Chinese college EFL students read at about 130wpm before instruction, far below fluent L1 reading rates of 250-300wpm¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causalr1·q2
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2023: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Participants' average pretest reading rate was around 130wpm, with a maximum of 203wpm and minimum of 89wpm, so even the fastest reader was slower than the average L1 reader. → Chen et al. 2018
Evidence¶
Chen et al. 2018¶
Xiaokan Chen, Hongmei Li, Min Gui. (2018). Instructional Effects of Syntactic Parsing on Chinese College Students’ EFL Reading Rates. Journal of Education and Training Studies, Vol. 6, No. 11. https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v6i11.3470
q2 · i? · causal · r1
Descriptive report of pretest reading rates in the Discussion, compared by the authors with cited figures of fluent L1 readers at 250-300wpm and L2 readers at 80-120wpm. The pretest average is described as consistent with Yamashita & Ichikawa (2010).
"Participants in the current study read at an average rate of around 130wpm, with the maximum rate at 203wpm and the minimum rate at 89wpm. The findings show that even the fastest participants’ reading rate is slower than the average reading rate of L1 readers."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- A 12-week syntactic parsing instruction produced a significantly greater reading-rate gain in the experimental group than in the control group (Cohen's d = 0.52) — related
- Syntactic parsing ability is strongly correlated with EFL reading rate among Chinese college students in both pretest and posttest — related
- Interviewed students held positive attitudes toward syntactic parsing instruction and reported benefits including faster reading and greater confidence with long complex sentences — related
- Experimental-group students' syntactic parsing ability improved significantly from pretest to posttest after the 12-week instruction — related
- EFL undergraduates at King Khalid University read at about 75 wpm, far below the 200 wpm threshold Jordan classifies as slow — related
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