Abstract
Within the context of reading in English, fluency plays an important role with regards to readers’ reading comprehension performance. Deficit in reading fluency may affect the efficiency of phonological processing, which in turn affects reading comprehension performance. Within the realm of English as foreign language (EFL) reading, the role of reading fluency is of similar importance. Considering the significance of reading fluency within the context of EFL reading comprehension performance, the current pilot study attempted to analyze reading fluency performance in a non-rich target language environment for the purpose of informing EFL reading comprehension instruction with regards to reading fluency. The participant was a middle school aged, EFL reader who received EFL reading comprehension instruction for the period of seven years at the time the study was conducted but had never received phonics instruction. The data in this study were acquired within the period of two months. The data collection was spread within the period of two months in order to acquire standardized performance and to avoid contamination. Two reading fluency diagnosis instruments were used to evaluate the participant’s fluency: Fluency rate per minute for grade-level and non-grade level texts and miscue analysis. The texts used in this study were the ones provided in Leslie and Caldwell’s Qualitative Reading Inventory IV. The findings show that although the participant in this study had never received any phonics instruction, he was not able to read at the grade-level and above grade-level fluency rates. The findings from the miscue analysis show that the participant was not able to meet the required grade-level accuracy. The findings are discussed within the realm of reading instruction in the foreign language reading context and with regards to their implications in EFL reading comprehension instruction. Keywords : Fluency, EFL foreign language, reading, miscue analysis
Highlights
Within the context of reading in English as a first language, reading fluency has been given a significant emphasis due to its role in affecting reading comprehension performance (e.g., Sidek, 2008)
Considering the importance of fluency when reading in the foreign language and the phenomenon of lacking of phonics instruction in the English as foreign language (EFL) reading instruction, it is important to find out if EFL readers, at the secondary level have any issue in EFL reading fluency, which issue should have been addressed a the elementary level
The findings of the study suggest that the lacking in the knowledge of the English language phonics had resulted in the participant spending more of his cognitive resources on phonological processing, which condition may hamper his EFL reading comprehension
Summary
Within the context of reading in English as a first language, reading fluency has been given a significant emphasis due to its role in affecting reading comprehension performance (e.g., Sidek, 2008). On the contrary, reading fluency has not been given much attention, which results in an unsatisfactory level of reading fluency when reading in a second or foreign language (e.g., Coyne & Harn, 2006; Elliot, Lee, & Tollefson, 2001; Watson, 2005; Fien, 2005; Beach, 2005). Such emphasis is due to fluency that has been set aside (Allington, 1983) because more focus has been attributed to reading comprehension. The current study attempted to analyze an EFL reader‟s reading fluency by examining the fluency and accuracy rates when reading texts in EFL
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