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Society: Oral reading as a neccesity
In early American culture neccesitated oral reading for sharing of knowledge and entertainment. Typically only one member of teh family could read, so oral reading was the only way to share a book. Oral reading was viewed as a skill in itself, not a means to becoming a better reader. -
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Early Conceptions of Fluency
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Society: BOOKS!!!
In the early 20th century perhaps the most influencial social occurrance was the increase in the availablity of text. Newspapers, magazines, even instructional manuals made personal literacy more important. -
Instruction: Know what you read.
In the early 20th century, classroom reading instruction shifted from oral reading as the primary mode of instruction, to a focus on understanding text. Studies at the time showed 11 in 12 students did not understand most of the words that they could read orally. -
Instruction: Nonoral Method
Based on a near obsession with silent reading to increase comprehension and reading speed, Chicago schools adopted a program called the nonoral method. This method empasized the teaching of silent reading exclusively. -
Instruction: Standardized Testing
The impact of silent reading deepened with a shift toward assessment through standardized tests. Evidence by William S. Gray showed overwhelmingly that students with higher levels of silent reading proficiency performed best on the standardized assessments. -
Instruction: Round-Robbin Reading
Although classroom instruction did move toward silent reading with a focus on comprehension, oral reading never entirely disapeared. Oral reading in the form of round-robin reading continued as a mainstay of reading instruction thorughout the 20th century. Round-robin reading allows for assessment of reader fluency, students are picked at random to read, while others follow along silently. Despite the deeply embedded nature of round-robin reading in the typical American classroom, little evid -
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Fluency Researchi n the Second Half of the 20th Century
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Research: Rise of cognitive psychology
During most of the first part of the 20th century, behaviorism dominated research and practice in reading classrooms. Only what occured "outside" of the head (observable behavior) was studied and practiced. The advent of cognitive psych in the mid 1960's lead to reseach on comprehension and fluency, or "inside" the head topics. -
Theory: Lamberge and Samuels (1974)
The theory of automatic information process in reading was perhaps the first modern theoretical conception of reading fluency. The theory argues that surface-level processonng of words in reading should be done at the automatic level, thus reserving most of our limited cognitive capcity for comprehension. -
Text: Gibson and Levin (1975)
In this seminal text, the authors discuss oral reading, expressive reading, and reading rate. -
Instruction: Neurological Impress Method, Chomsky
Chomsky (1976): This method for imporiving reading (initially developed by Heckelman in 1969), invovles struggling readers listening to tapes of certain passages read fluently and then practicing their own reading. Chomsky reported remarkably positive results for students on texts practiced, on new texts never before read, and in attitude toward reading. -
Society: The automatic theory and you
Samuels (1979) arugued that automaticity finds its way into many human activites. We develop certain skills that can be completed without actively thinking about them--mastery. For example, this can be seen in athletes as they master certain skills necessary for success in their sport. -
Theory: Interative compensatory explaination of reading fluency
Stanovich (1980) reasoned that the major difference beween good and poor readers was in the way they processed text while reading. Poor readers are less able to employ automatic word decoding. -
Research: Fluency Neglected
Allington referred to fluency as one of the most neglected areas of teh reading curriculum. This article began a slow but increasing awareness of the contribution of reading fluency to proficient reading. -
Theory: Prosiodic reading or prosody
Prosodic reading refers to the ability of a reader to chuck text into syntactically and semantically appropriate units and to interpret text by reading with appropriate expression (Schreiber, 1991). -
Instruction: Modeled fluent reading and repeated reading
Samuels's repeated reading method continued to be proven effective in improving students' reading rates, word recognition accuracy, comprehension, and even study habits. -
Research: Oral reading fluecy and achievement
Pinnell and colleagues identified a significant relationship between the quality of fourth graders' oral reading and reading comprehension skills. The study showed that 45% of students read below minimallly acceptable fluency levels, and that those who read orally wiht greatest fluency tended to score highest in overall silent reading achievement, and visa-versa. -
Research: Fluency's strong connection to overall reading proficiency
Research like that of Fuchs, Fuchs, and Maxwell (1998) continued to demonstrate the strong correlation between reading fluency and student performance on standardized tests of silent reading comprehension. -
Instruction: The National Reading Panel
The Report of the National Reading Panel raised awareness of the important role fluency plays in overall reading development. Fluency was identified as one of five key instructional areas critical to producing proficient readers. -
Research: Fluency is multidemensional
Padak and Rasinski defined fluency as a bridge that connects decoding to comprehension. Accurate decoding is not enough, fluent reading requires automatic decoding on teh part of readers. -
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Fluency Today
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Today's Standards
Fluency has evolved to mean teh ability to read meaningfully, as well as accurately and with appropriate speed. Fluency enabels readers to acquire control over surface-level text processing so that decoding and comprehending can occur simultaneously.
