Prosodic reading, or reading with expression, is considered one of the hallmarks of fluent reading. The major purpose of the study was to learn how reading prosody is related to decoding and reading comprehension skills. Suprasegmental features of oral reading were measured in 2nd-and 3rd-grade children (N = 123) and 24 adults. Reading comprehension and word decoding skills were assessed. Children with faster decoding speed made shorter and less variable intersentential pauses, shorter intrasentential pauses, larger sentence-final fundamental frequency (F 0 ) declinations, and better matched the adult prosodic F 0 profile. Two structural equation models found evidence of a relationship between decoding speed and reading prosody as well as decoding speed and comprehension. There was only minimal evidence that prosodic reading was an important mediator of reading comprehension skill.Prosodic reading, or reading with expression, is widely considered to be one of the hallmarks of the achievement of reading fluency. When a child is reading prosodically, oral reading sounds much like speech with appropriate phrasing, pause structures, stress, rise and fall patterns, and general expressiveness. However, exactly where does the development of prosodic reading or "making it sound like language" (Stahl & Kuhn, 2002, p. 582) fit in our conceptions of developing reading skill? The purpose of the current study was to determine how individual differences in developing reading skill are related to prosodic reading in order to better place prosodic reading in the process of learning to read fluently. Gough and Tumner's (1986) "simple view of reading" proposed that reading comprehension could be described in terms of two factors-language comprehension and word decoding. In this model, both language comprehension and decoding are seen as limiting factors in reading comprehension. If the child's decoding is less than fully automatic, his or her comprehension will suffer. As decoding moves toward full automaticity, reading comprehension skill should equal comprehension of oral language (Carver, 1993(Carver, , 2000Hoover & Gough, 1990). OthersCorrespondence concerning this article should be addressed to Paula J. Schwanenflugel, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Georgia, 323E Aderhold Hall, Athens, GA 30602. E-mail: pschwane@coe.uga.edu.
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NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript (e.g., Kuhn & Stahl, 2003; National Reading Panel, 2000) suggested that more than automaticity of individual word decoding is necessary for comprehension to be enhanced. Instead, they suggested that fluency, defined as not only accuracy and automaticity of individual word reading, but also prosodic rendering of the text, is needed for children to adequately comprehend.
What Is Reading Prosody?Despite its presumed status as the hallmark of fluent reading, we currently know little about the nature of reading prosody per se. To read prosodically, children must be able to do more than de...