Running head: FLUENCY LITERATURE REVIEW
Does Fluency Rate Affect Student Reading Comprehension?
A Literature Review
Laura Jordan
Kennesaw State University
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FLUENCY LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
Both fluency and reading comprehension are important pillars in literacy
instruction. When teaching students it is important to test both their comprehension and
reading fluency rates. Fluency is typically measured by how fast a student reads. Reading
comprehension is measured by how much information and meaning a student takes from
the text. While incorporating both of these into literacy instruction is essential, do they
both carry the same weight? Even more importantly, does a student’s fluency rate have an
affect on hisreading comprehension success?
Review of Literature
Fluency
Fluency is defined as translating written text into an oral output for speed and
accuracy (Speece & Ritchey, 2005). This involves a student reading a text and measuring
how many words per minute (WPM) this student can read aloud. There are three
components that are used to measure fluency: accuracy, automaticity, and prosody (Wise
et al., 2012). Accuracy is measured by the student correctly identifying the given words of a
text. Automaticity deals with the student’s immediate recognition of the word and how
long it takes the student to orally repeat it. And prosody is measuring if the student is
reading with expression and using the correct pauses while reading. When all three of
these components are measured the teacher is able to see what the student’s fluency rate
is. Unfortunately fluency is typically recognized as how fast (automaticity) a student can
orally read a text. Because of this, students are not being measured correctly and are only
being called “fluent” readers based on their WPM.
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The National Reading Panel produces studies involving student achievement and
literacy education and they found that fluency is indeed one of the important pillars of
effective reading (NRP, 2000). What does this mean for teachers? In the past decades
fluency has been thought to be both a hot and not-hot topic in literacy education. It is
important that fluency is tested and measured when analyzing student achievement.
Just because a student is a fluent reader does not always mean that they can
comprehend as well as they can read aloud. With tests of students in early stages of
literacy it was found that there was a breakdown between their oral reading and their
reading comprehension levels later on in their schooling career (Kendeou et al., 2009). This
study showed that students who are able to read with automaticity early on in life are not
guaranteed to be just as successful with reading comprehension. Although both fluency
and comprehension are important pillars they do have an equal relationship in which when
one goes up the other automatically goes up as well.
Fluency positives
Fluency is am important pillar in literacy education, but why? What are some
positives of fluency testing? A great aspect of fluency testing is that is can be measured
very easily and whenever the teacher wants data. By using tests such as DIBELS or running
records the teacher is able to assess a student’s fluency throughout the school year as
opposed to the end of the year testing that measures student comprehension (Brabham &
Paleologos, 2011). By collecting the student’s fluency data throughout the school year the
teacher is able to easily assess what areas the student may need help on in oral reading
whether it be punctuation and pauses or reading with expression.
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It has been found that fluency is an effective tool when looking for struggling
readers in a classroom (Swain, 2013). This is thought to be because the student who is
struggling to be fluent is also spending a majority of his time decoding the words and not
processing the meaning of the text. To help these students become more fluent there have
been many studies on how to increase oral fluency. Dahl (1974) created the Repeated
Reading Technique (RRT) in which a student is asked to read a passage aloud over and
over again. When the student is able to read the passage multiple times, he is familiarizing
himself with all of the words and punctuation marks. It is with this technique that fluency
improvement is evident (Swain, 2013). It is thought that if a student becomes more fluent
with RRT that this will help their reading comprehension, is this true? What are the
negatives of fluency instruction? Is fluency instruction helping our students?
Fluency negatives
People continually believe that fluency is an automatic indicator of a student’s
reading comprehension strength. This has been proven to be untrue. There is a
breakdown between these two pillars that shows that just because a student is extremely
strong in one of the to categories it does not mean that you are strong in the other
(Kendeou et al., 2009).
Many people consider fluency to be reading aloud quickly. If that is what is taught
then students will have no understanding of the importance of reading. If students are
being measured on just how fast they read they are likely to rush through their reading.
And although they can accurately decode words, are they making mental images? Are the
students truly comprehending the text as a whole? If there is so much pressure on students
to read at a specific speed, we are pushing our student to focus only on their speed and not
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teaching them to slow down, make mental images, and truly comprehend what they are
reading (Rasinski, 2012).
Fluency is thought to be an important factor in defining a student’s reading ability.
Is this true? What about reading comprehension? And how are the two connected?
Reading Comprehension
We read to learn, to grow, and to explore. Reading comprehension is the main focus
of reading. Students read to gain understanding of their text (Weaver, 2002). Reading
comprehension is defined as “an active process that requires intentional and thoughtful
interaction between the reader and text” (NRP, 2000, p.1). It is important to remember
that comprehension can be measured in many ways and is thought to be unique to each
student. Comprehension involves taking the text, decoding it, and then creating a mental
image of the text so that a student can fully understand what you are reading.
Comprehension is truly an active complex cognitive process (NRP, 2000).
Because reading comprehension is so complex, the ways in which it is studied are
countless. It is thought that comprehension is not a single process but the coming together
of many skills that a reader must learn to be successful (Cutting & Scarborough, 2006). The
brain is doing multiple things while reading and comprehension is happening in various
ways.
Comprehension is not just knowledge that is found in the text that the student can
repeat. Comprehension is taking the text and applying a general knowledge to the
information and mixing it with background knowledge that the student has already
acquired. Comprehension cannot be found in a single text or a sentence but it is a holistic
process involving both what the student knows and what the student are taking in
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(Lonigan & Whitehurst, 1998). Reading comprehension is clearly a complex process that
has caused many assessment questions in literacy education.
One of the main issues regarding reading comprehension is that there is not just one
way of measuring comprehension. There are so many different texts, standardized exams,
and informal assessments when measuring reading comprehension (Kendeou et al., 2009).
And, as previously stated, because comprehension is such a complex process it is very
difficult to compare comprehension scores across a group because of the multiples forms of
assessment. It is important to remember that each child comprehends texts differently
based on their schemas.
Although there is an on going debate on what comprehension truly is and how it is
defined, all educators seems to agree that comprehension involves the student creating
mental images of the text (Applebee et al., 1978). How is this taught? What are the ways in
which reading comprehension is assessed? Because comprehension is the main focus of
reading, there must be a universal way in which educators measure reading
comprehension so that data can be compared.
The Relationship between fluency and reading comprehension
It is evident that because both fluency and reading comprehension are important
pillars in literacy instruction there must be a relationship between the two. Is there a
correlational relationship? Does one affect the other? How does student achievement rank
between these two pillars?
Pinnell (1995) has found that a student’s accuracy does not relate to his reading
comprehension. There must be more than accuracy to determine reading comprehension.
Some students may be able to accurately decode because of the pressures to finish first and
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to read quickly. This may cause the student to read quickly but that does not necessarily
mean that the student is comprehending the text.
In contrast, without accurate word identification it has been found that reading
comprehension is not possible (Wise et al., 2010). This is because automaticity of words,
not accuracy, is the largest contributor to reading comprehension. A student may have
already encountered the word and stored its meaning. This allows the student to take less
time decoding the word when reading the text (Therrin, 2004). Because the student is able
to fluently read known words, their reading comprehension also increases. Clearly
vocabulary instruction and visualization are essential in reading comprehension.
If fluency is not stressed, as many educators believe it should not be, students will
continue to read both aloud and in silent incorrectly. If students are non-fluent they will
continue to put a lot of effort into decoding a sentence and may even forget what the
sentence is about because they spend so long decoding it. Fluency instruction is an
essential part of a comprehensive literacy program.
If fluency is taught correctly it will help the student achieve throughout his school
career. As students move past the elementary level they are asked to read silently more
often. Good readers are fluent both aloud and silently in that they are reading with
expression and pausing at appropriate times both mentally and aloud. If fluency and
reading comprehension are taught together then these students, when faced with more
challenging texts and vocabulary, will be able to not only accurate decode the words, but
synthesize them in order to comprehend what they are reading (NRP, 2000).
So what should teachers be aware of? Because of the No Child Left Behind Act there
was a call for more data to measure school success. Having and collecting data between
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both fluency and comprehension is important when measuring student success. It is
important that both teachers are students are aware that both fluency and comprehension
are needed for a student to be a good reader (Paleologos & Brabham, 2012).
It has been found that fluency is a significant factor connecting decoding with
reading comprehension. Because of this, it is evident that both paths are needed when
reading (Nunes et al., 2012). Reading comprehension has two paths, lexile and non-lexile.
The lexile path refers to the students recalling mental images already created for words he
encounters. The non-lexile path is the active process of decoding the words as they are
being read in terms of graphemes, or letters, and phonemes, or sounds (Castles, 2006).
These two processes show that reading is not only an active complex process but that it
calls on both fluency and comprehension to accurately read a text.
Some researchers have found that fluency is a huge factor in reading competence.
Reading competence is being able to accurately read and gain meaning from a text, or
comprehend (Wise et al., 2010). This as well as the other literature does show that there is
a relationship between the two. But what does this relationship entail?
Because both fluency and reading comprehension are stressed in classrooms, it is
important to know their relationship. Multiple studies have shown the importance of being
both a fluent and comprehensive reader. Fluency, when comprised of all three factors, and
reading comprehension when measuring how much meaning a student is getting from a
text are both needed in order for a student to be successful. It has also been found that
students with different fluency rates vary with reading comprehension levels. Does a
student’s fluency rate affect their success in reading comprehension? Are the two
connected in such a way?
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FLUENCY LITERATURE REVIEW
References
Applebee, A. N. (1978).The child’s concept of a story: Ages two to seventeen. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Castles, A. (2006). The dual route model and the developmental dyslexias. London Review of
Education, 4, 49-61.
Cutting, L. E., & Scarborough, H. S. (2006). Prediction of reading comprehension: Relative
contributions of word recognition, language proficiency, and other cognitive skills
can depend on how comprehension is measured. Scientific Studies of Reading, 10,
277–299.
Dahl, P. (1974). An experimental program for teaching high speed word recognition and
comprehension skills Washington, DC: National Institute of Education.
Hilden, K., & Jones, J. (2013). Effective Interactive Read-Alouds Build Stronger
Comprehension. Reading Today, 30(5), 17-19.
Kendeou, P., van den Broek, P., White, M., & Lynch, J. S. (2009). Predicting reading
comprehension in early elementary school: The independent contributions of oral
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Nunes, T. Bryant, P., & Barros, R. (2012). The development of word recognition and its
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104(4), 959-973.
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Paleologos, T. M., & Brabham, E. G. (2011). The Effectiveness of DIBELS Oral Reading
Fluency for Predicting Reading Comprehension of High- and Low-Income Students.
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Pinnell, G. S., Pikulksi, J. J., Wixson, K. K., Campbell, J. R., Gough, P. B., & Beatty, A. S.(1995).
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Swain, K., Leader-Janssen, E. M., & Cconely, P. (2013). Effects of repeated reading and
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Therrien, W.(2004). Fluency and comprehension gains as a result of repeated reading: A
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