Arab World English Journal
AWEJ Vol.2 No. 4 December 2011 pp.219-256
The Role of Pleasure Reading in Enhancing Reading Speed and Reading Comprehension:
A Case Study
Dr. Choudhry Zahid Javid
Taif University, Saudi Arabia
Dr. Muhammad Hannan Al-Khairi
Taif University, Saudi Arabia
Abstract
Effective reading is mandatory for the students to keep abreast themselves of the vast knowledge around them. Venkateswaran (1995) defines reading as a psycholinguistic process by which the reader reconstructs a message, which has been encoded by a writer. He views reading as an interaction among three essential factors: background knowledge, conceptual abilities and learning strategies. Slow reading is a widely recognized problem, in the realm of ESL/EFL, which hinders effective learning (Hamp-Lyon, 1983; Cooper, 1984). And keeping in view the same scenario, this study investigated 74 Saudi medical undergraduates studying at College of Medicine and Medical Sciences (CMMS), Taif University to determine the positive overbearing of an extensive pleasure reading project on reading speed, reading comprehension and their attitude towards reading in their leisure time. The reading speed and reading comprehension of the participants were calculated by using graded readers in the beginning and at the end of this project. The data were scientifically analyzed and the results reported that the gains in the reading speed and reading comprehension of the experimental group were significantly higher than the control group. Furthermore, the questionnaire data revealed that the pleasure reading had a positive change in their behavior and majority of the samples declared that they would continue reading in their leisure time in the future as well.
Key Words: Pleasure reading, top-down, bottom-up, loud reading, and silent reading