[[abstract]]This study investigated the power of extensive reading for pleasure by using a popular original novel, The Last Song, as the material to improve learners’ reading speed, reading comprehension, and general English reading proficiency. With intermediate or high-intermediate level of English proficiency, 15 adult participants at Acme Language Institute (ALI), a private language school, received the extensive reading treatment for 10 weeks. The 15 participants were taking a course entitled Novel Reading taught by Bruce, an American teacher who adopted the extensive reading approach. The participants took the pre-test (before the beginning of the class) and post-test (after the end of the class) on reading speed, reading comprehension, and general English reading proficiency developed and administered by ALI. Paired-samples t-test was conducted to check if there was significant progress in the participants’ scores between the pre-test and post-test. Furthermore, each participant was interviewed once after the post-test to check the reliability of the quantitative data. The results showed that due to the characteristics of extensive reading (such as the purposes of reading usually being related to pleasure, information, and general understanding, etc.), the 15 participants significantly enhanced their reading speed and reading comprehension after the treatment. In addition, the results also indicated that by increasing a considerable amount of reading input from the 463-page novel for 10 weeks, the 15 participants significantly improved their overall English reading proficiency including vocabulary usage, grammar knowledge and reading ability. Moreover, data from interviews also showed that all 15 participants expressed positive attitudes toward reading the original novel in the extensive reading approach. As a result, the findings suggested that reading a bestselling original novel extensively is an interesting, effective, and natural way to motivate ESL/EFL learners to become autonomous language acquirers. The pedagogical implications and the limitations of this study were discussed in the end.
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