The Effects of Choral Repeated Reading on Foreign Language Reading Fluency of Words in Connected and Disconnected Text

Abstract

Repeated reading has been successfully used to enhance reading fluency in L1, but little is known about how (and to what extent) this strategy impacts reading in foreign language classrooms. Our paper reports the results of a 5-week intervention program aimed to improve reading fluency of middle school students during their English as a foreign language classes. Four classes of sixth-graders divided in two groups received two reading treatments for the last 15 minutes of the class: choral repeated reading (CRR) and reading comprehension/vocabulary development (RC/VD). Results indicated that a short term International Journal of Linguistics ISSN 1948-5425 2017 www.macrothink.org/ijl 11 intervention program of repeated reading can lead to significant improvements of fluency only at lexical level (words in disconnected text) but not at syntactic level (words in connected text). Pedagogical implications and further research directions are addressed.

Effect of Readers Theater on Reading Comprehension Skills and Reading Motivation among Students of Turkish as a Foreign Language

“…Çiftçi (2015) found that Turkish EFL learners' reading errors decreased and their comprehension skills improved thanks to the repeated reading method. Some studies have also revealed that repeated and choral reading has a positive effect on the reading fluency and reading comprehension skills of EFL learners (Hocker, 2004;Gorsuch & Taguchi, 2008;Landa, 2009;Roundy & Roundy, 2009;Chang, 2012;Topping, 2014;Dolean et al, 2017). Repeated reading is also based on the Repeated reading method, which involves reading and practicing a text multiple times and then applying it.…”