1. An apparatus comprising an error-correction (EC) decoder (e.g., 200 , 500 ) for recovering an EC-encoded codeword, the EC decoder comprising an extrinsic value generator (e.g., 402 , 504 ) adapted to: (a) generate a current extrinsic value (e.g., Le n (i) ,Le n (i,l) ) based on at least one check-node value (e.g., R), wherein the current extrinsic value corresponds to a bit (e.g., n) of the EC-encoded codeword; and (b) generate a current average extrinsic value (e.g., Le n,avg (i) ,Le n,avg (i,l) ) based on the current extrinsic value and at least one previous extrinsic value (e.g., Le n (i-1) ,Le n (i,l-1) ), wherein the current average extrinsic value and the at least one previous extrinsic value correspond to the bit of the EC-encoded codeword.