Reading Fluency and College Readiness Rasinski, Timothy V.; Chang, Shu-Ching; Edmondson, Elizabeth ...
Journal of adolescent & adult literacy,
January/February 2017, Letnik:
60, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The Common Core State Standards suggest that an appropriate goal for secondary education is college and career readiness. Previous research has identified reading fluency as a critical component for ...proficient reading. One component of fluency is word recognition accuracy and automaticity. The present study attempted to determine the word recognition accuracy and automaticity indicators for incoming college students and to examine the relationship between oral reading rate and ACT scores. Knowledge of such performance may provide secondary literacy educators with another tool for assessing reading proficiency and college readiness. Eighty‐one students were asked to read a college‐level narrative passage. Mean student accuracy and automacity scores were determined, as well as correlations between accuracy, automacity, and students’ ACT scores. Results suggest a moderate and significant relationship between measures of automaticity and both the ACT reading subtest and ACT composite scores.
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.
The main goal of many students of English as a foreign language (EFL) is to be fluent in the target language, i.e. to be capable to transfer their thoughts smoothly and easily in different contexts. ...The present study examines the effect of pedagogic intervention on enhancing speech fluency in EFL using a pretest – immediate posttest – delayed posttest design. Two groups of 32 EFL students at a University in Iran took part in the study, receiving the same amount of instruction (18 hours over 18 weeks). The Control group listened to / viewed authentic audio recordings and movies in English, discussed their contents, and completed a variety of speaking skills tasks but received no fluency training. The Experimental group spent part of the time on fluency strategy training, encouraging the memorization, repetition, and retelling of the audio and video materials. Systematic interviews were run to assess the EFL learners’ speech fluency. The findings revealed that the fluency training significantly enhanced the EFL students’ speech fluency. The findings also show that students’ second language speech fluency development can be partly predicted by the fluency in their first language. These results have pedagogical implications for practitioners in EFL settings, material designers, and EFL instructors.
Psycholinguistics has provided numerous theories that explain how a person acquires a language, produces and perceives both spoken and written language, including theories of proceduralization. ...Learners of English as a foreign language (hereafter referred to as EFL learners) often find it difficult to achieve oral fluency, a key construct closely related to the mental state or even mental health of learners. According to previous research, this problem could be addressed by the mastery of formulaic sequences, since the employment of formulaic sequences could often promote oral fluency in the long run, reflected in the positive relationship between formulaic sequence use and oral fluency. However, there are also findings contradicting the abovementioned ones, without adequate explanations. This study aims to explore the roles of formulaic sequences in oral fluency, taking into account the relationship between formulaic sequence use and oral fluency. This study investigated 120 pieces of spoken narratives by Chinese EFL learners, using both quantitative and qualitative methods, combined with artificial intelligence techniques. Results of canonical correlation analysis showed that the frequency of formulaic sequences was significantly related to speed fluency (
r
= 0.563,
p
= 0.000) and breakdown fluency (
r
= 0.360,
p
= 0.001), while the variety of formulaic sequences was significantly related to repair fluency (
r
= 0.292,
p
= 0.035). Case studies further demonstrated that formulaic sequences could contribute to oral fluency development by promoting speed and reducing pausing when retrieved holistically, but they sometimes lost processing advantages when retrieved and processed in a word-by-word manner. The inappropriate use of formulaic sequences also neutralized the facilitative effects of formulaic sequences on repair fluency and could mirror speakers’ occasional tendency to sacrifice repair fluency for the improvement of speed and breakdown fluency when using formulaic sequences. Pedagogical implications were provided accordingly to promote sustainable oral fluency development through the use of formulaic sequences.
The current study examined the extent to which first language (L1) utterance fluency measures can predict second language (L2) fluency and how L2 proficiency moderates the relationship between L1 and ...L2 fluency. A total of 104 Japanese-speaking learners of English completed different argumentative speech tasks in their L1 and L2. Their speaking performance was analysed using measures of speed, breakdown, and repair fluency. L2 proficiency was operationalised as cognitive fluency. Two factor scores of cognitive fluency—linguistic resources and processing speed—were computed based on performance in a set of linguistic knowledge tests capturing vocabulary knowledge, morphosyntactic processing, and articulatory skills. A series of generalised linear mixed-effects models revealed small-to-moderate effect sizes for the predictive power of L1 utterance fluency measures on their L2 counterparts. Moderator effects of L2 proficiency were found only in speed fluency measures. The relationship between L1 and L2 speed fluency was weaker for L2 learners with wider L2 linguistic resources. Conversely, for those with faster L2 processing speed, the L1-L2 link tended to be stronger. These findings indicate that the L1-L2 fluency link is subject to the complex interplay of phonological differences between learners’ L1 and L2 and their L2 proficiency, offering implications for diagnostic speaking assessment.
When processing an object, the human cognitive system instantaneously produces a latent experience of processing fluency that has been shown to influence a wide variety of judgments (e.g., liking, ...beauty, truth, safety, trustworthiness, etc.). The majority of findings revolve around the idea that fluent processing is hedonically positive and shifts evaluative judgments in the positive direction (the “Hedonic Fluency Model”). However, other findings indicate that fluency can intensify existing judgmental tendencies in the positive and negative directions (the “Fluency Amplification Model”). In two exploratory studies and three confirmatory studies submitted as a registered report, the present paper examines whether fluency hedonically upshifts evaluative judgments or whether it bidirectionally amplifies them. All five studies indicate that both mechanisms seem to be at work simultaneously. These findings challenge the previously assumed unidimensional nature of fluency and call for an advancement of the current theories of processing fluency.
•To predict the precision of its predictions, brain relies on its own beliefs; that is to say about the confidence of its prior predictions.•Fluency—the subjective experience associated with any ...cognitive treatment—plays a key role in prediction because it reflects the precision of (i.e., confidence placed in) predictions.•It is not fluency itself that is perceived but rather changes in fluency.•Changes in fluency orient attentional selection in response to violations and unexplained prediction errors.•Fluency can be read as recognising and contextualising unfelt fluency; where unfelt fluency optimises predictions of the precision of sensory processing.
For a growing number of researchers, it is now accepted that the brain is a predictive organ that predicts the content of the sensorium and crucially the precision of—or confidence in—its own predictions. In order to predict the precision of its predictions, the brain has to infer the reliability of its own beliefs. This means that our brains have to recognise the precision of their predictions or, at least, their accuracy. In this paper, we argue that fluency is product of this recognition process. In short, to recognise fluency is to infer that we have a precise ‘grip’ on the unfolding processes that generate our sensations. More specifically, we propose that it is changes in fluency — from unfelt to felt — that are both recognised and realised when updating predictions about precision. Unfelt fluency orients attention to unpredicted sensations, while felt fluency supervenes on—and contextualises—unfelt fluency; thereby rendering certain attentional processes, phenomenologically opaque. As such, fluency underwrites the precision we place in our predictions and therefore acts upon our perceptual inferences. Hence, the causes of conscious subjective inference have unconscious perceptual precursors.
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