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.

This article discusses an adjunct Sustained Silent Reading Program (SSR) in which getting satisfaction from reading and developing a better attitude toward reading are the goals. When doing SSR, student self-select books from a collection and read them. They also write journal entries, prepare oral and written book reports, and talk about books that they are reading. They receive recognition for the books they finish. While it is the student’s task to read and read a lot, it is the ESL program’s task to provide a variety of interesting books that students can understand.

In this pilot study, participating Hispanic and Southeast Asian freshmen took a writing-intensive history survey course with a weekly analytic journal task. The study examined the helpfulness of the weekly journal and the scaffolding steps provided by the professor and teaching assistants, by peers in their learning community, and by out-of-class tutors. Students completed a survey about their perceptions related to the analytic journal task, their self-assessment of their reading comprehension, their views about the helpfulness of the social learning opportunities offered from peers in the course and from tutors, and the time they spent on the journal task. The survey was administered early and late in the semester. The findings show that when students wrote every week in response to primary sources, they got regular practice in reading, critical thinking, and writing. This study suggests that regular reading practice along with scaffolding by a university history professor, while helpful in certain ways, does not seem to be sufficient to help the participating students overcome challenges with reading comprehension and vocabulary of assigned history texts. This pilot study offers practical ideas for instructors of college or university ESL, for those assigning reading and writing journals, and for tutoring center tutors and coordinators.