Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 2(2) May 2019 pp. 101-119 P- ISSN: 2614-5960 e-ISSN: 2615-4137 http://jurnal.unswagati.ac.id/index.php/RILL Copyright @ 2019 Vivi Aulia 101 PROMOTING EXTENSIVE READING ACTIVITY BY CONSTRUCTING READING LOG PROJECT IN EFL CLASS Vivi Aulia STKIP PGRI Banjarmasin ABSTRACT This research aims at knowing the result of students’ extensive reading (ER) activities that is described on reading logs project carried out by English Department students of STKIP PGRI Banjarmasin. Besides that, this research also aims at knowing the students’ attitude towards the ER activity by gaining their personal views on the benefits and difficulties accomplishing the activity. This research took place towards 22 students who were assigned to do ER activity outside the class time. The data were collected through the documentation of their reading logs project and the questionnaire. The reading log project consisted of six elements that were reported by students individually presenting the summary of their ER activities during 16 weeks while the questionnaire gained information further on clarifying the benefits and the difficulties of doing the activity. The result of documentation students’ reading logs project showed that the students were comfortable having freedom to choose reading material based on determined genres and its sources, stating specific reason on choosing reading material, and reflecting what has been discovered while reading. Furthermore, the result of questionnaire showed that students have benefits and difficulties in promoting ER activity through constructing reading log project. Since they were given freedom on this activity, 100% of them stated that ER activity were not easy due to limitation of their free time during the large amount of other courses assignment. This research concluded that promoting ER to build students’ reading habit and reading culture should be developed continually. Keywords: extensive reading, reading log project, and EFL class Sari Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui hasil dari aktivitas Extensive Reading (ER) yang dituangkan dalam catatan harian Reading oleh mahasiswa Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Banjarmasin. Di samping itu, penelitian ini juga bertujuan mengetahui pendapat mahasiswa dengan menggali manfaat dan kesulitan yang dihadapi selama mereka melakukan kegiatan ER. Sebanyak 22 orang mahasiswa diberikan tugas untuk melaksanakan ER di luar waktu perkuliahan. Data penelitian ini dikumpulkan melalui dokumen catatan harian Reading mahasiswa dan kuisioner. Catatan harian Reading mahasiswa terdiri dari enam elemen yang dipaparkan oleh setiap mahasiswa berupa rekaman aktivitas ER mereka selama 16 minggu, sedangkan kuesioner berisi informasi untuk menggali manfaat dan kesulitan yang mereka hadapi Aulia, V. 102 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 selama melaksanakan kegiatan ER. Hasil dari dokumen catatan harian Reading mahasiswa menunjukkan bahwa mereka cukup nyaman memiliki kebebasan dalam memilih bahan bacaan dengan jenis yang telah ditentukan, memilih sumber bahan bacaan, menyatakan alasan memilih bahan bacaan tertentu, serta merefleksikan apa saja yang mahasiswa dapatkan selama kegiatan ER. Selain itu, hasil kuesioner menunjukkan bahwa mahasiswa mendapatkan manfaat dalam melaksanakan ER serta menyusun catatan harian Reading. Selain mendapatkan manfaat, mahasiswa juga mengalami kesulitan dalam melaksanakan kegiatan ER. Meskipun mereka diberikan kebebasan dalam kegiatan ER, 100% mahasiswa menyatakan bahwa melaksanakan kegiatan ER tidaklah mudah karena faktor terbatasnya waktu luang untuk membaca dengan rileks di tengah banyaknya jumlah tugas mata kuliah lainnya yang harus diselesaikan di waktu bersamaan. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa menumbuhkan kegiatan ER untuk membangun kebiasaan dan budaya membaca kepada mahasiswa perlu dikembangkan terus menerus. Kata kunci: extensive reading, catatan harian reading, dan pembelajaran Bahasa Inggris ______________________________________________________________________ Received 10 March 2019 last revision 18 April 2019 published 31 May 2019 doi. 10.33603/rill.v2i2.2042 Introduction EFL reading activities becomes the important part to discuss. Reading is a cognitive process involving the reader and the text being read to get the understanding and information. In the context of learning English as a foreign language, reading which dominantly focuses on the activities connecting with text source is considered to be interactive skill among others skills. Interacting with the reading text is an activity using the cognitive area in which the readers are acquired to activate the critical thinking skill for getting such meaningful understanding dealing with the content of the text. Building students’ willingness to read is not easy. This is because reading is revealed as the essential means for learning everything. Encouraging the students being lifelong readers should be built regarding the fact that the most part of the information sources around the world is in form of text mode so that reading ability is significant to support the activities of updating worldwide information. Thus, interacting with the text, gaining new knowledge, and getting access to update information are the positive things on being the active and interactive readers. Moreover, being active and interactive readers will lead students to develop their critical thinking skills as well as sharpen their Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 2(2) May 2019 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 103 point of views on text being read. In the process of understanding the reading text, a reader generally recognizes and interrogates with anything in the text, such as what the text tells about, how the writer’s viewpoints are, and what they will get after reading (Maltepe, 2016, p.171). These reading engagements are needed to develop by EFL students so that they will have meaningful reading activity and get valuable feedback. As the effort of promoting meaningful reading activity, extensive reading (ER) is one of reading activity the teacher can carry out encouraging students to be interactive readers in forms of reading many kinds of materials on a wide range of topics. Students are allowed selecting their own reading materials matching their language level. Besides that, ER emphasizes on reading activity individually both inside and outside the classroom for getting general understanding (Day, 2015, p.295). These kind of ways are not only leading students to become active readers as well as independent learners, but also allowing them to develop their interest and it is the way to affect their motivation positively (Bonyadi and Zeinalpur, 2014, p.386). Extensive reading (ER) which is also commonly recognized as independent reading allows the students to do cognitive process based on their own reading ability. It opens up the opportunity for students to dive into the active and critical readers. Students read independently through a wide selection of reading material enabling them to generate interesting and insightful feedback on their comprehension. The possibility of ER can be implemented on the students’ choice what to read and explicit instruction about what, why, and how readers read the books as many as possible and variety of text, having access to texts, and talking about what they read. These activities can be applied actively only if the students are motivated to have awareness on allocating enough time in reading various materials. Therefore, ER activities have been used in many classrooms to help encourage students to learn reading material on their own in order to improve their comprehension, fluency, and rich their vocabularies. Reading various comprehensible materials ensures that the students will be able to build fluency, read for meaning, and having greater reading confidence (Weber, 2018, p.5). When the students are given any chances to choose the Aulia, V. 104 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 reading material on their own, it will lead them to their motivation and reading ability improvement. In other words, if the students have their own reading materials, they have the freedom of exploring the topic they will be more interested in reading. In the context of promoting ER activities, an ER project is assigned to English department students of STKIP PGRI Banjarmasin for those who take Advanced Reading course in the third semester of their study. In the first two semesters of reading course, the students are taught to have the intensive reading in which they do skimming, scanning, getting main idea of the text, understanding difficult vocabularies of the text, and getting understanding of grammatical structure of the text. In details, there are three sessions of reading course available in the first three semesters at the English department of STKIP PGRI Banjarmasin. They are Basic Reading given in the first semester; Intermediate Reading given in the second semester; and Advanced Reading given in the third semester. Based on syllabus of the course, Basic and Intermediate Reading focus on developing students’ competence in recognizing and understanding the text and its types. They are also trained to learn and practice using various reading strategies. Furthermore, Advanced Reading is the last session of reading course expanding students’ with variety of literary texts, such as social science, natural science, technology, history, and biography texts. It can be difficult text types to read, otherwise; the students’ activities are expected to sharpen their knowledge by reading advanced text types. In order to support the more reading activities and valuable experiences, reading log is selected to facilitate students activating their background knowledge to connect with the text. According to Lyutaya (2011, p.29), reading log is designed to accompany students maintaining a written record of their personal views to the text. The log becomes the important part for students expressing their attitudes towards a text, reflecting on the things they discovered while reading, and allowing them to make connection between the author’s views and the students’ expectation on the text. Moreover, reading log which is known as reading journal offers the place for students have their own recordings on the reading process representing the readers’ responses to Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 2(2) May 2019 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 105 texts (Delarriva and Basabe, 2015, p.38). It reflects the students’ point of view gotten from the reading materials, such as: the moral message, pros and cons toward the content of reading as well as the opinion to get knowledge relating what they read. As the concept of ER is widely for pleasure, the reading logs the students construct in this study are used to record what the students have read during ER activity. There is no interruption on any exercises they should do like reading comprehension question or getting the meaning of difficult words should be consulted to dictionary. There are some previous similar studies that have been conducted by other researcher showing that using reading log is useful supporting students’ ER activities. Aliponga (2013, p.73-80) conducted a study on investigating the benefit of reading journal for ER. His studies showed that the reading journal motivates students to read more, enables them to understand the main idea and important details of the text they choose, as well as enables them to have critical thinking towards the text. Another similar study comes from Khonamri et al (2016, p.58-67) who investigated the use of reading log for developing critical thinking skill in literature-based ER activity. Two groups of students were observed to see its difference on their critical thinking skill level. The result showed that the two groups perform a little progress after the treatment of doing ER. Due to the result of previous studies that reading log can be utilized in ER activity, the researcher tried to promote ER activity to the English Department students of STKIP PGRI Banjarmasin who took Advanced Reading course by constructing the similar way. In other words, the purpose of this research covers two points. First of all, this research aims at knowing the result of students’ ER activities outside of class time that is summarized into the reading log project. Secondly, this research investigates the students’ attitude towards the ER activity by gaining their personal views on the benefits and the difficulties from the process of doing ER activity during 16 weeks. Method This research was conducted by using descriptive quantitative design in which the researcher described the process of students performing ER activity during 16 weeks in Advanced Reading course by calculating the percentage of students’ trends in Aulia, V. 106 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 performing the activity. There were 22 students of the third semester batch 2017 at the English department of STKIP PGRI Banjarmasin as the participants of this research. The first meeting of the course is begun by introducing the reading activities students had in a semester. The teacher described that they had two kinds of reading activities in this course. The first activity was in-class reading in which the students were given the text article for reading during class time. During this process, the teacher led the lesson as needed, using whole-class articles had been determined as well as dialoguing each other about the articles dealing with natural science, social science, technology, history, and biography to discuss. Next, the second activity was out-of-class reading that became the ER activity for students. There were four guidelines the teacher explained to students following the essential ER project adapted from Lyutaya (2015, p.27-29). The procedures of doing ER activity and constructing reading log were described as follows: 1. Students choose the reading material The teacher assigned the students to read as many as reading texts or articles by themselves from various sources outside the class time. Since the objective of this activity was to make reading enjoyable, the students were given freedom to choose the reading material from five literary genres. They were natural science, social science, technology, history, and biography texts. Take for instance: if they were interested on natural science rather than other texts, they could read a lot of the articles about that as far as they feel enjoy reading it. Moreover, they students were also given authorities in selecting the forms of reading material like book, encyclopedia, articles from academic journals, newspaper, magazine, various downloaded articles from the internet, the collection of book from college library, as well as from other possible resources. They were free to decide the sources of the articles they need to read. Besides that, they were also free to decide the amount of articles they need to read. 2. Students choose the right difficulty level In the process of choosing the reading material, the teacher assigned the students to find the reading texts or articles in a comfort level for them to read. The difficult and Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 2(2) May 2019 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 107 complicated on such text might prevent students from enjoying the materials so that they were suggested to choose the acceptable reading materials on their level of difficulties. The wide varieties of materials were available to choose with acceptable and possible difficulty level for each of them. 3. Students present the progress of their reading in class During the ER activity outside the class time, the students were asked to present their individual ER progress to the class. In every meeting of the class lesson, each student was given opportunity to share ideas with others about what kinds of text they had read, their point of views towards the text had been read, discovering something valuable while reading, and others things to discuss with the whole class. 4. Students keep a reading log In the process of doing ER outside of class time during 16 weeks, the students were asked to record their activities regularly by constructing individual reading log. The components that should be written down on their reading logs project covered six areas. They were: (1) the title of each article they read, (2) the category of each article they read, (3) the source of each article they read, (4) the reason why each article was interesting to read, (5) the reflection what has been discovered while reading by identifying the author’s purpose and point of view on each article, and (6) the short summary of each article. All the students should submit their final reading logs at the end of semester. The documentation of students’ reading logs were analyzed and mapped out in form of table to see the most students prefer on each component of reading log had been submitted. The individual reading log was assessed with portfolio assessment scoring rubric since it contained a growing collection of students work throughout the project and provide a record of student’ accomplishments over time. The students were given score on the intervals between (1) excellent, (2) very good, (3) good, and (4) needs work by considering the students’ completion on six components of reading log they had submitted for all the articles they read. This assessment model was adapted from the portfolio assessment proposed by Lyutaya (2015, p.33). Aulia, V. 108 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 Finally, in order to know the students’ attitudes towards the use of reading log promoting ER, the questionnaire was distributed to see their personal views about the benefits and the difficulties they had after accomplishing this activity at the end of semester. The result of questionnaire was calculated and tabulated in form of table to get the percentage on students’ responses of each questionnaire item. All the data collections were analyzed using triangulation to get insight on the result of this research. Results and Discussion The results of this research cover two areas. They are: (1) the summary record of students’ reading logs project of doing ER outside the class time during 16 weeks, and (2) the result of students’ attitudes towards the ER activity after accomplishing it in the end of semester. Each of these results is presented in the following part: 1. The Summary Record of Students’ Reading Logs of Doing ER The following is the presentation of the detail result from each component of reading log the students have accomplished during 16 weeks. Table 1. The Category of Reading Texts or Article Title the Students Choose No The Category of Reading Text or Articles the Students Choose Sample of Article Titles Number of Students Choosing the Text Percentage of students Choosing the Text 1. N Natural Science  Human creatures  Human nature  Biological and chemistry articles  Solar system, natural phenomenon  Others similar articles  Astronomers Discover a Planet Made Water  Earthquake and Tsunami Devastate Indonesia  Underwater Meadows of Seagrass Could be the Ideal Carbon Sinks 5 23% 2. Social Science  Society, environment, people  Social and society phenomenon  Cultural articles  Others similar articles  Pros and Cons of Facebook  Mothers Adopt a Universal Tone of Voice when They Talk to Babies  American Culture: Traditions and Customs of US 6 27% 3. Technology  Modern art of technology  Evolution of technology  Others similar articles  The Evolution of Video Games  Evolution of the Phone: From the First Call to the Next Frontier 3 14% Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 2(2) May 2019 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 109  A cheap set of LEDs is the Best Way to Upgrade Your Fancy New TV 4. H History  History of specific places, famous persons, arts, and others  History of development of particular religion  History of particular life philosophy of someone  Others similar articles  This 2.300-Year-Old Egyptian Fortress Had an Unusual Task: Guarding a Part that Sent Elephants to War  Stone Tools at Arabian “Crossroads” Present Mysteries of Ancient Human Migration  The History of Yin and Yang 4 18% 5. B Biography  Local and national hero  Famous person in the world  Particular character of person in the world  Others similar articles  The Biography of B.J. Habibie  The Biography of Marthin Luther King Jr.  The Biography of Mahatma Gandhi  The Biography of R.A. Kartini 4 18% Total of students 22 100% From Table 1 above, it can be concluded that the students have various articles to read about. There are no particular articles which they selected most since the distribution percentages of the reading material they choose are relatively the same. Social science and natural science are the most two articles the students read since they discussed the interesting things about people, society, and universe. Table 2. The Source of Reading Texts or Articles the Students Choose No Source of the Text or Articles Number of Students The Percentage of Students 1 Textbook/encyclopedia/reference book from the college library 3 13% 2 E-newspaper/magazine and printed newspaper/magazine 3 13% 3 Articles from academic journals 5 24% 4 Downloaded articles from internet 11 50% Total 22 100% Table 2 above shows that the highest percentage of students (50%) choose downloaded reading texts or articles from the internet as the material to read extensively outside of class time. As internet provides million worldwide information and learning sources, most of students are active enough to find out the reading material both in online and offline modes. Besides that, the high percentage of them also comes from academic journal articles (24%) they select to get the reading material. They tend to select the Aulia, V. 110 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 academic journal articles due to the fact that it also provides various research result and conceptual articles from specific disciplines enriching their knowledge. Table 3. The Students’ Reason Why the Articles are Interesting to Read No The Students’ Reason Why The Article They Choose is Interesting to Read Number of Students The Percentage of Students 1. The reading texts or articles discuss the new things the students have not read yet. 3 14% 2. The reading texts or articles offer new perspectives on human life. 4 18% 3. The reading texts or articles update the newest information and knowledge around the world. 6 27% 4. The reading texts or articles teach us respecting other living things. 5 23% 5. The reading texts or articles teach us to always thank God on everything we have in our life. 4 18% Total 22 100% Based on Table 3 above, there are various reasons why the reading texts or articles they choose on their own are interesting to read. The high percentage of their reasons (27%) shows that the reading texts or articles they search update the newest information and knowledge around the world. Besides that, 23% of them said that the content of the reading texts or articles teach them to respect other living things. This is because the majority of articles they read are about people, society, and universe so that they get any valuable life lesson from the environment around them. Table 4. The Students’ Reflection on Doing ER Activity No T The Result of Students’ Reflection on Doing ER Activity Number of Students Percentage of Students 1. The students find out the value of life while reading, such as religion value, social value, moral value, and aesthetic value. 3 14% 2. The students find out the pros and cons on the author’s point of view about the text. 7 32% 3. The students find out the different culture, custom, life philosophy, and other things from other countries on the text. 5 23% 4. The students find out the important lesson from the biography of particular person and figure so that they can respect their life. 1 4% 5. The students criticize the particular issue on the reading texts or articles to be reflected in their daily life. 6 27% Total 22 100% Table 4 above presents the result of students’ reflection on what they have discovered while doing ER. There are 32% of them reflect on the author’s point of view on the content of the reading texts or articles, for example; some of the authors say negative Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 2(2) May 2019 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 111 perspectives on the particular topic about environment due to the fact that it is hard to educate people keeping their health. This leads on the students’ reflections that there are always different point of views occur between the authors and the readers. Besides that, 27% of students criticize the particular issue on the reading texts or articles to be reflected in their daily life. This indicates that the students are active enough reflecting valuable feedback they can get from the reading texts or articles they read. 2. The Result of Students’ Attitudes towards ER Activity After the students submitted their reading logs project at the end of semester, the teacher distributed questionnaire gaining the data about their attitudes towards the activity. The questionnaire consisted of nine items describing students’ personal views about the benefits and the difficulties during 16 weeks doing ER activity outside of class time. Table 5 presents the summary of their responses on each questionnaire item. Table 5. The Result of Students’ Responses on the Questionnaire No Statement The Students’ Responses Yes No 1. I feel comfortable choosing the reading material on my own to read extensively. 73% 27% 2. I feel comfortable to decide the kinds of reading material voluntarily I want to read. 82% 18% 3. I have difficulties in choosing the reading material on my own in this ER activity. 32% 68% 4. I feel comfortable choosing the reading material on my own right difficulty level. 78% 22% 5. Choosing the reading texts or articles based on my own right difficulty level is sometimes difficult for me. 50% 50% 6. I feel comfortable for sharing my ER progress to the class. 78% 22% 7. I get interactive feedback and responses from the class when sharing my ER progress. 82% 18% 8. Based on your experience, what are the benefits you got from ER activity using reading log? ER activity using reading log provides area for me to express and explore my feeling, comment, and emotions about the content of reading material. 64% 36% Reading log tracks my progress on large amount of reading material I have read so that I can motivate myself to have meaningful ER activity. 86% 14% ER is enjoyable for me since I have freedom to choose reading material, to choose the free time for reading, to choose the reading material based on my difficulty level, and feel free to choose the source of reading material on my own. 91% 9% 9. Based on your experience, what are the difficulties you got from ER activity using reading log? Sometimes, ER makes me stressful since allocating free time 100% - Aulia, V. 112 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 to read is not maximal due to the large amount of other course assignment should be handled at the same time. Reading independently without consulting on a dictionary is hard. As the objective of doing ER is gaining general understanding, I need to think such strategy to follow up the difficult words found while reading for not depending on the dictionary 91% 9% Based on Table 5 above, the students’ attitude towards the ER activity are different from each other. The high percentage of them responses the activity positively on some ER components like choosing the reading material on their own, choosing the reading material based on their own difficulty level, and sharing their ER progress with others. The benefits the students have got can also be seen from the table. They feel free to express and to explore their opinions, feelings, emotions, and possible feedback based on what they read. On the other hand, the students also have difficulties during the ER activity. Some of them feel anxious to read the different difficulty level of reading text with others. The other states that ER causes being stressful on some of them due to the limitation of allocating free time during the large amount of other course assignments should be handled at the same time. These indicate that each student has different impression each other after accomplishing the ER activity in the end of semester. Discussion Reading activity is a complex activity engaging the readers and the reading material to read. Working with reading material can be carried out in many ways to build awareness on the importance of having reading habit. ER which is also mentioned as independent reading requires the students to read large quantities of reading material aiming at gaining general understanding. It allows students to find pleasure in reading as they gain a general understanding of literary ideas, learn reading strategies, and build their motivation to have awareness on willing to read (Lyutaya, 2015, p.26). Besides that, ER encourages students improving other skills and literacy of English (Salameh, 2017, p.13). It is expected that ER gives new experiences for students to have enjoyable reading activity instead of intensive reading that merely needs more detailed understanding on grammatical, thematic, and discourse element of the reading material. Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 2(2) May 2019 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 113 Responding the finding of this research on the integration of ER activity with reading log construction, the English Department students at STKIP PGRI Banjarmasin have performed better on the activity under this research. They are assigned to do ER activity during 16 weeks outside the reading class time. As a way to record this activity, reading log is designed to be the project that should be completed representing the record of their individual reading. The objective of constructing reading log is the students have the opportunity to express, to explore, and to reflect valuable feedback from the ER activity they have accomplished. Following the concept of ER in which the students are allowed choosing the reading material on their own, the first finding of this research reports that there are 27% of the students choose the social science and 23% of them choose natural science. Meanwhile, technology (14%) area becomes the minority genre of reading material to read by the students. Students have freedom to choose the reading material on their own choice but it does not mean that they ignore particular genre due to its unfamiliar content. They choose the reading material based on what they want to read as they feel enjoy and comfortable with specific genre. Instead, every genre they choose has always implication on students. When they take the option on reading natural science and social science, it will promote their scientific literacy. Yarden (2009, p.309) proposes that scientific genre is important to read by students as it is a major source of new scientific information. Thus, reading about technology is also useful for them. It will affect students on getting the largest information on the issue of technology area around the world. The next finding of this research is the preferences of students in finding out the reading materials. There are 50% of them utilize internet network to find out downloaded reading materials or articles. Living in the 21 st century with the wide development of technology has given change on the way of students’ independence on determining the source of reading material to read. The ease of internet access helps them much on engaging themselves in ER activity. This is because the utilization of internet resources makes it possible for them to access a wide range of material that they can retrieve easily based on their needs. The more important of students’ preferences on utilizing Aulia, V. 114 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 internet encourage them to have information literacy skills that enable them to successfully surf the internet by searching information to improve learning (Kofo and Mercy, 2018, p.12). The various things are also found when the students state on their reading logs about the reasons why the reading materials they choose on their own are interesting to read. The highest percentage (27%) comes from those who said that the reading texts or articles update the newest information and knowledge around the world. There is a consistent result on this aspect with the result of students choose their reading materials majority from the internet. In this case, the existence of internet network is utilized by them to enlarge the knowledge by reading the news and information over the world. The other things come from students’ reflection on what has been discovered while reading extensively outside of class time. The majority of students (32%) reflect on the pros and cons about the author’s point of view. Reflecting on two sides of authors’ point of views refers to evaluating themselves on the beliefs and experiences which leads to certain understandings of texts. Furthermore, the use of reading log in this ER associates on the students’ reflection about what has been discovered while reading. Through reflection, the students have their general understanding on the reading text resulting in self-guidance and independent learning so that the message of author can be reflected on themselves. Nourdad and Asghari (2017, p.271) stated that the students should be trained to be reflective readers to gain insight and explore their thoughts while reading. These will build their point of views to criticize such issue and enable them to be active readers. All the findings gained from the result of students’ reading logs project under this research reveal on the conclusion about their attitudes towards this ER activity. They propose idea on the benefits and difficulties during ER activity in 16 weeks. The questionnaire which is distributed to the students at the end of semester show some essential points. First of all, choosing the reading material on the students’ own is responded positively by them. They feel comfortable to decide the reading material Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 2(2) May 2019 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 115 voluntarily. It indicates that the concept of ER about selection of reading material based on students’ interests is well performed. Second, in the context of students’ presentation and sharing idea on their reading progress to the class, the students state that they get interactive feedback and responses from the class. Sharing reading experiences by telling the reading material about, dialoguing about the authors’ views, and expressing their ideas towards the reading content are kinds of activity they have done in the class. It reflects a real-life task which is incorporated in reading instruction to build reading habit and reading culture (Charumanee, 2014, p.193). The third essential point gained from questionnaire is the students can express their feeling, emotion, and opinion through their reading logs. They report what they find interesting to talk about the parts of the text which made them are interested, have curiosity, agree with or disagree with the text. Reading log which is integrated on the students’ ER contributes to positive environment in the classroom to record their reading progress (Archer, 2012, p.179). Besides that, reading log enable students to motivate themselves of having value and meaning in the ER so that their motivation is likely to improve (Lipp, 2017, p.34). Despite the benefits the students have in ER activity, the essential point also comes from the difficulties they have from the activity. Since the ER activity outside the class should create students feel comfortable to read, the limitation of their free time becomes the main difficulties of accomplishing the activity. The large amount of other courses assignment takes time to handle so that the students have limited free time to read with pleasure. Academic pressure takes their time much on doing the course homework and assignment, making paper, summarizing the other course material, etc. As a result, the students are unable to do ER activity maximally regarding to this situation. This is in line with the result of previous research conducted by He and Green (2012, p.36). They conducted a research on investigating the challenges in implementing ER in Shanghai. One of the results of their research states that academic pressure potentially creates students in a bad mood and the ER will not become pleasurable activity in this Aulia, V. 116 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 circumstance. Dealing to this case, the teacher takes important role solving the students’ difficulties of ER activity under this condition. Another difficulties faced by students in doing this ER activity is related to the use of dictionary. As this is the first time for students doing ER activity, they state that it is hard to read something without consulting the difficult words using dictionary. Therefore, the role of teacher in motivating students not to concentrate their attention on checking word-by-word while doing ER activity is required. By training students to be independent readers, it will promote understanding the general meaning of the text. They are trained to get familiar with words quickly with practice. This will build students’ self-confidence because they do not need to worry about the meaning of the words so that they can pay attention in concentrating on the general meaning of the text (Archer, 2012, p.177; Fawzia and Salwa, 2016, p.96). Finally, the results of this research emphasize an important aspect to consider. Promoting the ER activity with constructing reading log in EFL class is complicated. In intensive reading activity, the teacher assists students to control their reading by getting main idea of the text rather than a complete, detailed understanding of every grammatical, thematic, and discourse elements of the text. Otherwise, in ER activity, the students read a large number of texts on a wide range of topics so that the success of this activity relies on students’ interests and knowledge. Addressing this point, a pedagogical teaching plan is necessary to ensure by setting and designing the optimal implementation of ER activity based on particular students’ conditions. Conclusion and Recommendation The present research has investigated the result of students’ ER activities outside of class time that is summarized into the reading log project. Based on the summary of their reading log projects, it is found that the students have various choices on the category and source of the reading materials, various reasons why the reading material they choose are interesting to read, and various reflection on what has been discovered while reading. In the process of doing ER activity, there are benefits and difficulties the students have. Since the ER activity is pleasurable for students having freedom Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 2(2) May 2019 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 117 choosing the material on their own difficulty level, they also sometimes cause uncomfortable for particular condition due to limitation of their free time. Finally, this research recommends of conducting further research and application of the different ways of implementing ER in educational settings. Sixteen weeks of doing ER cannot generalize the result of ER success. 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Investigating the effect of extensive reading on EFL learners’ reading attitudes at Hail University in KSA. Journal of Education and Practice, 8(8):7-15. Weber, S. (2018). How teachers can guide library book selection to maximize the value of independent reading time. The Language and Literacy Spectrum, 28(1), Article 4. Yarden, A. (2009). Reading scientific texts: adapting primary literature for promoting scientific literacy. Research in Science Education, 39(3): 307-311. Author Biography Vivi Aulia obtained her master degree in English Education from State University of Malang (2011). She is now an English lecturer at the English Department, STKIP PGRI Banjarmasin, Kalimantan Selatan, Indonesia. She is interested conducting research Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 2(2) May 2019 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 119 focusing in the area of EFL teaching and education in general. She can be contacted at: viviauliavasa@yahoo.com.