Progress 1 : Statement of the problem

Statement of the problem

Generally, the reading habit among Malaysians is widely reported to be declining day by day. It is getting more and more obvious. This is evident mainly from the quality of their language output. This problem arises when there is a language output activity. Pupils struggle to talk and communicate in English. The lack of vocabulary knowledge adds more to this problem. Reading as a leisure activity is gradually becoming less preferred and the electronic media such as internet and television seem to be more engaging to a wider range of the society especially young Malaysians in these days.

As an English teacher, I always wanted my students to read fluently and obtain as many new vocabularies as they could by reading. Unfortunately, the student get bored very easily as they frequently tried to look up for the meaning of the words in the dictionary. This is when I realized that the students need more extensive reading while what I have provided them was actually the intensive reading.

According to Susser and Robb (1990), “Such a pedagogic practice may be justified as a language lesson, but not as a reading lesson…. Intensive reading is actually not reading at all.” This justifies the fact that most primary school students are not at all fluent readers of English. They apply word-for-word processing of the reading texts, try to translate into their first language, and consequently, hesitate in their oral reading over even the simplest words they know. As a result, most of the students have negative attitudes toward L2 reading. In order to overcome all these drawbacks, students should be exposed to large quantities of reading materials that may help them develop fluency, speed, automaticity of word recognition, and positive attitudes toward L2 reading.

Additionally, Day and Bamford (1998) state that there are some points where extensive reading less focused in English teaching classroom. The ER programme is not common in second language learning because of various factors. Primarily, the students are learning to read a second language material which they do not read or like reading, (Day & Bamford, 1998). The students may not read and do not like reading because they are being exposed to some other learning activities. It looks like a simple view but it is true when come across real life situations. The more students read; the better they become in it. Reading activity has been given less attention by the pupils and teacher in order to give importance for writing activity.

For ER programme to be successful, every ESL teacher should provide pupils with interesting reading materials. But, in my school, there are teachers who do not provide the pupils with reading materials and these pupils do their own readings. This is because they are giving importance to examination. They are exposed towards writing skills which is the most acquired skill in the examination. So, they used to give an attention towards writing skill rather that extensive reading. As for extensive reading, exposure of reading materials is very important to path the pupils on reading. The materials for reading requires multiple sources like books, text books, magazines, newspapers and these materials should be interesting to the pupils. If pupils are exposed to their selection of reading materials, reading become more beneficial and be pleasurable for these pupils.