“We define fluency as reasonably accurate reading, at
an appropriate
rate, with suitable expression, that leads
to accurate and deep
comprehension and motivation to
read.”
Fluency
is the ability to read words accurately
and automatically with expression. Because
fluent readers do not have to slow down in
order to concentrate on decoding the individual
words in a text, they
can focus their attention
on the text's meaning.
In this way, fluency
acts as a bridge between
word recognition and comprehension, and this
relationship is reciprocal. That is, when a
student understands the meaning of the text
he/she is reading, it is much easier to read that
text with expression.
Fluency Strategies
Prosody
is a term that is frequently heard in
discussions of fluency. Prosody
refers to the
appropriate use of intonation and phrasing in
reading.
Reading involves paying attention to punctuation
signs like commas and periods, assigning
appropriate stress to individual words
within a
sentence, and raising or lowering voice
intonation to match the
meaning of the text
(e.g., raising the voice at the end of a question).
Paying attention to the elements of prosody
allows us to quantify and
measure what we
refer to as "reading with expression."
How fluency relates to ELLs
Instruction
in fluency can be particularly
beneficial for English language learners
because activities designed to enhance
fluency in reading can also a
contribute to oral
language development in English.
As students practice
reading English text
accurately and automatically, they
are gaining
valuable information about the sounds and cadences of spoken
English, and they are also
developing vocabulary skills that can
contribute
to oral language fluency, as well as reading and
listening comprehension.
Reading Skills:
There are different types of reading and
different ways to understand what you read.
When you’re reading in your native language,
you don’t have to think
about what you’re
going to read, how you’re going to read it or
how
you’re going to make sure you’ll
understand it.
Reading in your native
language is
automatic—it just happens. Over time, with
effort and practice, reading in English will
become just as automatic for you.
Sowhatshouldyoudo?
\Well,onewaytoincreaseyourcontacthours
withEnglishthatyoucan actuallyunderstandis
throughapracticecalled extensive reading. The
ideaisthatyouchoosebookstoreadthatare
veryeasyto understand,andyouthenreadlots
andlotsofthem.
Formostlearners,thisinvolvesusing graded
readers, thatis,books writtenusingthemost
commonEnglishwordsforpeoplewhoare
notyetfluentatEnglish.
Andifyoureadataleveljustatorjustbelow
youractuallevel, thenyoucanreadeasilyand
smoothly.Thenyoucanfocuson theactual
contentofwhatyouarereadinginsteadofthe
language itself.
Whenyoucanjustenjoythestory,thenyoucan
forgetabout thelanguage.Andthenguess
what?Youareexposingyour mindtomany
differentEnglishpatternsoverandoveragain.
Andifyouseeanewvocabularyword,youjust
skiprightoveritandinferthemeaning.You’ll
seeitagainanyway.Youdon’t actuallyneeda
dictionary.Yousimplyinternalizethese
vocabularywordsandsentencepatterns.
Andthenwhenyougotospeak,thepatterns
canexpress themselvesthroughyourspeech
sinceyouhaveseenthem somanytimes.
Interesting,huh?
Assessing reading fluency
As with any type
of instruction, fluency instruction
depends upon ongoing assessment to
identify
individual students' strengths and needs.
Effective fluency
assessment must include
measures of all three components of fluency:
reading accuracy and prosody.
It is important to note that the accuracy
percentages and the reading rate ranges
described in
this article are based on research
conducted in English and should not
be applied
to reading in other languages. Even languages
that use the
same alphabet differ in such
characteristics as phonetic regularity, syntactica
complexity, and even average word length, all of
which can
affect reading accuracy and
rate.Additional research is needed to
determine
appropriate accuracy and rate ranges for other
languages.
Assessing reading accuracy
Accuracy
refers to the percentage of words a
reader can read correctly in a
given text.
Measuring accuracy allows teachers to choose
texts at an
appropriate difficulty level for each
student. In order to improve their
reading,
students need texts that are difficult enough to
require them
to practice using the reading
strategies they are learning without being
so difficult that the student is overwhelmed.
Four Types of Reading
Intensive reading.
Reading intensively means trying to understand
every word on the page. You want to get as much
information as you can from the text.
This is the kind of reading you do when you have
some time to really focus. You don’t want to be
distracted (unable to pay attention).
You’ll also want to keep a dictionary handy
because you’ll want to
look up any words you don’t
know. Grab a notebook, too—it’s always a
good
idea to take notes as you read!
When you practice intensive reading, pick a fairly
short text that
interests you. If you have a really
long text—or you just don’t care
about the topic—
you might give up before you finish.
Try to make this process as interesting and
enjoyable as you can.
That way, you’ll want to do
more intensive reading. And the more you can
use
this powerful tool for improving English, the better.
Extensive reading.
Extensive reading simply means casually
reading anything you see in English. Don’t
stress. Don’t worry about what every word
means.
Read a new recipe. Read an email. Read a
blog post.
Read billboards along the highway. Read
newspaper headlines.
It doesn’t matter what you read—just read in
English. Anything. Everything.
Extensive reading is important because it opens
you up to all kinds
of English words and lets
you practice reading in many different
contexts.
The more extensive reading you do, the more
comfortable you’ll be with reading in English.
And the more comfortable you are, the more
confident you’ll become!
Skimming.
When you need to read something quickly to
get the main idea of the text, you can skim the
text.
Skimming means to simply read on the surface.
In other words, you
don’t go too deep into the
details. You don’t need to know what every
word means. You can just read deeply enough
to get the basic idea.
You can skim with a finger on the page, tracing
swiftly underneath
the words as you read. Use
the pace of your finger to make yourself read
faster. Your brain will naturally keep pace with
(go as fast as) your finger.
Scanning.
If you’re looking for specific information when
you read a text, try scanning for it. When you
scan, it’s almost like using your brain as a
search engine.You’re looking out for certain
key words or phrases.
You don’t need
to pay attention to everything.
Just stay focused, ignoring almost
everything
except for the information you need.
1 – Build phonemic awareness.
If you’re wondering what on earth phonemic awareness has to do with
fluency, here’s the deal. Phonemic awareness (the ability to identify
and manipulate individual sounds, or phonemes, in words) is essential
for success in decoding words. Since fluency is all about being
automatic with word recognition, we’ve got to teach the skills that will
get us to automaticity.
2 – Teach phonics in a systematic,
explicit way.
Research has told us again and again that students benefit from
direct and structured phonics instruction. When we combine phonemic
awareness with phonics, we are equipping our students to tackle
unfamiliar words that could interrupt their fluency.
(In fact, if a student scores below benchmark on an oral reading
fluency test, the first step is to give a phonics assessment to see if a
lack of phonics skills is impeding progress
3 – Teach students to read irregular high
frequency words.
While most words contain at least some graphemes (letter or letter
combinations that represent phonemes) that are regular, some words
include patterns that must be learned by heart. For example, in the word
the, the final vowel sound has an unexpected spelling. In the word said, the ai has an unexpected pronunciation.
When teaching these irregular words, it’s important to remember that
students learn them just like they learn any other word – and not through
whole word memorization. Instead of drilling these as whole words, we
can call attention to the parts that are regular and those that are not.
After introducing words in this way, it’s perfectly appropriate to do
flash card practice. Hasbrouck and Glaser (2019) recommend the
following procedure:
Students write each word on the front of an index card (or the teacher may do this in advance).
Students trace the letters while saying them and reading the word.
On the back, students write a sentence using the word and/or draw a
quick picture to help them recall the word. (The teacher may do this as
well.)
The cards can then be put on a ring or a recipe box for students to use for daily practice.
When students practice the words, they can sort them according to
their speed under pictures of a dog, rabbit, and turtle. The dog pile
gets words that are read quickly and automatically. The rabbit pile gets
words that are read with some hesitation. The turtle pile gets words
that are unknown, read incorrectly, or read after several seconds.
Students keep practicing until all cards get to the dog pile.
4 – Read aloud to your students
When teachers don’t make daily read alouds a routine, I think the
only reason must be that they aren’t aware of the countless benefits of
reading aloud to our students.
I won’t go off on a tangent here, but this quote from Tim
Rasinski (2010) is well worth sharing:
“Clearly, read aloud builds interest in reading, but its
benefits do
not end there. Read aloud helps you achieve
three important goals with
your students: it improves
comprehension and vocabulary, and builds
motivation”
Here’s one more benefit: reading aloud provides a wonderful model of fluent reading.
5 – Implement assisted reading
This simply means reading aloud alongside our students.
Choral reading – groups of students (or even the whole class) read the same text aloud in unision
Paired reading – This research-based approach is not exactly the same as partner reading or buddy reading. In
paired reading, a more proficient reader supports a less able reader by
reading together chorally; the more proficient reader adjusts his/her
volume and support as the other reader becomes more confident. The
reader signals when the more proficient reader should read more loudly
or bow out altogether.
Audio recorded reading – Listening to an audio recording of a text will help build fluency only if the listener is
reading along. Students can make great gains in fluency if they keep
listening and reading along until they can read the text independently.
6 – Provide opportunities for
repeated reading
Our goal is for students to read one text several times so that they
can read it fluently – with few errors, at an appropriate rate, with
proper expression, and good comprehension.
I’m surprised when I see people question the value of repeated
reading in large Facebook groups devoted to the science of reading. The
truth is that we’ve had decades of research that show its value.
Research has, in fact, found that rereading a familiar passage not
only leads to improvement on that particular passage, but fluency gains
also transfer to the reading other passages.
You may be familiar with the concept of timed repeated reading – in
which students read a passage multiple times until they achieve a
desired rate. This is a powerful intervention that is best suited for
students who fit this criteria:
Words Correct Per Minute scores are more than ten words below the
50th percentile on the Hasbrouck & Tindal ORF (Oral Reading Fluency)
norms when they read grade-level or instructional-level text.
Reading is slow but accurate.
Decoding of individual words is also slow but accurate.
Phonemic awareness is well developed.
Comprehension is adequate or good.
When doing timed repeated readings, always make it a point to also talk about the text. Reading fluently is not all about speed!
7 – Do whole class fluency lessons.
Later in this series I’ll walk you through the Fluency Development
Lesson, in which teachers support students as they learn to read a short
passage or poem with fluency. The FDL only takes about 15 minutes a
day.
If you have more time, and you want to help all children achieve
fluency with grade-level text, consider FORI (Fluency-Oriented Reading
Instruction).
Here’s a general overview of FORI:
Monday – The teacher introduces the text and reads
it while the class follows along; the teacher leads a discussion that
focuses on comprehending the text.
Tuesday – The teacher and students echo read the
story; comprehension instruction is infused throughout; students take
the text home and read it to a friend or family member
Wednesday – Teacher and students choral-read the text; students who need extra practice read it again at home.
Thursday – Students partner-read the text; students who need extra practice read it again at home.
Friday – Students complete extension activities to broaden comprehension.
8 – Provide opportunities for performance
reading
Timed repeated reading can be a great motivator for struggling
readers who watch their performance improve during their sessions.
But repeated reading, while beneficial to all students, can be less
than motivating if we go about it the wrong way. Thankfully, we can make
repeated reading interesting and engaging for all students when we make
it authentic.
When repeated reading is done for the purpose of rehearsal for a performance, we can get everyone on board.
Students can reread texts multiple times as they prepare to perform in any of these ways: