The Impact of Timed Reading Activity on Iranian EFL learners Reading Speed, Comprehension, and Attitudes at Intermediate Level

Learning English is one of the most important activities around the world. Learning a language includes a number of skills and sub-skills. Reading is one of the skills of language learning, and it is the focus of the present study. Comprehension and speed are two main parts of the reading skill. The main aim of this study is to investigate the effects of timed reading activity on speed, comprehension and the attitudes of English learners regarding the use of timed reading activity. To this aim, a pre-test, a post-test and a questionnaire were used to gather data. 40 intermediate language learners participated in this study, and they were divided into two groups; experimental and control groups. Timed reading activity was employed as the treatment for the experimental group. The collected data revealed that the treatment had effect on the reading speed of the participants in the experimental group. Moreover, the data indicated that the timed reading activity was not highly effective to develop the reading comprehension skill of the language learners. And the results of the questionnaire indicated that a large number of the participants had positive attitude toward the timed reading activity