4. Work on increasing reading rate.
One great difficulty in the second language reading classroom is that even
when language learners can read, much of their reading is not fluent. Often,
in our efforts to assist students in increasing their reading rate, teachers overemphasize
accuracy which impedes fluency. The teacher must work towards
finding a balance between assisting students to improve their reading rate and
developing reading comprehension skills. It is very important to understand
that the focus is not to develop speed readers, but fluent readers. I define a fluent
reader as one who reads at a rate of 200 words-per-minute with at least
70 percent comprehension.
One focus here is to teach readers to reduce their dependence on a dictionary.
Skills such as scanning, skimming, predicting, and identifying main
ideas get students to approach reading in different ways. Readers should
spend more time analyzing and synthesizing the content of the reading, and
not focusing on moving through the passage one word at a time. Part of the
joy of reading is being able to pick up a book and comprehend it, without
having to struggle through the task of reading.