What is efficient EFL reading?

An educated native speaker performs all reading-related tasks in his environment. These include reading and understanding newspapers and popular magazines, personal letters, business correspondence, official documents, stories, academic textbooks, scientific and technical reports. The objective of EFL reading course is to produce efficient EFL readers who can perform all reading-related tasks in their environment.

Efficient reading includes flexibility in speed and in comprehension.

Efficient readers generally read at three different speeds, depending on their purpose, the difficulty of the material and their background knowledge.

The first type of speed is study speed (200-300 words per minute). This is the slowest speed, used for reading textbooks and difficult materials such as legal document, when the reader desires a high rate of understanding (80% - 90% comprehension) as well as good retention. In this type of reading the reader studies the material carefully in order not to miss a single point.

The second type of speech is average reading speed (250-500 wpm.) This is the speed that educated native speakers use to read everyday materials such as newspapers, magazines, novels, and stories. At this speed the rate of comprehension is lowered (usually about 70%). They sometimes even skip over paragraphs or pages that don’t interest them.

The third type of sped is skimming speed.

This is the fastest speed that native speakers use, when they wish to cover the material in hurry and high comprehension is not required. Generally speaking the skimming speed is at least twice as fast as the average reading speed (800 wpm), comprehension 50%.

So we can see that speed and comprehension are inseparable in efficient reading. An efficient reader can not only read slowly with good comprehension, but can do also fast reading with needed comprehension when circumstances require. Experimental evidence has shown that a poor reader is typically one who reads everything at the same slow speed and does not get much meaning from reading.

Therefore, the major objective of EFL reading course should be to improve the average and skimming speeds of our students and to help them develop the ability to vary their speed in reading different materials for different purposes.