#21: The mathematics of language scream at us. An interview with Rob Waring

Whenever we asked our guests for tips on who to interview next, Dr. Rob Waring’s name popped up almost immediately. When we asked Paul Goldberg, he told us that nobody made the case for extensive reading like he did, and that if you were in the same room with him and did not support extensive reading yet, he would be fast to make you change your mind about it. In this episode, which includes the first part of our interview, Dr. Waring tells us about his experiences with ER, including the first ER colloquium in 1997 and the creation of the ER Foundation. He also tells us about how vocabulary research shows that there is a no other way but to do extensive reading if our students are to learn the many words and lexical units they need to learn the target L2. Here’s a link to an article by Dr. Waring whose title says it all: The inescapable case for extensive reading. [insert link: http://www.robwaring.org/er/what_and_why/er_is_vital.htm]