Reading fluency requires many different components working together to produce accurate reading fluency. Reading fluency is defined as “reading skills that involve the ability to read text aloud with accuracy, appropriate rate, and good expression” (Ray, 2017). The skills necessary and the degree of dependency on those components for reading a written passage change over time. Students will rely more on letter-sound correspondences to decode words when they are beginning to learn how to read and more on orthographic mapping as their reading abilities increase. Students will also depend more on their oral language or phonemic awareness abilities when they are first learning how to read. All students begin to read at the same point, no matter the age. In this blog I will focus on the accuracy part of reading fluency. In the future blogs, I will discuss the rate and good expression of reading fluency.
Reading fluency is dependent on how accurate the passage is read. This is the ability to read aloud written words or symbols on a page with little or no mistakes. Reading accuracy develops in layers, beginning with the foundation – oral language ability. This is developed through student environment, with their immediate or home environment having the largest impact on their oral language development. This means that students begin learning how to read through the individuals that they spend the most time interacting with. These individuals assist in their development of phonological awareness skills; the ability to recognize and manipulate sound parts of words, like phonemes and on-set rimes. Student phonological awareness skills before learning how to read written words usually dictates their rate of acquiring reading skills.
Another vital skill in the development of reading accuracy is knowing each individual phoneme and how it is represented by grapheme(es), which is letter – sound correspondences. This skill is essential for initially learning how to read. This skill gives students the power to decode written words. Student will combine this skill with their phonemic awareness skills, such as rhyming to decode words. Some students will learn this with little instruction. The majority of students need explicit, direct instruction accompanied with lots and lots and lots of practice. And still, some will need direct one-on-one instruction that includes oral, visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile components. Students will continue to rely on their knowledge of graphemes and their corresponding phonemes through-out their lifetime.
Another skill that is necessary for reading accurately is the ability to break down multisyllabic words into more manageable parts, sometimes called chunking. Students begin to automatically divide and conquer multisyllabic words based on their knowledge of phonemes, graphemes, syllables, and morphemes. This skill becomes more relevant after students learn how to accurately decode CVC, CVCe, CCVC and CCVCe words. Students use their knowledge of syllable types and morphemes to breakdown a multisyllabic word. The different syllable types have recognizable patterns that help the reader to decode words. Over time the student brain develops a “catalog” of rules and patterns about letters and groups of letters (orthographic knowledge) to increase the speed in which a person conquers new or previously introduced words that still need practice. Students use their orthographic mapping skills to permanently store a word for instant retrieval. Over time students will naturally depend less on the individual phonemes to decode words and rely more on their orthographic knowledge and mapping abilities.
Why worry about reading accuracy? Student usage of the words read in a passage is compromised when students are unable to accurately read at least 95% of the words. The inaccuracy usually causes a cognitive overload, similar to an overload on an energy circuit. The connection is disabled.
Learning how to read is not a naturally phenomenon. Each person has to learn, develop new skills in order to read written words. These skills are usually taught in a systematic format beginning with oral language knowledge and skills.
In my next blog I will discuss the appropriate rate necessary for reading fluency.
References
Apel K. What is orthographic knowledge? Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 2011 Oct;42(4):592-603. doi: 10.1044/0161-1461(2011/10-0085). Epub 2011 Aug 15. PMID: 21844399.
Ray, J. S. (2017). Tier 2 intervention for students in grades 1-3 identified as at-risk in reading. (Doctoral dissertation, Walden University). https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/3826/
Reading Rockets (2024). Basics: sight words and orthographic mapping.
https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-and-writing-basics/sight-words-and-orthographic-mapping
