A form of extensive reading that has recently been receiving more attention from language teachers and researchers is reading while simultaneously listening to an audio recording, or to the teacher reading a narrative aloud. The benefits cited have included increases in overall language proficiency, particularly listening comprehension, as well as the ability to acquire a greater sense of the rhythm of the language, which in turn can help learners to read and listen in meaningful sense groups rather than adopt a word-for-word strategy (Day & Bamford, 1998). Moreover, used as a strategy for promoting extensive reading, reading-while-listening can also pay
dividends, provided that learners understand “it might take [time] for concentration to
develop…eventually the moment will come when students are actually reading ahead of the
teacher and at the end of the lesson students carry on reading and ask to take the books home” (Smith, 1997, p. 34).