Developing Automaticity in Reading: A Study of University Students in Japan – Bryan Hahn

Happy New Year everyone. I want to kick off the New Year with a report of our last meeting of 2014. On December 14, we had a visit from Bryan Hahn of Akita International University.  He was in Morioka to talk to us about some research he had been involved in recently, and he wanted to go over the results.

Akita International University has a strong emphasis on English and they have a goal to bring their students’ reading levels up as high as possible.  Hahn worked with students who were enrolled in advanced reading classes at the University and tested whether or not there was progress to be gained by having them read words in “chunks” that allowed them to gradually read more words at a time.  He showed us some of the basic techniques he used to get the students to practice their readings, followed by  a pre-test and then a post-test to allow him to determine if any progress had been made. His hypothesis is that substantial progress can be made with this kind of reading practice.

Hahn stated that by having the students read in more manageable chunks and getting them reading more words at a time helps them improve the number of words-per-minute they can read.   We want to thank Bryan for taking the time out of his busy schedule to join us.

Our next meeting is coming up on January 25. We hope you’ll join us for it. We’ll be featuring Maggye Foster and she will be talking about Motivation:  “the importance of social influences”, and “Strategies and Resources of Motivated Teachers”.