Reading Fluency vs. Oral Language Comprehension in Predicting Reading Comprehension of Korean EFL Learners

Abstract

This study explored the applicability of the simple view of reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) for high school Korean EFL learners. The simple view of reading highlights language comprehension abilities and decoding skills as the two major components that explain reading comprehension. However, considering that most older L2 readers, such as Korean high school EFL learners, presumably have good command of word-level decoding skills, a slightly modified version of the simple view of reading was investigated in the current study. That is, in lieu of word recognition abilities, reading fluency that measured readers’ ability to decode and comprehend rapidly and simultaneously at the sentence level was considered. In addition, the relative importance of the two major constructs in explaining reading comprehension was explored. 101 Korean EFL learners in their first year of high school served as participants in this study, and the findings demonstrated that the modified simple view of reading was supported, as both reading fluency and language comprehension abilities turned out to be significant contributors to reading comprehension. However, the results from structural equation modeling showed that oral language comprehension abilities had much stronger influence on reading comprehension abilities, compared to reading fluency. These findings provide important pedagogical implications for building Korean EFL learners’ general oral language comprehension abilities in promoting successful reading comprehension in English.