Saw Shwe Lin
Critique paper 2
Authors:
Klauda, Susan Lutz, Department of Human Development, University of
Maryland, College Park, MD, US, susan3@umd.edu
Guthrie, John T., Department of Human Development, University of Maryland,
College Park, MD, US
Source:
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 100(2), May, 2008. pp. 310-321.
Title:
Relationships of three components of reading fluency to reading
comprehension.
Summary of the articles.
The components of fluency are not only speed and accuracy in reading, but also
appropriate expression is added in these days. Appropriate expression refers to using prosodic
features and phrasing in according to the syntactic structure. The two components of fluency –
speed and accuracy - at word level and prosody at the sentence and passage levels are discussed
in the study.
Although empirical studies of the relationship among reading skills have often reported to
high positive correlations between measures of fluency and comprehension, some studies have
indicated dissociations between fluency and comprehension when fluency is defined as
accuracy or speed in reading individual words or pseudowords, meaning that literal
comprehension did not correlate with accuracy in reading a list of words unrelated to the
comprehension.
Word reading speed facilitates the reading comprehension. That is because word
recognition becomes faster, it eventually becomes automatic, supporting the processes of word
1
Saw Shwe Lin
decoding for comprehension. Word reading speed and comprehension are related interactively.
Top-down processes of language comprehension facilitates word recognition speed, too.
Comprehension and fluency may also be related because they share a basis in some of the
semantic and syntactic processes involved in processing language at the phrase or sentence
level. Repeated reading lead to gains in comprehension and fluency, not because of practice
effects but at least partly because it forces readers to use syntactic as well as semantic,
morphological, contextual cues. Syntactic processing contributes to comprehension as shown in
tow studies: segmenting the test into meaningful phrases or segmented tests help better
comprehension and teaching the children to identify the words in the text faster does not linked
with significant gains in the comprehension.
Reading fluency and comprehension may owe on processing of features, overcoming of
organization and coherence or the macrostructure of the text. Empirical research provided that
the prosodic or expressive aspects of the story grammar assist the reading comprehension.
Understanding macrostructure involves discerning overall purpose or basic organizational
structure with the signal words of causation, description, sequence, problem solution, or
comparison. Some research mentioned clear links between expository text structure and
comprehension, while there are no studies for the association of fluency and awareness of the
text structure. However, according to the rubrics used for assessing the quality of children’s
passage oral reading, it is implied that the best readers have a sense of the passage’s
macrostructure.
There are mediators such as inferences and reader’s knowledge about the text as a key in
processing the comprehension. In the study, the mediation of the relationship between fluency
and comprehension is investigated. Fluency and comprehension is a reciprocal causal
2
Saw Shwe Lin
relationship. It shared multiple processes accounted for relations between fluency and
comprehension, such as vocabulary, syntactic knowledge and background knowledge.
This study is considered to answer the following questions.
1. To what extent does each type of fluency- word, syntactic, passage- correlate with
reading comprehension when the other types of fluency, inferencing, and prior
knowledge are statistically controlled?
2. To what extent is the association of each type of fluency with reading comprehension
mediated by inferencing and prior knowledge?
3. To what extent does each type of fluency correlate with reading comprehension when
the other types of fluency are statistically controlled?
4. To what extent does fluency predict changes in comprehension over a 12-week period,
and to what extend does reading comprehension predict changes in fluency over the
same length of time?
Method
The researcher used the hierarchical regression analysis. (Empirical study and qualitative
study) The study was done with the participations of 278 fifth grade students who have different
reading ability in English. They are samples from 13 classrooms in three schools, having
English as Second Language (ESL) Instruction, Special Education Services and Free and
Reduced Price Meals (FMRC).
There conducted the fluency assessments at three different levels, inferencing assessment,
and background knowledge assessment in the study. The reading comprehension assessment,
inferencing assessments, and two fluency measures shared a common text partially.
3
Saw Shwe Lin
At Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (GMRT) is used for comprehension tests. At first,
according to teacher’s judgments of reading ability and school records, the students were
assigned to Level 4, 5, 6 of Form S of the test. Then the students were reassigned to T Form of
the test if they are on the fixed cutoff point at the first. The scores of the later were used in the
analyses.
For inferencing assessment, two stimulus texts were selected from first half of each level
of GMRT comprehension test and each was followed by the six true-false items. One item was
to measure very low level inferencing and five items were to measure middle-to high-level
inferencing in each set of six in the assessment. Two practice items were provided to the
students before the assessment.
The knowledge of ecological concepts was used for the background knowledge
measurement. This represented that the general knowledge of one topic area would predict
knowledge of other topics. Nineteen multiple-choice items were constructed in the
measurement.
For the word recognition assessment (WRA), the students were expected to correctly
identify the individual words, as quickly as possible, presented in a list. There were two lists, A
and B, in which words were from the stimulus texts and the students received both A and B lists
according to their levels classified by GMRT. The assessment was contributed to students after
they were instructed for the directions of the assessment and a practice list of six words was
provided to them. Word reading speed was determined by calculating the number of words read
correctly per minute, and word accuracy, the percentage of words each student read correctly.
For measuring the fluency at the syntactic level, Woodcock-Johnson III reading fluency
test was used in this study. The test consisted of 98 simple sentences, describing common
4
Saw Shwe Lin
animals and objects. Students were directed to silently read as many sentences as they could
within 3 min and to circle ‘Y’ for ‘yes’ and ‘N’ for ‘No’ after each sentence. Scores were
calculated by subtracting number of incorrect responses from the number of correct responses.
To measure the fluency at the passage level (PORA), the passages used in this study were
stimulus texts from GMRT and the words in the texts are consisted of words of the lists given in
the WRA. The students were directed to read out loud expressively until the administrator ask
them to stop or they finish the passage. The dimensions emphasized on this present study were
passage expressiveness and phrasing. The ability of oral interpretation of the passage with the
appropriateness and consistency of the mood or tone is considered to score for the passage
expressiveness dimension, ranging from 1 (very weak) and 4 (very strong). For the scale of
phrasing, it was ranged from 1 (reading word by word) to 4 (reading in larger and meaningful
unit) according to National Assessment of Educational Progress fluency rubric.
The procedure of the assessments was ordered as follow. At time 1, a. GMRT
comprehension subtest, b. WJ-III Reading Fluency subtest, c. background knowledge, and d.
inferencing. Then, 12 students per classroom completed WRA and PORA. Those students were
students who were assigned to Level 4 of GMRT and the random sample of students who were
assigned to Level 5 and 6 of the GMRT. At time 2, students completed the GMRT test and WJIII fluency test.
5
Saw Shwe Lin
Results
1). To what extent does each type of fluency- word, syntactic, passage- correlate with reading
comprehension when the other types of fluency, inferencing, and prior knowledge are
statistically controlled?
The study revealed that background knowledge contributes 50% of the variance in
reading comprehension. And additional contributions from inferencing is 8%, from word
reading speed is 10%, from syntactic processing is 5% and from passage-level processing is 2%.
All five independent variables, in total, affected 75% on reading comprehension.
2).To what extent is the association of each type of fluency with reading comprehension
mediated by inferencing and prior knowledge?
Word recognition speed and reading comprehension were strongly related. The
decreasing of word recognition speed, when it is shared with referencing still, has a unique
association with the reading comprehension. The association of word reading speed with
reading comprehension decreased when background knowledge was added to it, suggesting that
effects of the association were mediated by background knowledge. As syntactic processing
itself was significantly associated with reading comprehension, it is not mediated by the other
contributions. Passage-level processing shared in variance with all the other variables, including
word recognition speed, inferencing, background knowledge, and syntactic processing.
3).To what extent does each type of fluency correlate with reading comprehension when the
other types of fluency are statistically controlled?
Reading comprehension at time 1 was the dependent variable and phrasing was used as a
measure of fluency at the syntactic level. Word reading speed contribute 43%, phrasing does
10% and passage-level processing does 4% of variance in reading comprehension.
6
Saw Shwe Lin
4).To what extent does fluency predict changes in comprehension over a 12-week period, and to
what extend does reading comprehension predict changes in fluency over the same length of
time?
Time 1 syntactic processing significantly explained Time 2 reading comprehension,
controlling for Time 1 reading comprehension when Time 2 reading comprehension was the
dependent variable. When Time 2 syntactic processing was the dependent variable, Time 1
reading comprehension explained significantly variance in Time 2 syntactic processing,
controlling for Time 1 syntactic processing.
Conclusion
The researcher discussed that the following facts are displayed to the students who
demonstrated highest performances in reading comprehension.
1. Fast recognition of isolated words
2. Adeptness in processing syntactic units while reading with oral or silent
3. Appropriate consistent expression when reading stories and information text out loud.
Faster word recognition speed and higher performance on the syntactic processing
measure may presume that fewer cognitive resources were needed for those activities. In
addition, it was revealed that better performance on the passage-level processing fluency
measure was associated with better performance on the cognitive measures and two other
fluency measures.
The findings were consistent with the research suggestion that fluency and
comprehension were related because they shared processing not only individual words, but also
of syntactic units. However, the prosody in young children’s oral reading did not correlate with
reading comprehension after word recognition automaticity was controlled.
7
Saw Shwe Lin
In this research, a new rating scale was created for assessing the student’s expressive
interpretation of the passage. This study did not provide direct evident that better performance
on passage expressiveness possessed higher accurate macrostructures of the passages they read
aloud. However, awareness of the macrostructure may explain relationship between passage
expressiveness and reading comprehension.
The researcher also discussed about the multi co-linearity in the contribution of the
present study. The word recognition and oral reading tasks were developed from the same
passages. Then, the question is how much the expressive components of fluency and
comprehension may vary from text to text because of the differences in the text’s grammatical
complexity or the in the reader’s interest in and the familiarity with the text.
Vocabulary knowledge and motivation variables may account for high correlations
between performance on fluency and comprehension measures.
In sum, this study suggested for the future researches such as examining whether the
various levels have different relationships to comprehension and examining how the multiple
levels of fluency and comprehension are related when motivation is also assessed.
8
Saw Shwe Lin
Personal reaction
I expected to learn about how reading fluency helps the comprehension of the text in this
study. As I mentioned in previous articles, Myanmar students practiced only rote rehearsing in
decades for learning. Most of the students own on the oral reading for rehearsing by heart. So, I
am expecting to know how oral reading is apparently related to the comprehension of the texts
from this research. And also I hypothesized that the relation of reading fluency for
comprehension might have different results for the mother languages.
In this study, the answer of the first research question said that the background
knowledge contributes 50% to the reading comprehension. That is very accurate result and
showed the essential part for reading comprehension of the text. In addition, I would like to say
that background knowledge encourages the readers have confident in translating the information
from what they have read to the mother language. Whenever I choose the English articles to
translate into Burmese version, I find out if I familiar the background information of the articles.
Or I have to read the additional articles for the background knowledge before translation.
Another reason I support the researcher’s notion is regarding to the teaching-learning process.
Now a day, teachers are trying to make the activities through which the students would recall
their experiences (background knowledge) to connect the lessons because they believe that
connecting what the students have already known about the lessons with the new information
makes the students learn better.
The researcher also said that repeated reading comprehends the texts more not because of
the practice effects because of becoming familiar the syntactic units in the text. I got experiences
in my schooling life regarding to this notion. By reading repeatedly a sentence or a paragraph I
eventually understand them even I do not know the reason for the association. Sometimes, I do
9
Saw Shwe Lin
not understand a paragraph even I know all the words and familiar with them. But, when I read it
repeatedly to attempt to go deeper understanding, it works and I understand the concept of the
paragraph. That is because of becoming deeper processing in syntactic units.
However, vocabulary knowledge may take higher contribution in comprehension of the
text. Thus can be approved from the researchers’ notion mentioned in this study that the students,
who showed higher performance, also demonstrated in fast recognition of isolated words.
Students gained fast recognition of the words because the exposure of those words from the
previous assessments made familiarity the students with the words. The reading comprehension,
inferencing assessment, word recognition assessment and passage oral reading assessment shared
a partially common text. The word recognition was assessed only after reading comprehension
and inferencing assessment. So, we can infer that the students have already exposure the words
and have already inferred the meaning of the words that promotes their recognition of those
words when they were assessed. Therefore, fast recognition making higher performance is meant
that the familiarity of the vocabulary knowledge makes higher performance in comprehension.
In this research, measuring the fluency at the passage level should involve the
other considerations for ESL students who were the participants of this study. The students were
scored according to the expressive interpretation of what they have read. In the oral
interpretation, tones and mood of the sound is considered for expressiveness. That could be
different according the mother languages of ESL students even they comprehend what they have
read. The tones of the speech in mother language can influence on the second language. For
example, in Burmese language, we speak in monotones. So, whenever we speak in English, it is
always in monotones except the ones who are grown up in native countries.
10
Saw Shwe Lin
As the researchers suggested for the future research, the different age level might have
different relation between the fluency and the comprehension. And also I would like to make two
suggestions. First, if all the participants are native English speaking children, the results might be
different and should be investigated. Secondly, how oral reading and silent reading correlate to
the comprehension of the texts can be researched.
11