Developing Reading Fluency In EFL: How Assisted Repeated Reading Affects Fluency Development

Educators and researchers purport that the development of reading fluency is a critical aspect of learning to read, it plays a vital role in developing effective and efficient readers. Educators agreed that reading fluency is a multidimensional construct including reading rate, accuracy and automaticity of word recognition, prosody, and comprehension.Traditionally, most researchers of reading fluency have focused on automaticity of word recognition, with which a reader can decode or recognize words, because when one can read words automatically, one's limited cognitive resources can be used for comprehension.Repeated reading has gained popularity as a technique for helping students achieve reading fluency and can facilitate growth in reading fluency and other aspects of reading achievement. Relatively less attention has been put to research on RR in L2 or FL settings while RR has been received considerable attention in English as L1 settings for years.The main objective of this study is to focus on whether and how assisted repeated reading with an auditory reading model enhances Chinese College students' reading fluency. Some comparisons of Chinese college students' performances in repeated reading programs are also made in an attempt to see gains in reading fluency and comprehension. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of student participants' reading behaviors suggest that assisted repeated reading is more effective in increasing reading fluency of Chinese college students, and to some extent, it is more effective in improving reading comprehension than traditional extensive reading. It also favorably affects readers' perceptions of reading activities. Furthermore, the results indicate that assisted repeated reading can potentially develop weak ESL/EFL readers' fluency and consequently, reading comprehension, and help them greatly to become independent readers.