Making reading accessible and enjoyable for all: Potential of teacher-made ebooks in supporting young English language learners who struggle to read

The emergence of digital children’s books has led to a heightened interest in their impact on children’s literacy development. In a study commissioned by National Literacy Trust, e-books were found to improve reading motivation among reluctant readers due to their potential benefits for improving reading speed and comprehension (Picton 2014). Henry (2010) also notes how technology can improve children’s endurance for reading by allowing them to enjoy texts which match their age and interest. Zipke (2013), in a review of e-books for beginning readers, concludes that the best e-books are those which make good uses of technological affordances to provide additional support to comprehension and literacy development.
However, for many young English language learners, especially those who struggle with reading, the majority of commercially published e-books are still too difficult. In order to address this problem, teachers presently can use e-book creation tools to create or customise reading materials to make them enjoyable and accessible for all. In order to increase pre-service English teachers’ understanding of richness of e-books and ability to consider the role of teacher-generated e-books in English language teaching, a project entitled ‘Supporting Struggling Readers with Books They Can and Want to Read: Teacher-made E-books’ was carried out.
By engaging in the creation of e-books and conducting trial lessons incorporating the e-books made, the recruited pre-service teachers were provided with opportunities to experience new ways to support children’s literacy development as they tried their hand at making e-books, elucidated on how their product could potentially encourage good literacy teaching practices and reflected on what could be done to further improve their e-book design and teaching approaches.
This presentation aims to help participants understand how new literary experiences are made possible with the unique affordances of e-books and critically evaluate the use of teacher-made e-books in TESOL contexts with reference to findings generated by this project. Recommendations on promising e-book design and instructional approaches for supporting less proficient young English learners with teacher-created e-books will also be made. Copyright © 2019 Educating the Global Citizen International Perspectives on Foreign Language Teaching in the Digital Age Conference.