Intensive reading courses that teach reading strategies and skills may not adequately equip students or produce behavioural changes required for academic studies. An extensive reading programme (ER) was therefore introduced as an adjunct, to support the goals of a reading for academic purposes course. This paper reports on the language learning and literacy skills expectances and outcomes that second year undergraduate students self-assessed as having accomplished as they participated in the ER. Before-and-after (ER) study design was employed, and self-perception questionnaires were administered to generate data that were subjected to descriptive analysis. High percentages of outcome expectations suggest that the students felt that their needs could be met by the ER, believing that it would influence relevant factors in their language learning and literacy skills improvement. Although the ER did not completely meet student expectation levels, it produced very impressive outcomes that recommend ER as a reliable support for reading and language improvement among learners of English as a second language in similar contexts as Nigeria.