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EDR8200 Dr. Kelsey

Scholarly Literature Review Synthesize the Scholarly Literature

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Reading Fluency: A Review of the Literature

Daniel Coffin

Northcentral University
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Reading Fluency: A Review of the Literature

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature relevant to the development of

reading fluency and the relation of reading fluency to reading comprehension. A great deal of

recent studies has enabled researchers to begin creating models which map out not only the

relationship between fluency and comprehension, but add to these two the other subcomponents

of reading developed in pre-literacy, offering an explanation as to how these skills continue to

influence reading success through the mediating factors of phonics and reading fluency. For all

this new understanding, however, there is still much to learn about the way the major

components of reading interact and how to leverage this knowledge in the classroom to improve

student reading outcomes. What follows is a review of recent studies of reading fluency and

reading comprehension, and some emergent themes from this research.

The Relationship of Pre-Literacy Skills, Fluency, and Reading Comprehension.

Oral reading fluency refers to the ability of a reader to quickly and accurately decode

text. Readers who are fluent are able to decode text with automaticity, or with a minimum of

mental effort, allowing them to attend to the ideas presented within the text rather than the text

itself. Oral reading fluency, then, is dependent upon a strong grasp of phonics and, in turn,

permits the reader to develop both reading prosody (reading aloud with appropriate intonation

and phrasing) and reading comprehension (Hilsmier, Wehby, & Falk, 2016).

Studies of reading acquisition in languages other than English have shown that reading

fluency does not necessarily have the same role in other languages that it does in English. In

Mandarin Chinese, for instance, which depends on a number of monosyllabic characters which

serve as the smallest units of meaning, morphological awareness (i.e. understanding of and

ability to perceive and identify these characters) is far more predictive of reading comprehension
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than phonological or orthographic awareness (Li & Wu, 2015). In Dutch, which uses a similar

grammar and syntax as English but with a great deal less orthographic depth (i.e. there is a much

greater one-to-one sound-symbol correspondence than in English), phonological awareness is

predictive of reading comprehension as it is in English, but to a lesser degree (Veenendaal,

Groen, & Verhoeven, 2015). In both these languages, as in English, fluency serves as a mediator

between pre-literacy skills and reading comprehension, influencing reading comprehension both

directly (through word reading) and indirectly (by allowing for greater meaning-making while

reading, while relies not just on phonological decoding but on pre-literacy listening

comprehension as well) (Li & Wu, 2015; Kim & Wagner, 2015). The nature of this mediator

role, and the degree to which it mediates between pre-literacy language skills and reading

comprehension, however, is unclear, and appears to change as the reader develops in skill.

A greater knowledge of how pre-literacy skills influence the development of fluency and,

through it, the development of reading comprehension in languages other than English can help

drive not only further research in early English language and literacy acquisition but also to

provide background knowledge relevant to addressing the instructional needs of students who are

English language learners. A deeper understanding of how reading fluency influences how

developing readers apply pre-literacy language skills to the reading task at different points in

their literacy development can help teachers to determine which fluency interventions would be

most appropriate and helpful for a reader given his or her level of skill as a reader, as in the

research showing that prosody becomes more important to comprehension than decoding in the

later primary and middle grades (Veenendaal, Groen, & Verhoeven, 2015).
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Socioeconomic Factors Influencing Oral Reading Disfluency

Why do some students have great deficits in pre-literacy language skills entering into

school? Research indicates parents of higher socioeconomic status engage in greater amounts of

child-directed speech than those of lower socioeconomic status and use speech to elicit

conversation with child rather than to direct behavior (Hoff, 2003). Because of this lack of

natural language development at home, many students of lower socioeconomic status enter into

formal schooling with deficits in vocabulary size and less developed language skills, such as

phonological awareness, than their higher socioeconomic status peers (Basit, Hughes, Iqbal, &

Cooper, 2015). These deficits have been shown to persist or even increase as students progress

through school, likely due to lack of exposure to print in the home and diminished intrinsic

motivation to read (Parker, Zaslofsky, Burns, Kanive, Hodgson, Scholin, & Klingbeil, 2015). As

phonological awareness is a prerequisite for oral reading fluency, these deficits often manifest in

disfluent oral reading.

By the time these students reach the middle grades however, years of oral reading

disfluency and concomitant reading frustration and avoidance frequently develop into

disaffection from reading, which in turn leads to overall diminished academic achievement, as

students in the middle grades are expected to be reading to learn rather than learning to read.

These studies help to explain why the prevailing paradigm of fluency development in the

primary grades and comprehension instruction in the middle and secondary grades is overly

simplistic and fails students from less affluent backgrounds. Students whose language and

literacy acquisition is delayed because of their home environments need the same sorts of

literacy development instruction, but may need it longer and later into their school careers to get

onto even footing.

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Oral vs. Silent Reading Fluency

By way of contrast with primary grades language arts curricula, middle grades

classrooms feature much more sustained silent reading (SSR). Many schools have even instituted

a DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) time during the school day when all students are expected

to read a book quietly for 20-30 minutes. Research would indicate, however, that silent reading

and oral reading are two different types of experiences, and that silent reading does not

contribute to reading comprehension (Price, Meisinger, Louwerse, & DMello, 2015). This has

important implications not only for how language arts classes are structured, but also for the

countless standardized tests of reading which are administered to students to assess their reading

ability and which call for texts to be read silently these tests might not be accurately assessing

the comprehension capabilities of these students.

Conclusion

While research has consistently shown the correlation between oral reading fluency and

reading comprehension, there remain a number of unanswered questions regarding the precise

nature of the reading fluency construct, how it relates to pre-literacy language skills and whether

intensive fluency interventions can compensate for their absence, and the connection of different

aspects of fluency to reading comprehension. These questions, however, provide great avenues

for future research which can further develop our understanding in these areas and our ability to

better meet the needs of struggling readers.

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References

Basit, T.N., Hughes, A., Iqbal, Z., & Cooper, J. (2015). The influence of socio-economic status
and ethnicity on speech and language development. International Journal of Early Years
Education, 23(1), 115-133.

Hoff, E. (2003). The specificity of environmental influence: Socioeconomic status affects early
vocabulary development via maternal speech. Child Development, 74(5), 1368-1378.

Kim, Y.G., & Wagner, R.K. (2015). Text (oral) reading fluency as a construct in reading
development: An investigation of its mediating role for children from grades 1 to 4. Scientific
Studies of Reading, 19(3), 224-242.

Li, L., & Wu, X. (2015). Effects of metalinguistic awareness on reading comprehension and the
mediator role of reading fluency from grades 2 to 4. PLoS ONE, 10(3), 1-16.

Parker, D.C., Zaslofsky, A.F., Burns, M.K., Kanive, R., Hodgson, J., Scholin, S.E., & Klingbeil,
D. A. (2015). A brief report on the diagnostic accuracy of oral reading fluency and reading
inventory levels for reading failure risk among second- and third-grade students. Reading &
Writing Quarterly, 31(1), 55-67.

Price, K.W., Meisinger, E.B., Louwerse, M.M, & DMello, S. (2016). The contributions of oral
and silent reading fluency to reading comprehension. Reading Psychology, 37(2), 167-201.

Veenendaal, N.J., Groen, M.A., & Verhoeven, L. (2015). What oral text reading fluency can
reveal about reading comprehension. Journal of Research in Reading, 38(3), 213-225.