The effect of online extensive reading on building the reading fluency of EFL university students

Research on extensive reading (ER) has typically focused on the effect of reading programs on students’ language proficiency rather than the topic of online extensive reading (ER) that relates to reading fluency. The present study examined how students build reading fluency, particularly their reading rate, automaticity, and comprehension. Several studies have suggested that extensive reading is required to build reading fluency [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Fifty EFL university students participated in an online extensive reading (ER) program comprising of eight meetings twice a week using ten graded readers. Three research questions were addressed: a) the effectiveness of online extensive reading, b) the amount of graded readers that should be read to develop reading fluency, c) if there is a difference in effect between learning simplified text and complicated text. The findings show that online extensive reading (ER) enhanced reading fluency. This implies that online extensive reading promotes the improvement of comprehension, automaticity as well as reading rates in a strategic way.