Improving Oral Reading Fluency of Struggling ESL Readers with Assisted Repeated Reading Using Graded Readers

One has to learn and master the four major language skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing, to be deemed proficient and fluent in the target language. In relation, reading skill is an essential language component and effective reading will allow for successful linguistic input so that comprehension, the ultimate outcome of reading skill, can be attained. Before comprehension can be established, it is important for readers to first read fluently. However, learning to read in a second or new language is often quite a challenging task. It is even more demanding for children with reading difficulties. Thus, this paper aims to explore the effectiveness of the reading intervention - assisted repeated reading using graded readers - in improving the oral reading fluency of struggling elementary-aged readers learning English as a second language (ESL). This action research based study was carried out with 7 struggling ESL readers from a primary school in the period of 30 days. The findings collected from three different data collection methods revealed that the participants were able to read with higher accuracy in word recognition and faster reading rate with improved prosodic reading. With the positive outcomes gathered from this study, it can be concluded that assisted repeated reading using graded readers did improve the oral reading fluency of struggling ESL readers. Further suggestions on how assisted repeated reading with graded readers can be adapted and applied to improve the oral reading fluency of struggling second language readers were also given.