Speed reading courses and their effect on reading authentic texts: A preliminary investigation

Fluent reading is essential for successful comprehension. One dimension of reading fluency is reading rate, or reading speed. Because of the importance of reading fluency, fluency development activities should be incorporated into classroom practice. One activity that meets the fluency development conditions proposed by Nation (2007) is speed reading. An important question is whether reading speed gains measured in words per minute on controlled speed reading texts transfer to other types of texts. This paper reports on a preliminary, small-scale investigation of this question. The findings suggest that a speed reading course may contribute to faster reading speeds on other types of texts, but there remains a need for further experimental research into the impact of speed reading courses

Can L1 children's literature be used in the English language classroom? High frequency words in writing for children

A challenge in reading research, and particularly extensive reading research, is how to manage the transition from the top of graded reading schemes to authentic texts which may be separated from each other by up to 5,000 word families. While texts written for native-speaker children have been recommended at times, recent research has shown that the lexical load of these texts was of similar difficulty to that of texts written for adults. In this paper we investigate whether it is possible to identify a specialist high frequency list in writing for children, and the impact of any such list on readability for language learners with a 2,000-word family vocabulary size. We found a list of 245 word families provided almost 3.4% coverage for such learners, thus making the use of L1 children’s literature possible in the English language, and especially the English as a foreign language (EFL), classroom

Two approaches to extensive reading and their effects on L2 vocabulary development

One avenue for developing second language (L2) vocabulary knowledge is through Extensive Reading (ER). ER can provide opportunities for incidental learning to occur. Class time is often too restricted for sufficient attention to deliberate learning (Hunt & Beglar, 2005) meaning ER is important for L2 vocabulary development. This article builds on ideas in the recent two-part Reading in a Foreign Language ER discussion forum by investigating two implementations of ER and their effects on L2 vocabulary development: a traditional ER-only approach, and an ER-plus approach which supplements ER with post-reading discussion implemented in small groups. L2 English learners enrolled at a university in Aotearoa New Zealand read five graded readers during normal class time. Latent Semantic Analysis was used to measure the development of word association knowledge of 60 target words. The findings revealed facilitative effects of both ER approaches. Supplementing ER with discussion provided opportunities for further development