good silent reading rate for L2

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good silent reading rate for L2

Postby sfuqua » Fri Jun 03, 2016 9:42 pm

What is a good target for silent reading rate for an L2 reader?

I think some folks here read at about 150 wpm for novels and the like.

I know it would vary all over the place for different types of reading

Let's say for reading an enjoyable novel.

Are there CEFR standards for this?

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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby sfuqua » Sat Jun 04, 2016 1:15 am

I guess it's kind of a dumb question, but do many people read at the same speed in their L2 that they read in their L1?
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby IronMike » Sat Jun 04, 2016 1:28 am

sfuqua wrote:I guess it's kind of a dumb question, but do many people read at the same speed in their L2 that they read in their L1?


Certainly not. My Russian and Esperanto reading levels are pretty good and I can read at a good clip, but it really depends upon what I'm reading. For instance, right now I'm studying Mari (a Finno-Ugric language of Russia with about 600K speakers), and my texts are in Russian. My "lingustics-y" reading proficiency in Russian is pretty good so I am reading that at about the same pace I'd read the same text in English, my L1. Same when I find the relatively rare Esperanto "linguistic-y" book.

Now change that to a novel, whether something translated that I've read in English or not, and my reading rate goes down drastically. I'm reading Metro 2033 now in Russian, and I'm on my 5th day of reading and have completed 11 pages, which takes me about an hour a day (to be fair, my reading cycle is: read 2-4 pages of the Russian, read the same pages in the English version, then re-read the Russian pages). That timing includes minimal dictionary usage, which I hold off for until right before I go through the Russian pages the second time.
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby Hank » Sat Jun 04, 2016 1:30 am

sfuqua wrote:I guess it's kind of a dumb question, but do many people read at the same speed in their L2 that they read in their L1?


I have always been a slow reader. I have never tried to figure out my words per minute. The weird thing is that I think I read Spanish faster than English. At first I just thought it seemed that way because I read more often. It would take me months to read a 450 page book in English, but I have read three 450 page Spanish books this year. Maybe Spanish is just a more fluid language than English? No clue.
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby Hrhenry » Sat Jun 04, 2016 1:43 am

Hank wrote: It would take me months to read a 450 page book in English, but I have read three 450 page Spanish books this year.

One of the things I like about the Kindle app is the time estimate to complete a book. The estimates are broken down into hours. I'm not sure how it calculates its estimates, but I suspect it comes down to subject matter. 400 pages in one subject may be different than 400 pages in another subject. In any case, it's pretty accurate for me, whether in English, Spanish or Italian.

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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby reineke » Sat Jun 04, 2016 2:49 am

"Optimal rates for processing prose are around 300 words per minute; and for fluent adult readers this is constant, regardless of the difficulty of the text (Carver, 1982, 1983, 1990). Even advanced bilinguals (see Segalowitz, Poulsen & Komoda 1991) read as much as 30% slower than this in L2, employing cognitive resources that would otherwise be used for higher-level processes."

According to Carver, the average reading rate for a college student who is reading at 300 wpm is 200 wpm for learning, and 138 wpm for memorizing. Reading at a rate between 250 wpm and 350 wpm allows readers to comprehend a text most efficiently (Carver, 1982).

Anderson (2008) defines reading fluency as “reading at an appropriate rate with adequate comprehension. For adult ESL learners, Anderson suggests a minimum rate of 200 wpm with at least 70% comprehension.

Weber (1991), points out that highly skilled bilinguals typically have a slower reading rate in a second language. Perkins and Pharis (1980) state that average ESL readers are well below average native English speakers in reading ability. Jensen (1986:106) indicates that "at the end of a reading course, even advanced ESL students may read only 100 words per minute or less."

"Dubin and Bycina (1991:198) state that "a rate of 200 words per minute would appear to be the absolute minimum in order to read with full comprehension." Jensen (1986:106) recommends that second language readers seek to "approximate native speaker reading rates and comprehension levels in order to keep up with classmates" and suggests that 300 words per minute is the optimal rate. This rate is supported by Nuttall (1996:56), who states that "for an L1 speaker of English of about average education and intelligence… the reading rate is about 300 words per minute."

"In several studies, L2 students who engaged in extensive reading over a period of time showed significantly more improvement in L2 writing skills than control groups who did not practise extensive reading"

"Even skilled L1 readers, however, fail to monitor their reading in L2 successfully until they have crossed the 'L2 reading comprehension threshold'. This is a well-documented phenomenon in which literate L1 readers do not transfer their higher-level reading comprehension skills to L2 until they reach a certain threshold of proficiency in the new language "
"The threshold, which has been described for several pairs of languages, occurs somewhere in the intermediate proficiency range. What seems to get transferred when the threshold is crossed is the ability to build reliable mental representations of text. "

Reading in a second language
https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/1420

Improving Reading Speed
Activities for the Classroom (Anderson)
http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/usia/E-USIA/forum/vols/vol37/no2/p2.htm

Silent Reading Rates (Carver)
http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/21/2/155.full.pdf
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sat Jun 04, 2016 11:33 am

My reading speed matches my level in the language in question. At least one page per minute for Swedish and English (up to maybe three pages per minute, depending on the content), slower for German and Spanish (but probably still up to 60 pages/hour - provided I understand what I'm reading!) and Irish and Esperanto... I don't know.
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby chokofingrz » Sat Jun 04, 2016 12:29 pm

Hrhenry wrote:One of the things I like about the Kindle app is the time estimate to complete a book. The estimates are broken down into hours. I'm not sure how it calculates its estimates, but I suspect it comes down to subject matter.


Do you know if it learns about your speed from the number of pages turned and your time spent in the app? If so, it might be what I'm looking for. Lately I've been manually timing myself through chapters of a novel to see how my rate is developing, but it sure would be nice to have that automated.
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby iguanamon » Sat Jun 04, 2016 1:09 pm

For me, reading in Spanish and Portuguese is very close to the rate I can read in my native language, English. Reading Ladino in Rashi script (from right to left) is about 25% slower than in Latin script, which I read about the same rate as ES and PT. Reading in Haitian Creole is about a third slower. This corresponds to my levels. In Ladino-Rashi, it's a factor of the similarity and identical nature of some of the letters taking longer to figure out in less frequent words.

As far as time goes, I have an older model e-ink Kindle and I read pdf's on my tablet, so I don't time myself in any language. I guess I'm one who doesn't feel the need to measure my language skills. I don't count words, books, pages or time.
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby verdastelo » Sat Jun 04, 2016 1:33 pm

I don't know what a good silent reading rate is for an average person, but I've noticed multiple times that I read between 25-30 pages in an hour in English and Hindustani (Hindi). That's the reading rate for most novels and light non-fiction, such as history texts which are not monographs and popular science books.

It's been a long time since I read a book in Punjabi, Hindustani (Urdu) or Esperanto. So I'm not in a position to comment for texts in those languages. My reading speed in Russian, which I'm learning, is probably 2-5 pages an hour for A1 or A2 graded readers. But that's probably a useless figure and will remain so until longer texts are used over a long time.
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