good silent reading rate for L2

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Montmorency
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby Montmorency » Sat Jun 04, 2016 1:56 pm

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?


Definitely not in my case. I've been trying to speed up my reading rate in German, but it all depends on how "intensive" I want to be regarding unknown or unfamiliar vocabulary. (And on how tired I feel, or how strained my eyes are getting). I do take note of the numbers, but I can't really give you a number that makes any sense, because it's so variable.

sfuqua wrote:I guess it's kind of a dumb question


Au contraire! - It's a very good question. :)
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby Cavesa » Sat Jun 04, 2016 11:36 pm

I read in Czech, English, and French at the same speed. I have never counted words per minute. However, the speed in all three varies, depending on the content. I devour my beloved fantasy novels and snail through the hell of the pharmacology textbooks (often rereading passages, as the content tends to instantly evaporate from my hippocampi). My fiction reading speed is somewhere between 40 and 50 pages per hour (A5 or that smaller format, typical of paperbacks, usual font size). Again, it depends on the content. Add some modern philosophy talk to a scifi book and you'll slow me by 10% at least :-D

In Spanish, I am slower and my comprehension is lower (and that is why I am slower of course). Yes, I can read Terry Pratchett in Spanish just as fast (and with the same comprehension and enjoyment) as in the other langauges, but Carlos Ruiz Zafon and other such authors are still a challenge. I would say this huge disbalance is an important sign of my huge reserves in Spanish. Italian is, overall, worse than Spanish. The books I've tried so far were at a speed around 20-25 pages per hour. German: insufficient data.

I highly doubt CEFR or another scale takes into account the reading speed. Your only limit during the exams is the overall limit for reading+completing the assignments. After all, there are naturally slower and faster readers among the natives as well.

I wonder about the specific "speed reading" techniques. Does anyone here have experience with those? And does it work the same for the foreign languages?
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby Cainntear » Sun Jun 05, 2016 9:59 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 find that I have to slow myself down and do more "sounding out" in my head in my L2s, as otherwise I get tripped up over phrasing in more complicated sentences.
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby Montmorency » Sun Jun 05, 2016 4:15 pm

Cainntear wrote:
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 find that I have to slow myself down and do more "sounding out" in my head in my L2s, as otherwise I get tripped up over phrasing in more complicated sentences.


I was intending to come back and talk about "sounding out" in one's head, so I'm glad you've brought it up.

I definitely like to "sound out in my head" most of the time with an L2 book, and I quite often try to mentally mimic the voice of a (professional) audiobook reader that I like. No doubt I will be making "pronunciation" mistakes but I feel I am less likely to by trying to mimic it in the audiobook-reader's voice than in my own. I believe this "inner voicing" is anathema to speed-reading experts, but nevertheless, I am going to continue doing it.

I also occasionally read out loud, which definitely slows you down. (But this thread is about silent reading, of course).
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby reineke » Sun Jun 05, 2016 4:59 pm

Do You Need to Speak Greek in Order to Read It? (SBL 2012 Report)

"Those who read proficiently have already internalized the language."

"For proficient reading, automaticity is necessary. In SLA [second language acquisition], automaticity means automatic recognition and understanding of a word or phrase. It actually happens involuntarily, without intervening analysis. It is not subject to introspection."

"In proficient reading, there is a phonological loop. As you read, you subvocalize (i.e. say the words in your mind), and your mind stores these virtual ‘sounds’ in its short term memory buffer where they can be recognized and comprehended automatically. This short term working memory allows understanding to occur in chunks. Here’s the main point about the phonological loop: it exists in order to allow you to hear the words so that you can understand them. All true reading entails this conversion of the written word into virtual sound. Thus, in a sense, reading is hearing. Of course, the only way you can ‘hear’ the words in your mind is to have heard them before in real-life, communicative situations where they were used in a comprehensible context.

"In order to read proficiently, you have to have oral-aural proficiency. It’s a prerequisite, without which a well-functioning phonological loop and automaticity can never exist."

"Where does this leave us? Well, it highlights the need to focus language classes on providing tons of spoken comprehensible input so that we and our students can hear and understand the language as we see it–automatically and without thinking or analyzing."

https://danielstreett.com/2012/11/24/do-you-need-to-speak-greek-in-order-to-read-it-sbl-2012-report/
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby reineke » Sun Jun 05, 2016 5:29 pm

Brian Schultz on Reading Fluency

"I just finished reading an interesting article on what I will call the mechanics of reading, entitled “Reading—From Behind the Eyes,” chapter 2 of Frank Smith’s book Reading without Nonsense.

The author highlights the fact that what makes for easier reading is to avoid what he calls “tunnel vision.” “Tunnel vision” in this case is not having one’s vision restricted or wrongfully focusing one’s vision on only a part of what can and should be perceived, but that our brains become overloaded with too much information it cannot process in the available time. The result is that the brain selects a portion of the input and ignores the rest, a kind of self-imposed “tunnel vision.” (He points out that it has been shown that the brain can only handle a certain amount of visual input, and that this does not change with age, skill or practice. See p. 16) If in reading, therefore, one is ‘bombarded’ by too much information that needs to be processed (rather than that which is already familiar), it becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to read.

One of the ways we avoid tunnel vision while reading is by being able to “predict,” so to speak, what might come next as we read. Smith points out that after any word, an author has an arsenal of 50,00-100,000 words to choose from (in English). But if I were to ask you to give your best guess as to what word might come after another word (A), you would not feel as though your are having to choose among 50,000+ words. Rather, word A in and of itself (assuming you know the language well) is allowing you to already restrict your choices from among about 200-300 words only (p. 24). “Not only do all readers have this prior knowledge of their language—generally without being aware they have it—but also they constantly use the prior knowledge without being aware of it” (p. 22; italics in the original).

The point Smith is trying to make is this: “It is therefore a basic skill of reading… to make maximum use of what you already know and to depend on that information from the eyes as little as possible” (p. 13).

If you read too slowly you will get tunnel vision, since the visual system will become clogged with all the visual information you are trying to get from the page. If you are reluctant to push ahead, reading and rereading in a hapless endeavor to remember every detail, then you will get tunnel vision. If you strive to get every word right before you look at the next, you will get tunnel vision. Unfortunately, these bad reading habits are something deliberately taught in the belief that they will help children learn… [Children] have been influenced too much by an adult who misguidedly says, “Slow down, be careful, and make sure you get every word right.” (p. 29)

From between the lines, it becomes obvious that good reading is based on a fluent control of a language."

Let’s go back to the point about reading too slowly:"

(The aforementioned tunnel vision paragraph) suggests that "when a reader slows down and consciously processes individual words their high-level comprehensive skills are impaired. The implied solution is that one needs a natural fluency in a language in order to do high-level reading. This would even apply to literary analysis and ‘close readings’, where one needs to keep the whole ‘in memory’ while contemplating an author’s choice of pieces."

https://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/fluency-reading-comprehension/
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby Cainntear » Sun Jun 05, 2016 9:59 pm

But I don't slow down to focus on single words, though. I slow down specifically to give myself time to deal with the phrasing. My eye is always ahead of my (internal) tongue. I - am - not - do-ing - school - reading, if you see what I mean.

But on the other hand, truly fluent reading requires, as in the earlier of your two posts, a full model of the language, as the fluent reader works on assumptions to skip over stuff on the page. If your assumptions aren't there, you read things that aren't on the page. In that case, a small amount of consciousness in your reading can help correct your incorrect assumptions.
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby reineke » Sun Jun 05, 2016 10:31 pm

Cainntear wrote:But I don't slow down to focus on single words, though. I slow down specifically to give myself time to deal with the phrasing. My eye is always ahead of my (internal) tongue. I - am - not - do-ing - school - reading, if you see what I mean.


That's conscious chunking of multisyllabic words by a native speaker. The reader being ahead of the inner tongue is how advanced reading is supposed to work (according to the article above).

You * should * ...* able *...*guess*... *wh...* *come...* next *.

You're not supposed to vocalize it ahead of time. The "guessing"/prediction also involves grammatical forms. Anyway, that's how I interpret it.

I've never had to employ elaborate reading strategies after prolonged periods of extensive listening.
Last edited by reineke on Sun Jun 05, 2016 11:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby Serpent » Sun Jun 05, 2016 11:12 pm

About speedreading, I've been meaning to start a separate thread. See these articles. That was quite a relief for me.

I might be a good learner but I'm a slow reader. I've learned to accept that. Maybe part of it is how the enjoyment of reading works for me - I'm not visual at all and don't play any "movie" in my head or anything, I enjoy the flow of words. Awareness already helps, though. For example, I think I must've picked up the idea that reading a book means reading every sentence in the book smoothly. So whenever I stumble, I then slow down further to reread the sentence from the beginning to the end. This is good when you want to feel the style, but I don't always enjoy it. And in L2 I generally try to pronounce everything correctly in my mind, though recently I've allowed myself some slack with numbers.

Similarly, I've noticed that once I've looked up one word during a reading session, I'm much more likely to look up more, to the point of questioning my knowledge of fairly easy words. And again, simply being aware of the tendency already helps :)
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Re: good silent reading rate for L2

Postby reineke » Mon Jun 06, 2016 12:03 am

Speed reading is supposed to kill all inner vocalizing. As the L2 reading speed increases to over 250 wpm, comprehension invariably suffers even with more advanced readers. It's possible to skim some information this way but I don't know if this is a good way to learn a second language.

But then again there will always be someone with a different opinion:

"It essentially makes you smarter!"

http://www.irisreading.com/benefits-of-learning-speed-reading-for-a-non-native-english-speaker/
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