KOREASCHOLAR

This paper explores a college EFL course designed to practice reading for pleasure during the pandemic. Sixty EFL college learners in a required English course read Mark Haddon’s (2004) [The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time] within the structure of a regular reading and writing focused academic English course. Reading for pleasure is often considered unfit for inclusion in regular curriculum. Nevertheless, for digital natives, the act of pleasurable reading especially in L2, should be actively implemented into classroom activities. This study follows a case study which practices reading for pleasure by utilizing weekly quizzes, discussion questions and response paper. Students’ feedback was collected and analyzed in order to share students’ experiences in completing the tasks. The feedback shows how weekly quizzes and class discussions have encouraged them to continue reading the text, influenced their attitude on reading English books and how they were able to empathize with the characters. This paper invokes the need to include reading young adult literature into general English courses for college learners to make them lifelong readers of L2.

I. Introduction
II. Reading for Pleasure
III. Using Young Adult Literature in the Language Classroomfor Reading for Pleasure
IV. Course Design and Reading for Pleasure
    1. Implementation of YA in the Curriculum
    2. Setting a Separate Goal
    3. Tasks Required for Book Reading Activity
V. Students’ Feedback
    1. Students’ View on the Tasks
    2. Empathy as a Sign of Engaged Readers
    3. Attitude toward Reading an English Book for Pleasure
VI. Conclusion
References

• Yoonji Kim(Ewha Womans University)