The CATESOL Journal

This pilot study examined multilingual university students’ willingness to engage in voluntary extensive reading (ER) of books after they received training. The research questions were whether training appeared to promote self-efficacy, motivation for the task, use of metacognitive strategies, and independent reading. University freshmen in an ESL reading and writing course participated in the project. The ER training included: (a) framing the ER task through stories of struggle and emotional appeal, and (b) introducing independent reading strategies. Surveys were used to collect data. Findings showed that students had beliefs of self-efficacy related to English book reading after the training, and they made considerable progress in their voluntary reading by the end of the course. The strategies that students found most helpful were selecting books for themselves, keeping records of their progress, and staying focused. Participants anticipated that ER would help them with academic literacy.