LDXXXX10.1177/0022219417691835Journal of Learning DisabilitiesO’Connor 691835research-article2017 Article Journal of Learning Disabilities 1 –13 Reading Fluency and Students With © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Reading Disabilities: How Fast Is DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219417691835 10.1177/0022219417691835 Fast Enough to Promote Reading journaloflearningdisabilities.sagepub.com Comprehension? Rollanda E. O’Connor, PhD1 Abstract The goal of improving reading rate and fluency is to positively impact reading comprehension; however, it is unclear how fast students with learning disabilities (LD) need to read to reap this benefit. The purpose of this research was to identify the point of diminishing return for students who were dysfluent readers. Participants included 337 students with reading difficulties in second and fourth grade (61% eligible for special education; 80% with a diagnosis of LD in the area of reading) and 150 typical readers from the same general education classes. LOESS (LOcal regrESSion) plots (logistic regression) were used to determine where linear relations between reading rate and comprehension broke down for these students: the rate at which getting faster no longer contributed clearly to reading comprehension improvement. Although typical readers in this sample showed patterns of oral reading rate and comprehension similar to students in other studies, patterns for students with reading difficulties differed. For dysfluent readers, improving reading rate improved comprehension only in the bands between 35 and 75 words correct per minute in second grade and between 40 and 90 words correct in fourth grade. Reading at faster rates revealed no clear advantage for reading comprehension. Keywords reading rate, reading comprehension, fluency, LOESS, learning disabilities, reading disabilities, poor readers, asymptote Good readers read with sufficient rate to process words Fluency, or the rate and prosody of reading text, has long effortlessly and think about what they read (LaBerge & been considered one of many components of effective read- Samuels, 1974; Paris, 2005). Effortless word reading enables ing (National Reading Panel Reports of the Subgroups, good readers to draw inferences from text and to link known 2000). Some reading components, such as phonemic aware- with new ideas and information (e.g., see reviews by Chard, ness (e.g., the ability to segment spoken words into speech Vaughn, & Tyler, 2002; Kuhn, Schwanenflugel, Meisinger, sounds) and recoding printed words as speech (e.g., decod- Levy, & Rasinski, 2010). By contrast, dysfluent readers tend ing words by associating printed letters with speech sounds), to read slowly because the process of word recognition has are considered constrained reading skills because they can not been consolidated (Ehri, 1995); thus, considerable atten- be mastered as a complete set in a year or two of instruction tion is devoted to “getting words off the page,” which makes (Paris, 2005). Others, such as vocabulary and reading com- deep processing of text difficult, if not impossible (Jenkins, prehension, are unconstrained and continue to grow over Fuchs, van den Broek, Espin, & Deno, 2003; Perfetti & time with sufficient text exposure. Learning in these areas is Stafura, 2014; Thurlow & van den Broek, 1997). For students never complete (Paris, 2005; Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). with a learning disability (LD), reading fluency is often iden- Fluency, and particularly oral reading fluency, falls in tified as a major hindrance that spirals through many aspects between the constrained and unconstrained components of reading: When students read slowly, they tend also to read because reading rate grows rapidly over the first several less text (Adams, 1990; Allington, 2001; Jenkins et al., 2003), years of instruction (Hasbrouck & Tindal, 2006; Kim, 2015), which slows acquisition of vocabulary (Nagy & Townsend, 2012) and the world knowledge that contributes to reading 1University of California at Riverside, USA comprehension (Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1988). Thus, improving students’ reading rate may have Corresponding Author: Rollanda E. O’Connor, University of California at Riverside, 1207 Sproul implications that go beyond the mere acquisition of fluency Hall, UCR, Riverside, CA 92521, USA. in students’ overall reading development. Email: [email protected] 2 Journal of Learning Disabilities improves gradually through the middle grades (Kim & Garcia and Cain also found evidence that characteristics of Wagner, 2015; Silberglitt, Burns, Madyun, & Lail, 2006), the reading comprehension measure played a role in the and takes several years to attain optimal levels (Silberglitt & strength of correlations between rate and comprehension, a Hintze, 2007), which many researchers suggest is the rate of finding that echoes that of Cutting and Scarborough (2006) speech (Samuels, Ediger, & Fautsch-Patridge, 2005). and Keenan, Betjemann, and Olson (2008). Samuels et al. (2005) suggested that “the essential ingredient in fluency is the ability to decode and comprehend at the Students With LD in Reading (RD) same time” (p. 2), or reading aloud as if listening to a speaker. Although prosody is clearly part of fluent reading, the mea- A consistent problem across these studies is that few have sure in the current study refers only to oral reading rate. considered the rate–comprehension relations specifically Developing sufficient reading rate is thought to be for students with RD, who may have the most to gain if important because studies consistently find strong correla- reading rate is improved sufficiently. Although some level tions between reading rate and comprehension throughout of reading fluency may be necessary for comprehension, the elementary school years (Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & high levels of fluency may not necessarily contribute to the Jenkins, 2001; Roehrig, Petscher, Nettles, Hudson, & text processing necessary for reading comprehension Torgesen, 2008). In Grades 1 through 6, Reschly, Busch, (Sabatini, O’Reilly, Halderman, & Bruce, 2014). Studies Betts, Deno, and Long (2009) found an average correlation have shown differences in fluency and growth in reading of .67 between rate and comprehension across studies. In rate between students with and without RD across the ele- most studies, correlations between reading rate and compre- mentary grades, and so it becomes important to establish hension appear to weaken by middle school. For example, whether reading rates attained by average readers are Silberglitt et al. (2006) found that correlations between needed for comprehension of text by students with RD. In a reading rate and comprehension gathered in Grade 7 were study that compared rates of oral reading fluency growth smaller than for students in Grade 5. They also hinted at an between students with RD and typical readers in second and asymptote for this relationship as reading rates approached third grade, Wanzek, Al Otaiba, and Petscher (2014) found 165 words correct per minute (wcpm), which is similar to consistently lower reading rates for students with RD cou- the rate of speech. For students whose oral reading rate pled with slower rate of growth during each school year. nears this upper desirable level, the influence of fluency This finding was similar to that of Tindal, Nese, Stevens, becomes constrained, even though reading vocabulary and and Alonzo (2016), who found that performance on mea- comprehension continue to grow. For this reason, Silberglitt sures of oral reading fluency correlated significantly with et al. suggested that schools be wary of setting rate target special education status. Like Wanzek et al., Tindal et al. scores as predictors of reading proficiency beyond the ele- also found much less growth on these measures over time mentary school years. for students with RD. Along these lines, Garcia and Cain (2014) found evi- In a study of second and third grade students, Petscher dence that age was a significant predictor of the strength of and Kim (2011) demonstrated weaker correlations between the relationship between word reading ability and reading reading rate and comprehension for students at the low end comprehension, with younger readers showing stronger of the reading distribution than for students reading in the relationships between word-level skills, such as decoding average and above range. Due to different—and lower— and reading rate, and comprehension. In modeling oral growth trajectories than typical readers, these researchers reading growth across grades, Silberglitt and Hintze (2007) questioned whether using oral reading rate to measure the also found slower rates of growth in Grades 4 through 6 reading success of students with RD was appropriate. Tindal than in Grades 2 through 4. Students with initially slower et al. also cautioned that students with RD may never reach reading rates also made less growth during the year. Kim oral reading fluency that mirrors speech. None of these and Wagner (2015) also report declines in the strength of studies considered whether optimal reading rates for ade- the relation between reading rate and comprehension across quate reading comprehension might differ between students grades from .93 in first grade to .72 in fourth grade, suggest- with and without RD. ing that studying the linkage across grades and stages of Wolf and Bowers (1999) suggest this slower growth in reading development may be important.