The reasons for choosing this article are twofold regarding my personal interest and the value of the research to the innovation of my teaching approach.
First, I have maintained a hobby of reading authentic English materials on a daily basis since I was an undergraduate. As I am now aware of the theories of language acquisition, I always wonder to what extent extensive reading may affect my reading proficiency.
The second reason is that the article may be beneficial for my current job. As a teacher of English, I would like to innovate my teaching approach by assigning graded readers to my students in order to improve their reading skills. Moreover, e-books are one of the most widely accessible source for …show more content…
(3) Does the e-books extensive reading program used in this study affect tertiary level EFL students’ English vocabulary?”
The researchers proposed a hypothesis that e-book extensive reading promoted reading engagement, enhanced the ability to understand the reading text, and broadened the vocabulary of tertiary students.
The questions were rooted from the fact that the researchers realized some gaps in previous studies. Specifically, preceding research mainly focused on the quantity of reading texts that students could read rather than how much the students were willing to read. Moreover, previous extensive reading research did not emphasize the effectiveness of online materials. Also, very limited studies had researched how e-book extensive reading influenced EFL undergraduates, which is considered a less representative subjects. Another reason was that few studies focused on the technological-undergraduate subjects.
3. Research methods
The researchers employed different methods, which were questionnaires, survey and pre-tests and post-test to collect the data for the answers of three …show more content…
First, the numbers of the participants in the two groups were different when 46 students were in the experimental group and the other 43 were in the control group. This might lead to the questions of research reliability. Secondly, only 89 undergraduates were selected from one university, which means that the results could not be generalized to all English learners in Taiwan. Finally, one of the aims of the research, which was to determine the reading attitude of the participants, might not be achieved when the researchers used the quantitative method (the Likert scale) to access qualitative data such as students’ reading attitude. The data might be unreliable due to dishonest