Second-language Literacy Instruction: Five Principles for Effective Fluency Development

| August 20, 2011
Title
Second-language Literacy Instruction: Five Principles for Effective Fluency Development
Authors
Joshua Cohen
Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan

Bio Data
Joshua Cohen is an Instructor of English as a Foreign Language in the Language Center at Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan. He received his BA from San Diego State University and his MS Ed from Temple University. His interests include task-based teaching, fluency development, and teaching creative writing.

Abstract
Reading fluency development has played a critical role in English L1 settings for the last 30 years, yet despite its success it has attracted limited attention in L2 and foreign language contexts, presumably because it is thought to grow naturally as other reading skills develop. Therefore, many L2 teachers give little, if any, recognition to reading fluency development as an essential curriculum goal. For teachers wishing to give reading fluency instruction a more prominent role in their classroom, several methods have been developed that have proven successful for struggling readers in English L1 environments. Fortunately, the methods shown to be effective in helping lower proficiency readers develop fluency suggest a set of principles that teachers may find helpful in designing regular classroom activities for fluency development in the L2 classroom.

 

See pages 59-68

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Category: Monthly Editions, Volume 54