A Synthesis of Research on Effective Interventions for Building Reading Fluency with Elementary Students with Learning Disabilities

Abstract

Fluent reading, often defined as speed and accuracy, is an important skill for all readers to develop. Students with learning disabilities (LD) often struggle to read fluently, leading to difficulties in reading comprehension. Despite recent attention to reading fluency and ways to improve fluency, it is not clear which features of interventions that are designed to enhance fluency are beneficial for the most struggling readers. The purpose of this study is to synthesize research on interventions that are designed primarily to build reading fluency for students with LD. The search yielded 24 published and unpublished studies that reported findings on intervention features, including repeated reading with and without a model, sustained reading, number of repetitions, text difficulty, and specific improvement criteria. Our findings suggest that effective interventions for building fluency include an explicit model of fluent reading, multiple opportunities to repeatedly read familiar text independently and with corrective feedback, and established performance criteria for increasing text difficulty.

Remediation of Fluency: Word Specific or Generalised Training Effects?

“…Even if transfer is examined, this is often done only by studying whether the training effects remain stable when trained words are presented in a different context (e.g., such as a story, Bourassa, Levy, Dowin, & Casey, 1998). A recent review by Chard, Vaughn, and Tyler (2002) illustrates that the main purpose of many experiments is to show that a certain fluency training program leads to higher word specific training effects than another type of remediation. However, one might argue that it is the level of generalisation to untrained material that demonstrates the efficiency and practical value of a remediation technique.…”

“…Training programs for reading disabled children that are focussed on gaining fluency are often based on the idea that repetition of words will improve the word specific orthographic representation in the mental lexicon (Chard et al, 2002;Kuhn & Stahl, 2003). The more specified this representation is, the easier it is to read the word fluently (Perfetti & Hart, 2002).…”

“…It appears that repeated reading leads to high levels of fluency for trained words, but has little benefits for general reading skill. Recent research has provided a theoretical framework for the word specific training effect of repeated exposure (Chard et al, 2002;Kuhn & Stahl, 2003). The self-teaching hypothesis put forth by Share (1995; indicates that every successful decoding event will improve future reading of a particular word.…”

Response to intervention with older students with reading difficulties

“…Older students with reading difficulties may need instruction in any of a range of reading components from beginning phonics skills to decoding multi-syllabic words and practicing reading for fluency, depending on their degree of development and corresponding areas of need. In addition, many students benefit from multiple opportunities to read text aloud and to engage in activities that involve improving reading fluency (e.g., Archer, Gleason, & Vachon, 2003; see for review Chard, Vaughn, & Tyler, 2002). Thus, all secondary-level students with reading difficulties need explicit instruction in vocabulary and the application of comprehension strategies.…”

Fluency and Comprehension of Expository Texts in Turkish Students in Grades Four through Eight

“…Akıcı okuma, okuma programlarında göreceli olarak ihmal edilen bir konu olmasına rağmen (Allington, 1983;Rasinski, Paige ve Nageldinger, 2015) Ulusal Okuma Paneli'nin (2000) okuma üzerine yürüttüğü kapsamlı araştırmadan beri İngilizce başarılı okuma programlarının önemli bir unsuru olarak yapılandırılmıştır. Akıcı okumaya ilişkin yapılan araştırmalar (Chard, Vaughn ve Tyler, 2002;Kuhn, Schwanenflugel ve Meisinger, 2010;Rasinski, Reutzel, Chard ve Linan-Thompson, 2011) okuma gelişiminin sağlanmasında akıcı okumanın önemini güçlendirmekte ve akıcı okuma becerisinin ilkokul yıllarında geliştirilmesi gerektiğini vurgulamaktadır. Araştırmalar, akıcı okumanın sesli ve sessiz okumanın birinci amacı olan anlama ile yüksek düzeyde ilişkili olduğunu göstermektedir (Daane, Campbell, Grigg, Goodman ve Oranje, 2005;Miller ve Schwanenflugel, 2006; Pinnell vd., 1995;Wiley ve Deno, 2005).…”