The Impact of Reading Fluency on Comprehension among Sudanese EFL learners

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the influence of reading fluency on comprehending a text. Fluency in reading refers to appropriate reading speed, accurate word recognition, appropriate phrasing, and appropriate expression when reading orally. The descriptive method is used to achieve the study. The Fluency Development Lesson (FDL) is used to investigate the student's ability in reading fluency by measuring the influence of the strategies of reading and its influence on the text understanding. Then the Assessing Fluency Chart is applied to check the rate of fluency among students and its effect on understanding the text. The sample of the study consists of 25 male and 25 female students selected randomly from a total population of 410 students enrolled at the University of Elimam Elmahadi English department in the second semester of 2016. However, after applying the measure of reading fluency the following results was found reading without fluency is one of the main reasons for students' learning difficulties in understanding of what they read. Fluency in reading is essential and crucial factor for the EFL learners to become a successful reader and strongly correlates with reading comprehension. However, the researcher also found that when students moved to new passages, their initial readings of those new pieces were read with higher levels of fluency and comprehension than the initial readings of the previous passage. The study 
recommends that EFL students should be encouraged to practice reading fluency to enhance their understanding of what they read.