Encouraging extensive reading through reading circle activity at a preparatory school in Turkey

Main reason to learn a foreign language is to communicate; therefore, language might be considered as an effective, active, and dynamic tool to accomplish this purpose. As one of the receptive skills, reading plays a vital role in language learning journey. Learning the target language and culture through one of the receptive skills in a qualified, effective, and meaningful way is a must for all the language learners. Extensive reading is one of the ways of teaching reading and it includes various activities providing various quantities of input. One of the extensive reading activities is reading circle, which consists of high level of enthusiasm, independent readers, and cooperative learning. This study aimed to investigate the learners' perceptions about extensive reading with the reading circle activity and to explore whether there were any contributions of reading circle activity to improve learners' reading skills. In this study, six of the voluntary students took part because of the number of the roles in reading circle activity. In this way the students made the group to enable reading circle roles equally. The study included the qualitative and quantitative approaches with the features of mixed-type research design in order to collect data. Data of this study were collected from four essential sources: reading circle role sheets, researcher's diary, interviews and learners' exam results. The data were analyzed by content analysis, observing frequency and improvement. The results of the data showed that the reading circle activity may encourage the language learners to read in target language with enjoyment and improve language proficiency.