by Timothy Rasinski and Lisa Lenhart
Thanks to the publication of the National Reading Panel report in 2000 and its summary of research related to key instructional variables in reading, reading fluency has finally been recognized as an essential component for success in learning to read. Yet, as a profession, we seem to struggle with the concept of fluency. What does it mean to be a fluent reader? How can we measure fluency? These questions are important because the way we define and measure a concept often influences, or perhaps even dictates, the way it is taught.
Reading rate (how fast one reads) seems to have emerged as the key defining characteristic of reading fluency, and fluency has come to be assessed through measurements of reading rate. Indeed, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), the popular assessment and progress monitoring system for the early grades, uses a measure of reading rate (Oral Reading Fluency) as a key measure of overall reading progress, not just fluency.
The use of reading rate as a measure of fluency comes from research that has demonstrated a strong correlational association between rate and other more general measures of reading proficiency. However, correlation between two variables does not necessarily imply a causal relationship.
Yet in many classrooms around the United States instructional programs focus almost exclusively on improving students’ reading rate. Students keep personal graphs of their progress in reading speed, teachers challenge students to read faster, and timers abound in classrooms.
This laser-like focus on reading rate led us to think about the nature and definition of reading fluency. Certainly fluent readers read with a certain level of speed. Overly slow and halting reading is a marker of disfluent reading and poor comprehension. Yet does this mean that if some degree of fast reading is good, faster reading is even better and more fluent? Do the most fluent readers read as fast as they can?
To explore this last question, we examined the reading rates of what are arguably some of the most fluent readings of the 20th century—President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s declaration of war speech (“December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy ”), President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech (“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country...”), and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. We found the written and oral versions of the speeches at the website www.americanrhetoric.com and assessed the number of words read correctly in one-minute increments. Roosevelt’s rates ranged from 83 to 107 words per minute, Kennedy’s ranged from 88 to 120, and King’s ranged from 88 to 154.
No one would argue that these three readings were not fluent. These speeches sent a nation to war, set the stage for the 1960s, and mobilized the Civil Rights movement. Yet, while second graders at the 50th percentile end the year reading approximately 90 words correct per minute, the initial minute of reading for all three of these readers fell below that standard. Although the reading rates increased during the speeches, they were still significantly below what one would expect of an average elementary student.
Roosevelt, Kennedy, and King could have read the passages at a much faster clip, but they deliberately chose not to. They knew that a meaningful and fluent rendering of the words could only be made if the text was read in a slower manner in which the prosodic elements of oral language were used to give meaning and emphasis to the text.
Here fluency is most prominently defined by the expression that each reader used—intonation, volume, emphasis, phrasing, pausing, and adjusting the pacing. These elements helped make the speeches meaningful and memorable. Imagine the loss of impact if these speeches were read in a hurried, monotone, and staccato style.
Our point is not to diminish the role of reading rate as a measure of one aspect of reading fluency. Rather, we believe true fluency is more than reading fast; it is reading with expression and meaning. Thus, authentic fluency instruction should emphasize students practicing their reading to make meaning through the various prosodic tools at their disposal. In doing so, students will focus on how meaning is constructed and communicated through oral reading and engage in practiced or repeated readings (rehearsal) to make those texts come to life. Texts that lend themselves to such prosodic practice include speeches, poetry, scripts for Readers Theatre, song lyrics, monologues, dialogues, journals, letters, and other texts that have a strong sense of voice and that can be performed for an audience.
This approach to fluency is much more genuine than having students learn to read fast. It is aimed at the ultimate goal of reading—making meaning. Interestingly, research finds that this more genuine approach to fluency leads not only to improved student reading achievement and comprehension but also to remarkably increased reading rates.
Although reading speed is strongly correlated with other more commonly accepted measures of reading achievement and comprehension, reading fast is not fluency. Reading with automatic word recognition and expression and meaning is, in the final analysis, what fluency is all about. Reading rate is a side effect of fluency. Instruction that is aimed at helping students read automatically, expressively, and with meaning will, without any specific instruction, also lead to gains in reading rate.
To paraphrase Kennedy’s famous quote, “Ask not what instruction in reading speed can do for reading fluency and reading achievement; ask what instruction in authentic fluency can do for reading speed and achievement!”
Chart and references for this article
Timothy Rasinski is a professor of literacy education at Kent State University, Ohio, USA, and a former IRA Board member. Lisa Lenhart is codirector of the Reading First–Ohio Center and an associate professor of literacy in the College of Education at the University of Akron.
Explorations of fluent readers. (December 2007). Reading Today, 25(3), 18.
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