Purpose: The study aimed to examine whether oral reading prosody--the use of acoustic features (e.g., pitch and duration variations) when reading passages aloud--predicts reading fluency and comprehension abilities. Method: We measured vocabulary, syntax, word reading, reading fluency (including rate and accuracy), reading comprehension (in Grades…

This study compared the reading speed, comprehension and perceptions of two groups of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. Each group addressed one of two types of narrow reading: same genre and same title. The same genre texts were three graded readers in the "Sherlock Holmes" series, and the same title texts were "The…

Some music has been proved effectively to mitigate anxiety, beneficial to reading. However, little was known on its influence of reading behaviors and outcomes. Thanks to the advance of e-book technology, it becomes possible to track reading rate and outcomes in a real-time manner by the underlying mobile devices. This study intends to examine the…

There are no salient word spaces in Mandarin Chinese. Thus, it is unclear whether word spacing information differentially affects the reading speed of children with and without reading difficulties (RD). In the present study, native Chinese-speaking children of differential reading abilities were tested with Chinese text in un-spaced versus spaced…

This study investigated the online reading performances and the level of visual fatigue from the perspectives of non-native speaking students (NNSs). Reading on a computer screen is more visually more demanding than reading printed text. Online reading requires frequent saccadic eye movements and imposes continuous focusing and alignment demand.…

Thirteen English as a foreign language students read 26 passages during a 13-week period. Each passage was read five times, and students answered comprehension questions after the first and the fifth reading. Another 13 students read the same number of passages but without repetition and only answered the comprehension questions once. All students…

The study examined the effects of cultural familiarity with a text on Chinese students' reading comprehension performance and reading time. In the first phase of the study, participants were required to read a culturally familiar text, write down the time they spent reading the passage, and immediately complete a cloze test without referring back…

This study investigates the effect of timed reading (TR) and repeated oral reading (RR) on 35 adult students of English as a foreign language. Students in the TR (n =18) and RR (n =17) groups read 52 and 26 passages respectively over a 13-week period. Reading rates and comprehension levels were measured at three occasions: pre-intervention,…