Slow Reading Essay

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Recommended: Effects of reading habits on academic performances of students

“With strengthened reading skills, ESL/EFL readers will make greater progress and attain greater development in all academic areas (Anderson 1).” The ability to read fluently in a second or foreign language is a very important issue. Reading fluency is the ability to read quickly, easily, and smoothly. A fluent reader reads and understands books with minimum effort and at a fast speed. Basically, a fluent reader has the capacity to decode automatically, build up sight vocabulary, and comprehend in context. According to Nation, reading speed and comprehension are very important for ESL/EFL students to proceed through their academic courses successfully. Until recently, many ESL/EFL learners have faced a problem with slow reading. A number of experts in the linguistic field have expressed their concern about this issue. For example, …show more content…

When comparing native speakers to non-native speakers, there is a significant gap in their reading times. Grabe compares reading rates between L1 students and L2 students in academic settings. L2 students can only read at a rate of 80-120 words per minute. On the other hand, L1 students can read two or three times faster than L2 students (Reading in a Second Language 291). This indicates that slow reading might influence the scores of academic courses negatively for ESL/EFL students in comparison to the native students in the same academic courses. According to Anderson, this is a common situation in ESL/EFL reading classrooms. Although students are able to read in their second language, they are not fluent in reading. As a result, they cannot enjoy their reading activities. As a non-fluent reader reads word by word, he or she cannot understand the meaning enough to enjoy the book (1). The problem is that, if the students read word by word, not only does it take a long time, but also it

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