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The main focus of this research was to examine the effects of extensive reading on junior high school students' language proficiency and learning attitude development, compared with those who received the current reading IR (grammar/translation-based) instruction. The potential of graded readers and books for native English speaking children in English learning was also investigated. The research aimed at finding evidence to support the adoption of extensive reading in the school syllabus in Taiwan, and to raise the awareness of educational authorities about the desirability of adopting ER in the school curriculum. The results of the study consistently showed that extensive reading is more effective on improving all the variables mentioned than the current IR instruction. While the positive outcomes stand in line with the results of previous studies, this study also gave insight into the use of the materials, the amount of reading time and accompanying activities. The findings indicated significantly the strength of the graded readers (GR) approach on students' language learning in all circumstances. The effects of reading books for native EngRsh speaking children (BNESC) proved positive only when the amount of time per week given to ER was doubled. Moreover, the results appeared to be contrary to the widely held belief that reading interesting books is alone sufficient to improve student attitudes. In fact, with this level and type of learners, without accompanying activities ER appeared to take away their enthusiasm. Once collaborative activities were introduced, ER showed great potential for improving language, proficiency, reading ability and attitudes toward reading. The findings demonstrate the potential of ER for improving students' language proficiency and learning attitudes. Thus, they provide support for integrating ER into the English curriculum for improving current learning and teaching approaches. Moreover, the findings indicate the desirability of investing in ER as paving the way for students' long-term development. Implications of this study can be deduced in several aspects: the adoption of ER, the need of book provision, the need of reading strategy training, the use of authentic reading materials, the amount of reading time and the use of accompanying activities.

This thesis evaluated a new speech rhythm measure, the Lexical Judgement Task (LJT), by conducting a series of cross-sectional studies. It was examined whether the LJT could be used with children from different age groups, whether associations between speech rhythm sensitivity, phonological awareness and reading skills could be observed and whether speech rhythm sensitivity could predict reading skills cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Study 1 piloted the LJT with 5- to 9-year-old children and assessed the relationship between poor and good readers‟ speech rhythm sensitivity and their reading skills. Analyses showed that poor readers performed lower on the task compared to good readers, indicating that reduced stress sensitivity was related to lower reading proficiency. Examination of the task indicated potential fatigue effects, thus the task was shortened, which resulted in a 12-item tasks that was used through the remainder of the studies. Children between 4- and 11-years old were assessed in three following studies and results showed differential associations between stress sensitivity and reading (related) skills; indicating an involvement of maturation in stress sensitivity‟s development but also highlighting that stress sensitivity is involved in reading skills differently across varying ages. The final study in this thesis examined the longitudinal effect of stress sensitivity on reading skills and it was found that stress sensitivity was not able to account for growth in reading skills, independently from vocabulary or phonological processing skills; although concurrently unique variance in reading skills was accountable to stress sensitivity. Overall, this thesis highlights the importance of stress sensitivity in children‟s reading development, offers supporting evidence for previously found associations between this skills and reading abilities and demonstrates the need to incorporate speech rhythm sensitivity in theoretical reading development models.

This study investigated the relationship between reading attitudes in L1 and in L2 of learners in Pakistan. It also investigated the differences between reading attitudes of learners from different home backgrounds, rural and urban. The participants of the study had Sindhi as their L1 and English as their L2. They came from rural (n=186) and urban (n=202) parts of Sindh. The study employed a mixed methods approach. It collected data through a questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire collected information on four reading attitude variables: self perception as a reader, utilitarian value for reading, personal involvement for reading and lack of reading anxiety both in Sindhi and in English. The fifth variable was learner’s rural/urban home background. My study partially confirms findings from previous studies indicating that reading attitudes in L1 and in L2 are related. Rural learners displayed a stronger relationship between reading attitudes in L1 and in L2, whereas urban learners displayed a weaker relationship. This finding was further confirmed when, through a multiple regression analysis, the contribution of each reading attitude was checked in terms of the coefficient values. A learner’s ‘rural/urban home background’ emerged as the strongest indicator of a learner’s reading attitudes than his/her reading attitudes in Sindhi. Thus, urban home background seems to add positively to reading attitudes in English. The findings show the importance of one’s educational background, home and society on the whole in the process of developing a learner’s attitudes towards reading in English. Furthermore, this study also demonstrated marked differences in the reading attitudes of both the groups in terms of their reading attitudes in L1 and in L2. The rural learners had better reading attitudes in L1 than their counterparts, whereas the urban learners had better reading attitudes in English than the rural learners. Such a finding again supports the role of society and social background in shaping learners’ reading attitudes in L1 or in L2.