Leessnelheid in Vreemde Talen

This paper presents the results of two studies on the reading rate of students after 5 years of secondary education, including French and English as foreign languages. The reading processes investigated were, in the terminology of Carver, rauding (i.e. 'normal' reading), scanning and learning.As is known from research by Segalowitz, even skilled bilinguals attain an L2 reading rate of only 60-70% of that in their native language. Our students cannot be considered really 'skilled' bilinguals. So it is not surprising that, during the 'normal' reading process (i.e. the process of rauding) of French texts, our students arrive at a reading rate that is considerably slower; they attain a reading rate of 42-48% of the rate of comparable Tl readers; they read about 104 words a minute in French. The reading rate of our students in English as a foreign language is somewhat better: they arrive at a rate of 137 words a minute; this corresponds to 58.6% of the reading rate of comparable Tl readers in English.Strikingly, reading rates in three reading processes: scanning, rauding and learning, as described by Carver, differed proportionally for our readers of French in nearly the same way as for native-language readers of English. In the three cases, students arrived at a reading rate of about 40-45% of that in native-language reading.