The purpose of this study is to determine whether extensive reading has positive effects on developing inferencing skills. Extensive reading is a language learning method of reading large amounts of comprehensible texts. This method limits the use of dictionaries while reading; therefore, extensive readers have greater practice in dealing with unfamiliar words than non-extensive readers. One of the ways to deal with unfamiliar words is to infer the meaning of the word using contextual clues. Knowing how to infer the meaning of unknown words is a helpful skill for language learners. Due to the fact that extensive readers have a greater practice in dealing with unknown words, this study examines whether there are any differences in the precision of inferencing skills between extensive readers and non-extensive readers. There were 39 participants analyzed in this study, 28 non-extensive readers and 11 extensive readers. The results showed that extensive reading has positive effects on language learners’ inferencing skills. In terms of accuracy, we could not see a statistical difference; however, the extensive readers had a higher percentage in accurately inferring the word meaning. In terms of the use of knowledge sources, extensive readers were able to choose the appropriate knowledge source when inferring the target word. These results indicate that extensive reading can enhance language learners’ inferencing skills.

This thesis studied young, struggling readers, all of whom had participated in the Reading Recovery literacy intervention, and investigated whether differential progress was made by children learning English as an additional language when compared with their native, English-speaking peers. The children were assessed on a pre- and post-test basis on literacy measures associated with reading comprehension in a UK context. Following a Pilot Phase, 52 children who were learning English as an additional language, and 48 native, English-speaking children were recruited from twenty-three primary schools in 8 local authorities across the UK. The children were administered standardised literacy measures, including the British Abilities Scale (BAS) single word reading test, the British Picture Vocabulary Scales (BPVS) vocabulary knowledge test, the Phonological Assessment Battery (PHAB) pseudo-word reading test, and two reading comprehension measures: the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT) and the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC). Statistical analyses were conducted on the data and the results indicated that differential progress was made by the groups, after initial levels of decoding or vocabulary were covaried. The first research question investigated the differential progress made by the two groups, and over the course of the intervention, the EAL children made more progress after controlling for initial skills at entry. After controlling for initial vocabulary levels, the EAL group made more gains than their NS peers, as measured by the BAS single word reading assessment. The second research question examined differential predictors of reading comprehension, and multiple regression analyses showed that vocabulary was a stronger predictor for EAL learners, whereas decoding was found to be a stronger predictor for NS learners. The findings suggest that it is important to develop the vocabulary abilities of EAL learners, as the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension acquisition was found to be stronger for this group than for the NS group. The findings also suggest that NS children’s decoding abilities must be supported, as the relationship between single word reading and the acquisition of reading comprehension was found to be stronger for this group than for the EAL group.