Proper nouns constitute a lexical class with special properties and are thus treated differently from other words by second language acquisition researchers. An assumption exists that even low-proficiency learners will find them unproblematic, yet research suggests this assumption might be misplaced. The present study involved two self-paced…

This longitudinal study examined the effectiveness of a progress monitoring method, namely the Multilayer Instruction Model-Progress Monitoring (MIM-PM), which is a word reading fluency measure. It was used from 1st grade onward to predict the overall reading achievement of students in elementary school by tracking their reading achievement over…

Few studies have examined the effects of extensive reading (ER) on foreign language learners' acquisition of sight vocabulary, especially for partially known high-frequency words and reading fluency development. This study compared groups of non-English-major Japanese university-level students engaged in ER with intensive reading (IR) for two…

The effects of extensive, timed, and repeated oral reading on 101 lower-intermediate Japanese university L2 English learners' reading rates and comprehension were investigated over one academic year. The participants were divided into four quasiexperimental groups: (a) Group 1 did extensive, timed, and repeated oral reading with prosody and…

Background: The present study aimed to examine the early growth of word and nonword reading fluency and their cognitive predictors in a consistent syllabic orthography (Japanese "Hiragana"). Method: One hundred sixty-nine Grade 1 Japanese children (M[subscript age] = 80.12 months, SD = 3.62) were followed until the middle of Grade 2 and…

We examined the cognitive predictors of early word reading skills in Japanese syllabic Hiragana and morphographic Kanji. Eighty-three Japanese kindergarten children (M age = 75.6 months, SD = 3.4) were assessed on nonverbal IQ, vocabulary, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological memory, morphological awareness, and…

In this study, an instrument for measuring proper name (PN) familiarity was developed for a psycholinguistic experiment investigating the effect of PNs on Japanese university students' English reading fluency. Familiarity has previously been operationalized in disparate ways, producing contradictory results. Furthermore, authors of previous…

Recent research has shown that reading and listening together can be helpful in developing EFL reading fluency, but learner-autonomous bimodal reading research remains scarce. The present study, in an intensive academic English program in Japan, was intended to explore whether reading rates and related reading skills might improve while…

This exploratory study represents an attempt to investigate the factors that may affect the reading comprehension abilities of English as an additional language (EAL) learners. For this study, we examined a participant group of 31 (25 EAL and 6 first language English) learners studying at an international school in Japan. We assessed the…

This paper examines learners' fluency development in L2 silent reading rate and comprehension. In both L1 and L2 readings, a positive relationship between readers' silent reading rate and comprehension has not been as firmly established as theories might propose. Based on Wallot et al. (2014), the paper indicates the need to look at readers'…

In this study, I sought to investigate whether visuospatial working memory (VWM) explains individual differences in reading fluency growth. One hundred and thirty Japanese junior and senior high school students were administered the Mr. Peanut and reversed Corsi tasks, respectively as measures of VWM, followed by three waves of reading fluency…

This quasi-experimental study traces a 12-week reading fluency training program for elementary-level English as a foreign language (EFL) learners at a Japanese university (N = 56). More specifically, this study examined whether a teaching intervention combining (a) extensive reading and practicing, (b) timed reading, and (c) repeated oral reading…

Low-proficient L2 readers, especially, struggle for literal understanding of the text and for appropriately using reading strategy (RS). We examined whether and how the development of L2- English reading comprehension skills is associated with the frequency and kinds of L2 RS use. Fifty Japanese learners of English completed a reading…

This study compares two instructional methodologies: extensive reading plus output activity and intensive reading plus grammar-translation with regard to improvement of non-English major EFL learners' reading comprehension and fluency development in a Japanese junior college. It identifies the minimum number of words an individual should read for…

Reading rate, usually measured in words per minute, is a common operationalization of reading fluency in second language (L2) research and pedagogy. However, the impact of word length is often not addressed. This paper presents two studies showing how the number of characters in a text influences L2 reading time, independent of word counts, within…