Fluency Instruction, Second Edition: Research-Based Best Practices

Contents Title Page Copyright Page About the Editors Contributors Preface PART I. FLUENCY THEORY, FLUENCY RESEARCH Reading Fluency: Its Past, Present, and Future Chapter 1. S. Jay Samuels Developing Fluency in the Context of Effective Literacy Instruction Chapter 2. Timothy Shanahan Reading Expressiveness: The Neglected Aspect of Reading Chapter 3. Fluency Paula J. Schwanenflugel and Rebekah George Benjamin The Importance of Adolescent Fluency Chapter 4. David D. Paige Reading Fluency Revisited: Much More Than Fast and Accurate Reading Chapter 5. Barbara J. Walker, Kouider Mokhtari, and Stephan Sargent Fluency: The Link between Decoding and Comprehension for Struggling Readers Chapter 6. David J. Chard, John J. Pikulski, and Sarah H. McDonagh “Hey Teacher, When You Say ‘Fluency,’ What Do You Mean?”: Developing Fluency in Elementary Chapter 7. Classrooms D. Ray Reutzel PART II. BEST PROGRAMS, BEST PRACTICES Battling on Two Fronts: Creating Effective Oral Reading Instruction Chapter 8. Melanie R. Kuhn, Gwynne E. Ash, and Megan Gregory “Jonathon Is 11 but Reads Like a Struggling 7-Year-Old”: Providing Assistance for Struggling Chapter 9. Readers with Audio-Assisted Reading Programs Meryl-Lynn Pluck The Fluency Development Lesson: A Model of Authentic and Effective Fluency Instruction Chapter 10. Belinda Zimmerman and Timothy Rasinski Paired Reading: Impact of a Tutoring Method on Reading Accuracy, Comprehension, and Fluency Chapter 11. Keith J. Topping “Everybody Reads”: Fluency as a Focus for Staff Development Camille L. Z. Blachowicz, Mary Kay Moskal, Chapter 12. Jennifer R. Massarelli, Connie M. Obrochta, Ellen Fogelberg, and Peter Fisher Hijacking Fluency and Instructionally Informative Assessments Chapter 13. Danielle V. Dennis, Kathryn L. Solic, and Richard L. Allington PART III. SPECIAL TOPICS, SPECIAL POPULATIONS Teaching Fluency (and Decoding) through Fast Start: An Early Childhood Parental Involvement Chapter 14. Program Timothy Rasinski, Nancy Padak, and Bruce Stevenson Reading Fluency and Comprehension in English Language Learners Chapter 15. Kristin Lems Fluency Instruction in Reading in a Second or Foreign Language Chapter 16. Etsuo Taguchi and Greta Gorsuch Fluency Scores of English Language Learners: What Can They Tell Us? Chapter 17. Becky McTague, Kristin Lems, Dana Butler, and Elsa Carmona Curious George and Rosetta Stone: The Role of Texts in Supporting Automaticity in Beginning Chapter 18. Reading Elfrieda H. Hiebert Building a Focus on Oral Reading Fluency into Individual Instruction for Struggling Readers Chapter 19. Jerry Zutell, Randal Donelson, Jessica Mangelson, and Patsy Todt Index About Guilford Press Discover More Guilford Titles Reading Fluency Its Past, Present, and Future S. Jay Samuels In the last few years, reading fluency has become a topic of great interest to teachers. An article by Cassidy and Cassidy (2003/2004) that appeared in the International Reading Association publication Reading Today was entitled “What’s Hot, What’s Not for 2004.” For this article, numerous reading experts were asked their views about what is “in” and what is “out” in reading instruction. For the first time, reading fluency was added to the list of terms that were evaluated by these experts. This field of experts was of the opinion that not only was fluency a hot topic, but that it also deserved to be a hot topic. With its new popularity, however, fluency is going through a period of what may be thought of as “growing pains.” One problem has to do with the definition of fluency and another with how it is measured, and both are interrelated. Because both problems are part of the history of fluency, I begin this chapter by defining it. Then I describe the evolution of fluency from a century ago, from the 1900s to about the 1970s. Using the year 1970 as a benchmark leading to the present, I explain what has been happening with regard to developing and measuring fluency. Finally, I gaze into my crystal ball and attempt to predict some future developments in reading fluency. DEFINITION OF FLUENCY Automaticity theory attempts to explain how people become highly skilled at difficult tasks such as driving a car, typing on a computer keyboard, or reading a book. If we examine the developmental stages in learning a complex skill, we usually find that good instructors break the complex skill into subskills, and the student is given instruction in how to perform each of the subskills. During the beginning phase, while learning to perform to the level of accuracy, the student has to put so much effort and attention into the task that only one task can be performed at a time. For example, beginning drivers find that when driving in traffic, they usually dislike taking on another task such as talking to another person or listening to a talk radio show. This focus on one task at a time is somewhat reminiscent of President Theodore Roosevelt’s comments about running the country or taking care of his daughter, who was giving her family some problems. The President said, “I can either run the country, or I can take care of Alice, but I cannot do both.” While it is true that in the beginning stages of learning a complex task the student can perform only one task at a time, with practice that situation changes. With practice the mechanics of driving a car becomes easier, and tasks such as using lane-change signals, watching for traffic lights, steering to avoid accidents, and choosing routes to one’s destination can be done with speed, accuracy, and little attention. As the student becomes automatic at the mechanics of driving, he or she finds it is possible to do two things simultaneously. For example, the person can drive the car through traffic and at the same time engage in conversation with another person or listen to talk shows on the radio. In other words, skilled drivers can do two or more things at the same time, whereas novice drivers cannot. In order to explain the transition from beginner to expert, automaticity theory makes certain assumptions. For example, it assumes that the human mind has only a limited capacity to perform difficult tasks. Second, it assumes that in order to perform difficult tasks such as recognizing words in a text or understanding their meaning, mental effort must be expended, and this effort consumes some of the limited capacity of the mind. Third, with continued practice over time, the amount of effort required to perform these tasks becomes less and less. Finally, when the amount of effort used in performing a task drops sufficiently, that person can then take on a new task at the same time.These few simple rules allow us to describe fluent reading. The reading process requires that two tasks get done. The first task the student must perform is to recognize the printed words (i.e., decode). The second task for the student is to construct meaning for the words that were decoded (i.e., comprehend). For a beginning reader, the decoding task is so difficult that all of the student’s mental capacity is used up in the word recognition process. When the entire capacity of the mind is used for decoding, the student cannot construct meaning. However, having decoded the words, the student can then switch attention to getting meaning. So, for beginners, the reading process is one of switching attention back and forth from decoding to meaning. This process is slow, effortful, and hard on memory. When the student has had lots of practice at reading high-frequency common words found in easy reading material, the decoding process becomes easier and easier, to the point where we can say that decoding is automatic. By “automatic” we simply mean that the words in the text can be decoded with ease, speed, and accuracy. Because the decoding task has become so easy and has not consumed all of the processing capacity of the mind, the student can then direct the unused portion of the mind toward constructing meaning. In other words, the most important characteristic of the fluent reader is the ability to decode and to comprehend the text at the same time. Of course, there are other characteristics of fluency such as accuracy of word recognition, speed of reading, and the ability to read orally with expression, but these are simply indicators of fluency. These indicators of fluency are like the temperature readings in a thermometer when administered to a sick person. The high temperature on the thermometer is not the disease itself, but only an indicator that a person is sick. Reading speed and proper expression in oral reading are indicators of fluency. The essence of fluency is not reading speed or oral reading expression but rather the ability to decode and comprehend text at the same time. READING FLUENCY: 1900–1970 About a century ago, a truly remarkable book about reading was written by Edmund Burke Huey (1908/1968), entitled The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading. The book was so extraordinary that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the leading universities in the world, reissued it in 1968 with a foreword by John B. Carroll and an introduction by Paul A. Kolers, both of whom were early pioneers in the field of cognitive psychology. One of the remarkable aspects of Huey’s book was his keen insight into what would later become automaticity theory. For example, on page 104 of the MIT publication, we find Huey’s description of how students become fluent readers: Perceiving being an act, it is, like all other things that we do, performed more easily with each repetition of the act. To perceive an entirely new word or other combination of strokes requires considerable time, close attention, and is likely to be imperfectly done, just as when we attempt some new combination of movements, some new trick in the gymnasium or new serve in tennis.

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