The Lessons Learned from the Digital Extensive Reading Trial

The purpose of this research is to examine the feasibility of a digital extensive reading programme and the attitude of English-major college students toward the programme. The research was conducted in the department of English in a professional training college in Tokyo, which never offered compulsory extensive reading classes before. There were 20 participants, none of which had any experience of an extensive reading programme, or with a digital library before. The participants had one month of digital reading experience with Xreading. The research result revealed that the introduction of the digital library itself did not encourage students to establish English reading habits. The sheer amount of material to read online actually discouraged some students from reading at all. The concerns and the implications from the findings are discussed.