Fluency

Reading fluency is an important focus of literacy teaching, and can be thought of in two different but complementary ways:

• Reading fluency has a qualitative definition, referring to the quality of students' reading. This includes the use of rhythm, phrasing, intonation, naturalness, and use of voice (for different characters/moods)
• Reading fluency also has a quantitative definition, referring to the accuracy (number of errors, compared to number of correct words read) and the rate (number of words read per minute).

Quality and efficiency together are indicators of fluent reading, and are necessary for reading achievement, but not sufficient.

The case for fluency

It is an important goal for children to become accurate, efficient, and therefore fluent readers. Facilitating repeated practice of reading aloud is key to developing fluency. The goal for all children is for decoding to become easy and automatic, so they can free up their attention to focus on the meaning of the text.

While easy and automatic reading allows readers to attend to the meaning of texts, fluency alone does not indicate good comprehension. As noted by Afflerbach, Pearson and Paris (2008), ‘fluent reading begins with strategies that integrate intentions, actions, and goals, and fluency increases with repeated practice’ (p.369).

Theory to practice

Early readers spend much of their attention and effort on decoding words, which will inevitably affect their speed and efficiency. As students become more familiar with basic graphemes, and build up a bank of automatically recognisable words, their reading rate increases.

Fluency is dependent upon the ability to decode the text (including phonemic awareness, phonics and vocabulary abilities), and fluent readers work with meaningful units such as phrases and clauses as they read. Readers become more fluent when they can quickly and accurately decode the text with ease.  Once reading fluency is developed to an automatic/proficient level, readers can focus much less on decoding and more on the comprehension of text.

What other areas of literacy relate to fluency?

Beginning  readers need to be aware of the speech sounds of spoken words (phonemes) and understand that these sounds are represented by combinations of letters in written words. When beginning readers apply their knowledge of phonemes to the corresponding graphemes found in words, they begin the process of decoding. Decoding is assisted through the blending and segmenting of phonemes. Phonological awareness and phonic knowledge are linked to reading fluency. The efficient application of phonological knowledge to written texts helps readers accurately decode words and read with fluency. Ineffective application of phoneme-grapheme correspondences when reading will slow down reading accuracy and fluency.

Another area which supports fluent reading is vocabulary knowledge (including morphology) because familiarity with a variety of words (and word parts, i.e., morphemes) can help to read these words with greater ease and fluency. 

Finally, awareness of sentence structure (grammar) and punctuation is also linked to fluency (particularly rhythm, phrasing, and intonation). This is because knowing how to break sentences into appropriate phrases, and including pauses at different punctuation, is a key component of the qualitative aspects of reading fluency.

Evidence base

In a review of research into this fluency has examined the role that it plays in contributing to comphrehension.  Konza (2016) examines three key areas which contribute to fluent – accuracy, rate and prosody (expression) – and which enable students to engage in meaningful and enjoyable experiences of reading  (cf Kuhn & Stahl, 2000; Rasinski, Rikli, & Johnston, 2009 as cited in Konza, 2016). Rasinski and Samuels (2011, p. 95) note that when readers develop fluency, ‘they are able to devote their finite cognitive resources to the more important task in reading – that is, comprehension’.

Key concepts

Grammar and punctuation

Another component of the teaching of fluency is the teaching of grammar and punctuation. This can include (but is not limited to) the following:

• Discussing word types: noun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, determiner etc.
• Explaining differences between commas, full stops, colons, semi colons, exclamation points.

For more information, visit Vocabulary

Developing fluency

Opportunities for developing reading fluency include:

• Modelled reading
• Shared reading
• Guided reading
• Peer reading
• Choral reading
• Readers’ theatre

Links to Victorian Curriculum - English

Links to Victorian Curriculum - English as an Additional Language (EAL)

References

Abbott, M, Wills, H, Greenwood, CR, Kamps, D, Heitzman-Powell, L & Selig, J (2010), The combined effects of grade retention and targeted small-group intervention on students’ literacy outcomes, Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 26(1), pp. 4-25.

Afflerbach, P., Pearson, P., & Paris S. G. (2008). Clarifying differences between reading skills and reading strategies. The Reading Teacher, 61(5), 364 - 373.

Konza, D. (2016). Understanding the process of reading: The big six. In J. Scull & B. Raban (Eds), Growing up literate:Australian literacy research for practice (pp. 149-175). South Yarra, Vic. : Eleanor Curtain Publishing

McArthur, G., Sheehan, Y., Badcock, N. A., Francis, D. A., Wang, H. C., Kohnen, S., ... & Castles, A. (2018). Phonics   training for English‐speaking poor readers. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 11, 1-103.

Rasinski, T.V. & Samuels, S.J. (2020). Reading fluency: what it is and what it is not. In S.J. Samuels & A.E. Farstrup (Eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction (4th ed.) (pp. 94 - 114). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.