Instructional Strategies’ Impacts on EFL Learners Reading Fluency: A Review

Abstract

Reading fluency is a skill, which is closely linked to reading comprehension.  Learners’ struggle with fluency in reading can be a significant hurdle to proficiency in their overall reading comprehension and competency. This paper, based on the thematic analysis approach, presents some theoretically pedagogical strategies discovered for developing reading fluency using repeated listening, readers’ theater and rhyming poetry. These three strategies generate favorable results on reading growth in fluency and comprehension; however, many readers have difficulty in moving to a level of automaticity and fluency which enables them to engage in a successful practice. Readers’ abilities to efficiently comprehend texts are prominently affected by their automatic and accurate word recognition and prosody.  This study can contribute towards addressing the gap in literature concerning different issues relating to oral reading fluency and would therefore give an insight for curriculum designers to consider these issues as comprehensively as possible in order to incorporate reading fluency in their programs.