ABSTRACT
This chapter describes fluency as a necessary part of any foreign language programme. The two faces of fluency, online processing in real time and accurate understanding of the text, are therefore complimentary aspects of the same process. With extensive reading and listening, the chapter exposes students to greater amounts of written or oral text and thus give them greater opportunities to practice. The main difference between extensive and intensive reading, would seem to be, as the name suggests, that students read considerably more and at a lower level than they would in a typical intensive reading class. Two things are of interest: first that the definition of fluency now encompasses more than speech and thus can be applied to other language skills such as reading or listening, and second, P. Lennon's definition includes the concept of accuracy. The subtitles in a film example should show that reading while listening is not such a totally alien concept outside the classroom.
