How does reading online change the reading experience?

Dr. Charles Browne, Meiji Gakuin UniversityDr. Rob Waring, Notre Dame Seishin University

Free online Extensive Reading resources and writing tools here:www.er-central.com

www.er-central.com/OGTE

Subtitle for our talk :

“Carry it with you!”

Amazon.com report selling more e-books than paper books in 2011

20-28% of publishing revenue comes from digital media (in 2011)

Penguin report e-book sales more than doubled in 2011 alone

333% increase in e-book exports from the U.S. since 2012 97% of the 123m Americans who read newspapers online

read on PCs, 3% on devices 25% of new Spanish ISBNs are for e-books e-books help boys to read more than girls 33% of Americans own e-readers The total value of reading materials (e-books and paper)

bought in 2011 is down, but sales of e-pubs is increasing Most growth in e-pub sales is from down-market material

Source www.the-digital-reader.com

The world is changing:

Gives access to more reading materials:

Free magazines

Free newspapers

Free books (e.g. Guttenberg Project)

Ability to store hundreds of books in a small device

Tendency towards shorter text length

Ability to ready any time, any place

Project Guttenberg …www.gutenberg.org

Tendency Towards Shorter Length…

Interactive Reading Features:

Online dictionary with direct access

Access to bookstores online

Change font and size

Ability to sync between devices / backup

Online notes / highlighting / sharing

Text-to-Speech

Can have accompanying links, videos, and interactive learning activities

Change Typeface/size…

Instant purchase online…

Highlighting/compare others…

Sync with all other

devices!!!!

Instantly look up any word…

What are the most popular reading devices?

What are the most popular reading devices?

What are the most popular reading devices?

Strengths for Authors:

Can bypass traditional publishers

Shorter time to delivery to market

Access to many markets & formats

In some formats, can edit even after publishing (Wiki-style)

More editorial freedom, fewer “rules”

Online tools which assist the “grading” of material

The OGTEwww.er-central.com/ogte/

Free online tool for grading texts

Analyzes presence or absence of high frequency vocabulary

Gives detailed statistical analysis

USING THE OGTE(1) Choose an Article….

(2) Paste into OGTE and choose a target difficulty level….

“out of list” words are often proper nouns which the system is designed to handle/ignore…

Leveling system is designed by Rob’s work for the Extensive Reading

Foundation…

Level 9

(3) Simply rewrite hard words and phrases to desired level….

Words in orange are ones re-written by editor (ie easier words than the red “out of level” ones)…

Possible side-effects of digital publishing

Outsourcing of memory

20% slower reading speed

Rewiring of the brain in new ways (heightened multi-tasking skills vs shorter attention spans)

Shorter texts can lead to less commitment to a piece of writing and lower chance of ‘deep reading’

Huge increase in eye-sight issues in Asia in the last decade

A change from a linear to non-linear text processing leading to unpredictable indirections of a reader’s thoughts and inferences

Possible side-effects II

Great associative thinking and mental effort required to read hypertext due to the increase in distractions and possible mental overload

Lower extra-textual associative connections in an unchanging reading environment

Is the brain being rewired?

Of course. But so does any input

Unclear if it’s long lasting – reading has no genetic base so can’t be passed on to descendants

Future Needs:

Online reading, especially via smartphones or devices is a perfect solution for encouraging students to increase the amount of English input

Need to find, organize, offer and track as many online reading materials, especially graded materials, as possible

Need to take advantage of interactive reading features of online platform

Future Needs II:

Need to understand we are moving from a reading brain to a digital one

Need to develop bi-textual literacy in our learners

Need to nurture multi-tasking reading skills

Need to see textual input as not limited just to the written word

Need to learn to process a vastly increased volume of input and input sources

Critical need to ensure learners don’t shift away from in-depth reading and lose a whole level of textual comprehension

How should online reading respond?

Huge variety of texts but not only focus on bite-sized texts

Require learners to read deeply not just blast through texts

Ensure there are vehicles to express and exchange ideas with others through social networking

Thanks

Rob and Charlie