonics.

    Example song:

    Clap your hands and turn around!

    Put your hands up!
    Put your hands down.
    Clap your hands
    And turn around!

    Put your head up!
    Put your head down!
    Clap your hands
    And turn around.

    Put your leg up!
    Put your leg down!
    Clap your hands
    And turn around.

    2. Move your body

    Learning through movement comes naturally to many young learners and can be a dynamic part of your phonics routine. Incorporating movement into your lessons can motivate students and help them retain the sounds and letters.

    • Add an accompanying action when you present a new phonics sound and its corresponding letter/s. For example, say, ‘S, s, s, snake’ and make a snaking movement with your arm. The action becomes a visual prompt, so students call out ‘S!’ whenever you do the action.
    • Air drawing can be great fun. Have students trace the shape of letters in the air with a finger while repeating the corresponding sound. This is also good pre-writing practice.
    • You can even challenge students to work alone or in pairs to make letter shapes with their whole bodies!

    3. Make phonics tactile

    To really embed the connection between the shape of the letters and the sounds they represent, get children to use their hands to feel the shape of the letters while they repeat the sounds.

    These tactile phonics activities have the added advantage of working on fine motor skills, which in turn will improve students’ handwriting.

    • Show students how to trace the shape of the letter in a tray of sand while repeating the sound. Alternatively, try tracing the letter shape in shaving foam.
    • Try modeling the letter shapes out of playdough or a piece of string.
    • A fun pair-work game involves one student silently drawing a letter on their partner’s back. Their partner must guess the letter and say the sound.

    4. Be creative

    There are wonderful, creative ways you can explore phonics with your students. For younger students who don’t yet have the fine motor skills to write letter shapes, using arts and crafts can be an enjoyable way to reinforce the link between the letter/s and the sound.

    • They could make letter shapes from dried pasta or use junk modeling.
    • Have your students decorate letter shapes by painting, coloring, or collaging. This will help them memorize the shapes. Encourage them to repeat the sounds as they do this, or play a phonics rhyme in the background so the association between the sound and letter/s is constantly reinforced.

    Create class displays for different sounds using a variety of pictures and objects starting with that sound. Use them for revision and classroom games. Try splitting the class into teams and then calling out a sound, or a word starting with that sound. The first team to touch the display with the matching letter/s wins a point.

    5. Play games

    Many popular ELT games can be adapted to teach phonics. Games are a great way to bring phonics to life and to give young learners the confidence to produce the sounds themselves.

    • Play ‘Whispers’. Students sitting in a circle whisper a sound rather than a word to the child next to them until it reaches the end of the circle. The last child says the sound aloud, or points to the letters that correspond to that sound.
    • Get children to create their own sets of cards with sounds and pictures on them. These can be used to play card games like snap and pairs.
    • Other games such as i-spy, board rush games, bingo and lucky dip, can be easily adapted to teach phonics.

    Whether you dedicate a whole lesson or just five minutes of your lesson to phonics, make sure to have fun!

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    • All of the above.

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    • a preliminary checklist for placement tests.

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    A preliminary checklist for placement tests

    What features do you need to achieve your goals?

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