Impact of perceptual skills training on the EFL reading speed and comprehension

The purpose of the research was to determine whether or not the modern perceptual technique of reading involving fast eye movements and rapid visual recognition would increase EFL Arab learners' reading speed, and consequently their reading comprehension. Data for this research were collected from pre- and post-test scores obtained through reading a selected English passage of 695 words followed by a ten item true-false comprehension test. The subjects involved in this study were sixty college English majors evenly distributed into control and the experimental groups. The experimental group was given rapid eye movement and word recognition exercises for two meetings weekly extended over a period of four weeks. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to obtain descriptive statistics. The means of gross and effective rates of reading were computed. The Hest was then applied to determine whether the differences between the reading efficiency scores of the experimental and the control groups in pre- and post-tests were statistically significant. The analysis revealed that the experimental group had significantly scored higher both in gross and effective reading rates than the control group. Both the gross reading and effective reading rates of the experimental group had increased by 20.95 and 37.12 w.p.m. (words per minute) respectively, while the control group had shown no significant progress on both variables. As a con-clusion, the experimental subjects were able to read faster and comprehend better because of the fast perceptual eye-movement and rapid visual recognition exercises. The recommendations included emphasizing and providing training in bottom-up skills in EFL reading curriculum and instruction and exposing the EFL teachers and learners to the eye-movement method and rapid visual recognition exercises in order to improve the reading speed and comprehension. Another recommendation made by the researcher was that applied linguists should place equal emphasis, and exercise balance in their research on bottom-up and top-down processing skills in reading