Interview with Dr. Charles Browne, Professor, Meiji Gakuin University. This is “Charles the Great,” from Meiji Gakuin University, and of course, English Central and many other places. And [he is] affectionately known as “Charlie.”

We are going to ask him a couple of questions about extensive reading. [The] first question is, “What’s good about it?”

Extensive reading? Okay, well I think the reason I like extensive reading is I think that Japanese students don’t do enough reading, and the reading that they have done in the past is usually not really reading. It’s more like translation. It’s too difficult. It’s too frustrating. Reading should be interesting. Reading should be fun even for second language learners. And what extensive reading is is reading materials at exactly your level. So if your English ability is here, you shouldn’t be reading books that are way up at this difficulty level. You should be reading books down at this difficulty level so that you can read it without a dictionary. And if you’re reading books every day that you don’t need a dictionary for, you’re going to read more and you’re going to read more. And as you read more, your confidence goes up, and as your confidence goes up, your motivation goes up. And as your confidence and motivation goes up, you start reading more. And as you do all of these things, your vocabulary grows. Your grammar grows. I just think that it’s one of the best things that you can do to grow your English on a daily basis.

“Charlie the Great,” you just nailed that question. Thank you very much.