The Relations Among Oral and Silent Reading Fluency and Comprehension in Middle School: Implications for Identification and Instruction of Students With Reading Difficulties

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations among oral and silent reading fluency and reading comprehension for students in Grades 6 to 8 (n = 1,421) and the use of fluency scores to identify middle school students who are at risk for failure on a high-stakes reading test. Results indicated moderate positive relations between measures of fluency and comprehension. Oral reading fluency (ORF) on passages was more strongly related to reading comprehension than ORF on word lists. A group-administered silent reading sentence verification test approximated the classification accuracy of individually administered ORF passages. The correlation between a maze task and comprehension was weaker than has been reported for elementary students. The best predictor of a high-stakes reading comprehension test was the previous year's administration of the grade-appropriate test; fluency and verbal knowledge measures accounted for only small amounts of unique variance beyond that accounted for by the previous year's administration.In recent years, increasing emphasis has been placed on identifying and intervening with older students with reading difficulties (e.g., Biancarosa & Snow, 2004), but questions remain regarding the valid identification of these students. Based on its demonstrably stong relations with both decoding and reading comprehension in the elementary grades, the measurement of oral reading fluency (ORF) has been widely accepted as an efficient and Correspondence should be sent to Carolyn A. Denton, Children's Learning Institute, University of Texas Health Science Center Houston, 7000 Fannin, UCT 2443, Houston, TX 77030. Carolyn.A.Denton@uth.tmc.edu. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptSci Stud Read. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 May 31. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript valid way to assess elementary school students' overall reading competence (e.g., Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001). These measures are often administered to elementary school students to identify those who need reading intervention, to monitor their progress, and to determine whether they have responded adequately to instruction.The empirical support for the use of such measures with elementary grade students is strong, but there is appreciably less known about valid applications of fluency measures with older students. Assumptions have been made that the measures will operate with secondary school students as they do with younger children, but these assumptions have not been substantiated. The purpose of this study was to examine (a) the relations among multiple measures of oral and silent reading fluency and reading comprehension for students in Grades 6, 7, and 8 and (b) the use of fluency measures to identify students at risk for failure on a high stakes reading comprehension test who may need supplemental reading intervention. MEASURING ORFORF is most often measured by timing a student reading one or more passages orally for 1 to 2 min, counting the total number of w...

The Indicating Factors of Oral Reading Fluency of Monolingual and Bilingual Children in Egypt

“…Researchers document the importance of rate, accuracy, and prosody in order to aid reading comprehension (Benjamin & Schwanenflugel, 2010;Denton et al, 2011;Hasbrouck & Tindal, 2006;Kuhn, Strauss, & Morris, 2006;Mckenna, 2002;McKenna & Stahi, 2003;Mohamed, 2006;Schwanenflugel et al, 2006;Samuels, 2004;Spooner, Baddeley, & Gathercole, 2004). Nevertheless, ORC as an indicating factor of ORF, as is the case in the current study, has received very little attention (University of Oregon, 2008).…”

“…In the literature, many researchers documented the importance of rate, accuracy, and prosody in order to aid reading comprehension (e.g., Benjamin & Schwanenflugel, 2010;Denton et al, 2011;Hasbrouck & Tindal, 2006;Kuhn, Strauss, & Morris, 2006;Mckenna, 2002;McKenna & Stahi, 2003;Mohamed, 2006). Others related comprehension to reading rate, accuracy, or prosody (e.g., Abbott, Wills, Miller, & Kaufman, 2012;Ali, 1987;Behari, 1988;El-Essawi, 2002;Daane et al, 2005;Mohamed, 2006).…”

Assessing reading fluency in Kenya: Oral or silent assessment?

“…In an oral assessment, the student must read the word out loud correctly in order for it to count towards the WCPM rate (Nagy et al 1987). As a result of these methodological issues, Denton et al (2011) concluded that on the basis of the available literature, we cannot determine whether any observed gaps between oral and silent reading comprehension are due to measurement issues or actual differences in comprehension.…”

“…Lynn Fuchs, Douglas Fuchs and Linn Maxwell (1988) found that when the reading levels of oral and silent passages were equated, the correlation between comprehension scores was generally high, a finding echoed in more recent studies (Hale et al 2011;McCallum et al 2004). However, among middle-school students (i.e., grades 6-8 or ages 11-14), Carolyn Denton et al (2011) found that ORF was more strongly related to reading comprehension than to scores on a silent task, results similar to those of a number of other studies (Ardoin et al 2004;Hale et al 2007;Jenkins and Jewell 1993). In contrast, among fifth-graders in Turkey, Kasim Yildirim and Seyit Ateş (2012) found that silent fluency was a better predictor of reading comprehension than oral reading fluency.…”

A utilização da plataforma “Ainda Estou a Aprender” na avaliação e na intervenção nas dificuldades na aprendizagem da leitura: um estudo de caso

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