Promoting L2 reading fluency at the tertiary level through timed and repeated reading

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of one semester of fluency-building activities on L2 readers' reading rate and comprehension. The participants were 63 university EFL students enrolled in three academic reading classes. Each class was assigned one of three instructional treatments: timed reading (TR), timed repeated reading (TRR), and timed reading and repeated oral reading (TROR). All participants engaged in the fluency-building activities twice a week, individually recording their reading rates and comprehension scores on a chart. Each reading passage was about 350 words long, written at the 1400-word level, and followed by five comprehension questions. A pretest was conducted at week 1 and a posttest at week 15. All three groups experienced gains in their reading rate, in the order of, from most to least gain, TRR, TROR, TR. The TRR group's rate gain was statistically significantly greater than that of the TR group. All three groups also improved in reading comprehension, in the order of TRR, TR, TROR. Furthermore, positive correlations between reading rate and comprehension on the posttest showed that improvement in reading rate was not achieved at the cost of comprehension. Pedagogic benefits of incorporating fluency practice into an academic classroom and instructional alternatives are discussed.