What is Reading Fluency and Why Is It Important?
Successful reading requires readers to process connected text and comprehend it. Reading fluency is the reader's ability to appropriately read text in order and understand textual meaning. There are features of fluency that lead to improved comprehension.
They include:
- reading words accurately and automatically so that they do have to take time away from understanding a sentence or story to figure words out
- reading words correctly - Readers must be able to "sound out" or decode the words in a text accurately with minimal errors.
- reading words smoothly and with ease - Readers need to spend as little time on decoding as possible to assist in comprehension.
- Students should increase their bank of words and word chunks with repeated exposure they are able to recognize by sight. Reading word by word and hesitating on challenging words impedes comprehension.
- reading with expression and attending to punctuation - Readers need to pay attention to punctuation (periods, commas, pauses, exclamations) to fully comprehend text. If a student reads quickly and accurately, but places equal emphasis on each word and ignores punctuation, it is unlikely the student will fully understand the meaning of the text.
- In other words, reading fluently should sound like you are having a conversation with a friend. The words should just flow easily and smoothly.
Research indicates that readers become more fluent when they are given ample opportunities to practice their reading. Reading and rereading texts that are at a students' independent reading level are appropriate for building fluency. Put Reading First (2001) states that having students read a text four times is sufficient to improve fluency. Techniques that parents/guardians can use to promote reading fluency include: (These activities are motivating for students because they can actually see that with practice, they can improve their fluency!)
#1 READ DAILY: It is important that your child read daily. Fluency takes practice, practice, practice. Stay with the same passage or story until your child is reading it fluently or smoothly before moving on to another one. Keep the practiced passages to reread from time to time as warm ups before introducing new passages and/or to increase confidence in your reader. Remember that fluency is increased with practice and time. Also encourage your reader to increase his/her rate in reading. Practice with a timer on the microwave or an egg timer to show them that the more times they read a passage the faster they reading rate should become. (NOT speed reading!)
ASSISTED READING PRACTICE: The child reads aloud while an adult follows along silently. If the child makes an error, the adult gives immediate corrective feedback to him/her. Encourage your child to "do your best reading." If the child misreads or hesitates on a word longer than five seconds, tell him/her the word. Have the child repeat the word correctly and then continue reading.
LISTENING PASSAGE PREVIEW: The child follows along silently as the parent read a passage aloud. Then the student read the same passage aloud receiving corrections as listed above as needed. Passages previewed should be no longer than two minutes in length for the adult reader. With younger students, parents should use their finger to track words to assist the child in keeping up reading rate.
PAIRED READING: The child and parent take turns reading pages in the book. Parents assist children with word corrections as needed.
REPEATED READING: The child reads a passage silently at first, then aloud to a parent and receives corrective feedback with reading errors. Passages should be no longer than 100 words in length (children's magazine articles are great for this as long as they are the appropriate reading level for the child). The child should read the passage twice silently and then twice aloud or until there are no errors.
Remember that fluency rates are based on the number of correct words read per minute. If your child begins making numerous errors while reading aloud, please stop and have him/her read an easier passage. If your child appears to be reading fast but with no understanding, please stop and begin the passage again reminding him/her to read for meaning.
