The Importance of Speed in Adult L2 Reading

Abstract

As observed by Kurvers, Stockmann, & Van de Craats (2010), many adult first time readers of Dutch as a second language never progress beyond a very basic level of reading. They understand the sound-letter correspondence, can read simple words and very short sentences, sometimes with many restarts and errors, but, in the end, they often do not succeed in fully understanding the meaning of what they read. It will be argued that the mental steps to be taken for reading a word or a sentence take so much time that hardly any space in working memory is left for building up meaning. This article is an argument for a more structural focus on fluency in literacy courses. A small-scale pilot classroom experiment with gathering reading speed shows enhanced fluency and illustrates that automatization can be attained with simple tools.