In the previous blogs, I have discussed the rate and accuracy of reading fluency. In this blog I will discuss the third part of reading fluency – prosody. Prosody is the personality of written words. It gives the listener the ability to better comprehend what the writer is trying convey. Prosody, although just one part of reading fluency, is complex. Prosody includes the differences of pitch, duration, stress, and pausing of the reader (Karageoros, Wallot, Müller, Schindler, & Richter, 2023). Proper comprehension depends on those intricate pieces of prosody synchronizing. Research has concluded that prosody usually predicts student reading comprehension abilities (Paige, 2020).
When reading written words, a person instantaneously processes them for pronunciation and meaning. They use multiple skills and sections of the brain, such as orthographic mapping, personal lexicon, syntax and decoding skills. Some of these skills are learned naturally through the environment or the modeling of individuals. Some may also need instruction in how to transfer the expression of oral language to written words. Most prosody skills need to be explicitly and systematically taught.
Types of Instruction that Help Students to Learn Prosody Skills
1. Instruction of foundational reading skills. These skills should be explicitly and systematically taught.
a. The first foundational skill is phonological awareness – the ability to process and manipulate letter sounds, rhyming words, and segmenting of sounds within words.
b. The second foundational skill is phoneme-grapheme correspondences. This gives students the opportunity to learn the visual representation of oral sound.
c. The third and fourth foundational skills are syllables and morphemes. These skills give students the power to chunk words in to parts instead of individual letters. This also gives students the power to link meaning to those chunks.
d. The fifth foundational skill is syntax, which is the study of sentences structure – punctuation, sequence, and function of words within a sentence.
e. The sixth foundational skill is semantics. The study of how parts of words, words, and groups of words create meaning to written passages.
2. Practice, Practice, Practice! Choral, echo and whisper reading are ways to practice oral reading. Students might also read to an animal, person, tree, etc.
3. General conversation – allowing students the opportunity to visit or collaborate about common subjects or projects.
4. Reader’s Theatre – Students practice reading and giving expression to written words. Students usually practice their lines over and over to make sure that they accurately bring the person they are emulating to life. This allows the student to practice the pitch, duration, stress, and pausing of the different words.
5. Teacher modeling of prosody, such as reading a story, passage, or phrase aloud with and to students. Teachers model how readers might bring written words to life, as they read aloud. This strengthens the comprehension of the listener. Most students “soak in” teacher verbiage and often mimic their prosody.
6. Partner reading – when two students take turns reading to each other at their learning level. Partner reading has many benefits, one being the ability to model and observe different ways written language might be brought to life.
7. Purposeful, direct instruction in relation to prosody. This might include a lesson on punctuation – how punctuation of a sentence will change the inflections of words. This might also include poetic reading.
References
Hasbrouck, Jan (2024). Fluency principles for practice. 2024 IDA Conference.
Karageoros, P., Wallot, S., Müller, B. Schindler, J., & Richter, T. (2023). Distinguishing between struggling and skilled readers based on their prosodic speech patterns in oral reading: an exploratory study in grades 2 and 4. Acta Psychologica, 235(May 2023), 1-11.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.103892.
Paige, D. D. (2020). Reading Fluency: A Brief history, the Importance of Supporting Processes, and the Role of Assessment. ERIC: ED607625.
Wilson, B. (2011). Instruction for older students with a word-level reading disability. In Birsh. J.R. (Ed.), Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills (3rd Edition, pp. 487-516). Brookes, Pub Co.
