Text reading fluency refers to the ability to read connected texts with accuracy, speed, and expression (prosody), and has garnered substantial attention as an important skill for reading ...comprehension. However, two fundamental questions remain-the dimensionality of text reading fluency including text reading efficiency (accuracy and speed) and reading prosody, and the directionality of the relation between text reading fluency and reading comprehension. These questions were addressed using longitudinal data from Grade 1 (Mage = 6.36 years) to Grade 3 (Mage = 8.34 years). Majority of children were White (approximately 60%) and African American (26%) with 39% to 52% from low-SES backgrounds, depending on the grade. Text reading fluency, word reading, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension were measured. Results from confirmatory factor analysis revealed that text reading fluency is a multidimensional construct with a trifactor structure, which has a general factor that captures common ability across text reading efficiency and reading prosody as well as local and specific factors that are unique beyond the general factor. However, the general factor was the most reliable factor, whereas local and specific factors were not reliable. The directionality of the relation between text reading fluency and reading comprehension was addressed by examining two competing structural equation models-text-reading-fluency-as-a-predictor/mediator model and text-reading-fluency-as-an-outcome model-and data supported the former. These results indicate that text reading fluency is a multidimensional construct, and it acts as a predictor, mediating the relations of word reading and listening comprehension to reading comprehension.
Background
Online multiple‐text comprehension is a key skill of the 21st Century, yet the study of its relations with boredom in young students has been disregarded. Boredom is an achievement emotion ...expected to be predicted negatively by antecedents like control and value appraisals and to be associated to a negative performance. Notwithstanding its documented domain‐specificity, scarce attention has been paid to investigating these relations with primary‐school students in the reading domain, and specifically for online multiple‐text comprehension, and to how such relations are moderated by basic cognitive abilities.
Aims
Considering separately two settings (homework, test), we studied the mediation of boredom in the relation between control‐value appraisals and online multiple‐text comprehension in primary‐school students, focusing on the moderating role of word‐reading fluency.
Sample
Participants were 334 fourth and fifth graders.
Methods
We evaluated students’ reading‐related self‐efficacy and task‐value, reading‐related boredom for homework and tests, word‐reading fluency, and online multiple‐text comprehension.
Results
Path analyses revealed negative relations between control‐value appraisals and boredom for homework and tests, and between boredom and online multiple‐text comprehension for tests only. For the latter, word‐reading fluency moderated the relation between appraisals, boredom, and comprehension: Boredom negatively related to comprehension only for students with high word‐reading fluency.
Conclusions
Findings are discussed focusing on antecedents of online multiple‐text comprehension as a literacy skill critical in the 21st Century. We underlined their implications for learning in general and specifically for the current educational changes due to the COVID‐19 pandemic.
► Relations among word reading, reading fluency, and comprehension were examined. ► Oral and silent reading fluency were dissociable constructs in grades one and two. ► Oral reading fluency was ...uniquely related to reading comprehension in 2nd grade. ► Silent fluency was related to reading comprehension over oral fluency in 2nd grade.
From a developmental framework, relations among list reading fluency, oral and silent reading fluency, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension might be expected to change as children’s reading skills develop. We examined developmental relations among these constructs in a latent-variable longitudinal study of first and second graders. Results showed that list reading fluency was uniquely related to reading comprehension in Grade 1, but not in Grade 2, after accounting for text reading fluency (oral or silent) and listening comprehension. In contrast, text reading fluency was uniquely related to reading comprehension in Grade 2, but not in Grade 1, after accounting for list reading fluency and listening comprehension. When oral reading fluency and silent reading fluency were compared, oral reading fluency was uniquely related to reading comprehension after accounting for silent reading fluency in Grade 1, whereas silent reading fluency was uniquely related to reading comprehension after accounting for oral reading fluency in Grade 2.
Reading is crucial for learning across all disciplines and to develop an understanding of the ever-changing world. Recently, reading activities in schools have been hampered due to modular and ...distance learning effected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to address students’ oral reading fluency (ORF) and contribute to their reading development in the English language by employing repeated reading and Big Books interventions. Words correct per minute (WCPM) and accuracy rates were the main ORF components measured in this study. The sample involved 21 students in the Grade 4 level at Tinoc Central School (TCS), Tinoc, Ifugao, Philippines. The study employed an action research design and the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills ? Oral Reading Fluency (DIBELS – ORF or DORF) assessment over three periods. The participants’ ORF and the effect of employing repeated reading and Big Books as interventions were quantitatively analyzed. Results indicate that most participants had ORF WCPM and accuracy rates below the Grade 4 benchmark goals for English reading, indicating that they were at risk of reading difficulties. Some participants even attained ORF WCPM and accuracy rates below their grade level. Conclusively, there were positive improvements in the participants’ ORF across the interventions, signifying the impact of repeated reading using Big Books on their reading fluency. Improved ORF fosters a deeper understanding of textual content and enhances communication skills, preparing students for better academic achievements and successful social interactions. Considering the study’s findings, using repeated reading and Big Books to support students’ English reading achievement is highly suggested for elementary reading enhancement.
Reading fluency, the ability to read quickly and accurately, is a critical marker of successful reading and is notoriously difficult to improve in reading disabled populations. Despite its importance ...to functional literacy, fluency is a relatively under-studied aspect of reading, and the neural correlates of reading fluency are not well understood. Here, we review the literature of the neural correlates of reading fluency as well as rapid automatized naming (RAN), a task that is robustly related to reading fluency. In a qualitative review of the neuroimaging literature, we evaluated structural and functional MRI studies of reading fluency in readers from a range of skill levels. This was followed by a quantitative activation likelihood estimate (ALE) meta-analysis of fMRI studies of reading speed and RAN measures. We anticipated that reading speed, relative to untimed reading and reading-related tasks, would harness ventral reading pathways that are thought to enable the fast, visual recognition of words. The qualitative review showed that speeded reading taps the entire canonical reading network. The meta-analysis indicated a stronger role of the ventral reading pathway in rapid reading and rapid naming. Both reviews identified regions outside the canonical reading network that contribute to reading fluency, such as the bilateral insula and superior parietal lobule. We suggest that fluent reading engages both domain-specific reading pathways as well as domain-general regions that support overall task performance and discuss future avenues of research to expand our understanding of the neural bases of fluent reading.
•Fluency is a critical component of successful reading.•The neural bases of reading fluency are not well understood.•Both reading-specific and domain-general regions support reading and naming speed.•Future work is needed to parse the neural bases of specific components of reading fluency.
This study explored (1) the relationship between verbal and non-verbal visual attention span measures and (2) the relationship between visual attention span and reading fluency in traditional ...Chinese, among 101 university students in Hong Kong. The participants' visual attention span was assessed using verbal measures (i.e., a global report task and a partial report task) and non-verbal measures (i.e., visual 1-back task with Chinese characters and visual 1-back task with symbols). The results of the confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the single latent factor model, composed of the global report task, the partial report task, the visual 1-back task with Chinese characters, and the visual 1-back task with symbols, was a good fit for the data. The results of the regression analysis showed that the global report task significantly predicted traditional Chinese reading fluency. Structural equation modeling revealed a significant predictive relationship between the single latent factor composed of verbal and non-verbal visual attention span measures and traditional Chinese reading fluency. Overall, the results indicate that visual attention span contributes to reading fluency in traditional Chinese.
The purpose of this study was to examine whether group-based differences exist in word- and text-level reading in a clinical sample of students with dyslexia, and to shed light on the cognitive ...processes supporting these essential skills. Second- through seventh-grade students were administered a battery of standardized measures of cognitive processing skills (phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming RAN, and verbal short-term memory), word reading skills (decoding and word identification), oral text reading (fluency and comprehension), and silent text reading (fluency and comprehension). Word- and text-level reading skills were used to place students into the following groups: text fluency deficit, globally impaired, and partially remediated. Results replicated the existence of a text fluency deficit group. Reader group differences in terms of cognitive processing skills were less pronounced than expected, with only phonological awareness differentiating among them. Phonological awareness and RAN emerged as the important contributors to reading skill, though their relative contributions varied across word- and text-level measures. Together, these results point to importance of considering text-level reading processes across modality in both research and clinical contexts.
This exploratory study was designed to evaluate the interplay of students’ rate and comprehension in independent silent reading of accessible text, within the frameworks of the Simple View of Reading ...and the RAND Reading Study Group. In the first phase, 61 sixth graders were given a reading test (GRADE), a motivation questionnaire, and an on-screen measure of comprehension-based silent reading rate (SRF-O, adapted from aimswebPlus SRF) with on-grade and below-grade text. Two-thirds of students had perfect or near-perfect SRF-O comprehension, but the other one-third had moderate to poor comprehension. These weaker SRF-O comprehenders had relatively low GRADE scores, but others with comparable GRADE scores comprehended well on SRF-O. The poorest SRF-O comprehenders read with increasing rate and decreasing comprehension across the SRF-O texts. In the second phase, the 21 students with weaker SRF-O comprehension took an oral reading fluency (ORF) test and a paper form of the silent reading rate measure (SRF-P) in a one-on-one setting. All students comprehended well on SRF-P and their SRF-P rates correlated highly with GRADE and ORF. Results support the view that poor comprehension in independent silent reading of accessible text may be due to factors other than reading ability (such as assessment context) and that, when students read with comprehension, their rate is a good indicator of their reading ability.
This study leverages advances in multivariate cross-classified random effects models to extend the Simple View of Reading to account for variation within readers and across texts, allowing for both ...the personalization of the reading function and the integration of the component skills and text and discourse frameworks for reading research. We illustrate the Complete View of Reading (CVRi) using data from an intensive longitudinal design study with a large sample of typical (N = 648) and struggling readers (N = 865) in middle school and using oral reading fluency as a proxy for comprehension. To illustrate the utility of the CVRi, we present a model with cross-classified random intercepts for students and passages and random slopes for growth, Lexile difficulty, and expository text type at the student level. We highlight differences between typical and struggling readers and differences across students in different grades. The model illustrates that readers develop differently and approach the reading task differently, showing differential impact of text features on their fluency. To be complete, a model of reading must be able to reflect this heterogeneity at the person and passage level, and the CVRi is a step in that direction. Implications for reading interventions and 21st century reading research in the era of “Big Data” and interest in phenotypic characterization are discussed.
We examined the direction of the relation between morphological awareness and reading/spelling skills in 2 languages varying in orthographic consistency (English and Greek) and whether word reading ...fluency and vocabulary mediate the relation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. One-hundred and 59 English-speaking Canadian and 224 Greek children were assessed 4 times between Grades 1 and 3 on measures of morphological awareness, phonological awareness, word reading fluency, and spelling to dictation. Vocabulary was assessed at the end of Grade 2 and reading comprehension at the end of Grade 2 and at the beginning of Grade 3. Cross-lagged analyses showed that earlier morphological awareness predicted later reading comprehension and spelling in both languages and reading fluency in English. The effect of morphological awareness on reading comprehension was not mediated by word reading fluency in either language, but an indirect effect through vocabulary emerged in English. Earlier reading fluency and spelling predicted later morphological awareness before Grade 3 only in English, but morphological awareness began to predict spelling as early as Grade 1 in Greek. Multigroup analyses further showed that the effects of morphological awareness on reading fluency and the effects of spelling on morphological awareness were stronger in English than in Greek. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
Educational Impact and Implications Statement
We found that morphological awareness after the end of Grade 2 was a significant predictor of later literacy skills in English- and Greek-speaking children. In addition, literacy skills predicted morphological awareness before the end of Grade 2 in English. The reciprocal relations between morphological awareness and literacy skills found during specific time points in our study suggest that children's morphological awareness should be enhanced as early as possible and be included in assessment batteries for the identification of future literacy difficulties.
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