Oldal 82 [82]
OCR
EXTRAMURAL ENGLISH ACTIVITIES AND INDIVIDUAL LEARNER DIFFERENCES simple, and the singers do not speak very elaborately because its difficult to find words that rhyme”. By this, Lucas means that in songs, it is not using a varied vocabulary but making words rhyme that is more important. He continues: [If there are] lines that I have difficulty understanding, I usually look up the words in the dictionary, but this is less common than in the case of movies because most of the words are familiar, and if somebody speaks at least a little English, they can figure out [the meaning or message] because there are really simple words in these songs. This, again, reflects on the lexical coverage of songs, which is much lower than movies, enabling learners to have a deeper understanding (Murphy 1992). Finally, Ben highlighted the differences between native and non-native English performers. He claimed that it is easier for him to understand non-native speakers. He commented on this as follows: “If there are performers who learned English as a foreign language, I understand it better because they speak more clearly [than native speakers]” (Ben). It is somewhat surprising that he considers non-native speakers’ pronunciation “nicer” than that of native speakers. 4.5.6 Reading in English Reading books, blogs, and online content in English is another EE category that could serve as an important resource for EFL input (Day-Bamford 2002, Day et al. 1991, Krashen 2004, 2011, Nation-Waring 2020). Reading books, however, does not seem to be a popular pastime activity — at least not in English. However, it is important to point out that reading in English and even in L1 is a common problem for this generation, whose reading habits are very different from that of the older generations. Therefore, it cannot be neglected that some learners may spend considerable time reading English texts while many other learners prefer not to read at all. Half of the interview participants do not read English language books at all in their free time, but those who do, like to read on a regular basis. Valentina read some of the Harry Potter books because she could not wait for the Hungarian translation. She explained this as follows: There was one book I read in English, the last book of Harry Potter, I wanted to read it right when it came out because I was very hooked, and [the English version] was the only one I could buy in Hungary at the time. On the other hand, Vera, for instance, would like to read a book in English and then reread the same book in Hungarian and would like to see to what * 80°
