F L U E N C Y

Oral fluency is important in reading comprehension. It is also one of the primary components in reading, for building fluent readers. Rasinski (2003), opines that fluency does not reveal itself naturally in reading but requires direct instruction, which leads a reader to significant literacy growth and understanding.

“Fluency” in reading refers to the rate, accuracy, and expression, or prosody, a reader possesses. As the term “prosody” is subjective in the interpretation of text, past definitions of fluency in oral reading have focused on rate and accuracy. In recent years, the definition of fluency has been expanded to include prosody because of the multiple dimensions of fluency (Miller and Schwanenflugel, 2008). All these aspects grouped together are conduits to comprehension.

One of the ways fluent readers demonstrate accuracy in reading is through prosody. Prosody is described as the extent to which oral reading resembles speaking (Rasinski, 2004). It encompasses the tonal and rhythmic dimensions of speech. It is the use of appropriate phrasing and expression while reading. The degree of fluency is dependent on the mastery of these aspects (Ness, 2009). The ability to apply stress, intonation, or inflection assists the reader in matching oral language to written language to gain meaning and understanding (Bear et al., 2010).

When a child develops automatic word recognition, more attention can be focused on reading for meaning (Schwanenflugel et al., 2006). Reading speed (or rate) only refers to word recognition. It does not ensure text comprehension. Attention to text cues such as typeface, syntax, signal words, and punctuation, allows the reader to attend to appropriate prosody (Deeney, 2010).

Miller and Schwanenflugel (2008) opine that although the exact nature between reading with prosody and understanding is not fully understood, they believe there is a clear existence of a relationship between the two. Being able to read with prosody is indicative of the ability to segment text in to its syntactic components.

As children develop their language, they are exposed to the syntax of sentence structure. Sentence structure is made up of smaller phrasal units. These phrasal units (or chunks) are important in the processing of language. Children tacitly familiarize themselves with these syntactic rules as they listen to well structured language around them and mimic those utterances.

The key to prosody instruction is familiarizing the child with oral syntactic phrasing in relation to written syntactic structure. Poor prosody creates confusion because of inappropriate grouping of words or application of expression (Hudson, Lane, & Pullen, 2005). Lack of fluent reading is a lack in recognizing the syntactic structure of written sentences (Schreiber, 1991).

Application

Expressive readers who are orally fluent tend to have good comprehension while reading silently. Methods to promote fluent reading through prosody include modeling fluent reading, repeated readings, and assisted reading (Young and Rasinski, 2009). Repeated readings should be for comprehension, not rate. Through repeated readings, a reader for example focuses on stressing certain parts of text and pausing accordingly as he/she attends to punctuation, building up to fluency and text comprehension. During the pre-literacy period in a child’s life when a caregiver reads to the child, and the child’s desire to have the story reread to him or her is expressed, the child is doing so to obtain further comprehension of the story and a greater understanding, and in the process gaining exposure to how sentences are orally broken down in to phrases.

An authentic approach to fluency through prosody utilizes texts in performances, whether it is readers’ theatre or staged dialogue (i.e. jokes, riddles). As the students attend to these performance texts through modeled, assisted, and repeated readings, they are actively engaged in the practicing and rehearsing of their parts as they internalize the content material. Furthermore, as one of the aims in fluency instruction is to improve prosody and meaning, such activities build towards this through improving automaticity and accuracy in word recognition (Young and Rasinski, 2009).

Spotlight on Literature:

Overview

The author composes this book from the theoretical to the practical, taking research-based observations and applying them to classroom instruction. He commences with a chapter on the brief history of oral reading and the research-based rationale on the importance of it for word recognition, fluency, and comprehension. The following four chapters focus on strategies such as read aloud, supported reading, repeated reading, and performance reading. Rasinski continues with a chapter on how these various strategies can be executed through specific lessons and a subsequent chapter on how oral reading can be integrated in to the wider curriculum. Finally, he concludes with a chapter on using oral reading to assess word recognition and fluency to check students’ progress and to guide instruction.

A published book synopsis can be found here:

http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/scholasticprofessional/authors/pdfs/sg_fluent_reader.pdf

LITERACY

The following video is from Reading

Recovery CNA's YouTube channel on

Effective Literacy Practices -

Phrasing in Fluent Reading.