Reading experience drives L2 reading speed development

The big idea

Practice matters—but not all practice is equal. We tracked students’ real-world reading habits during a bridging program to test whether reading more English texts gives learners an extra boost in reading speed development, beyond the effect of instruction alone.

What we did

• Followed 142 Mandarin/Cantonese-speaking English learners in an 8-month university bridging program.
• Collected week-by-week reading logs over 26 weeks of classroom instruction, where students recorded what they read, how long they read, and how many pages they covered.
• Modeled change in reading speed over time, then tested whether total pages read predicted who improved the most.

What we found

• Students became faster readers over time: minutes-per-page decreased steadily across the program (a clear linear improvement).
• The key finding: reading experience mattered. Students who read more pages during the program tended to show larger net gains in reading speed.

Why it matters

This gives a simple, practical lever for programs: instruction helps, but encouraging (and supporting) students to read more in English—especially beyond required coursework—can meaningfully accelerate reading fluency growth.