In 1983, Richard Allington proclaimed that fluency—the ability to read textual words automatically and with meaningful expression—was the neglected goal of the reading curriculum. It simply was not being taught. Fast forward to the year 2000 and the National Reading Panel identified reading fluency as a scientifically validated element of effective reading instruction. The importance of reading fluency was later reinforced when Reading First, the national literacy initiative, required that any school accepting Reading First funding commit itself to regular and direct instruction in reading fluency. But in 2009 and 2010, in the annual "what's hot, what's not" survey of reading experts (Cassidy & Cassidy, 2010; Cassidy, Ortleib, & Shettel, 2011), reading fluency was declared "not hot."

How can it be that in less than 30 years reading fluency can go from neglected to mandated to no longer relevant? I believe that this development is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of fluency and how that definition has been construed in classrooms across the country.

Fluency has been identified as the ability to read the words in texts effortlessly (automaticity) and expressively (prosody). Word recognition is so automatic for fluent readers that they need only pay minimal attention to the decoding the words, therefore maximizing the attention they give to meaning (comprehension). Automaticity is normally measured by reading rate. Readers who read texts quickly are giving evidence of their word recognition automaticity. This relationship between speed and automaticity, one aspect of fluency, has lead it to be incorrectly defined as reading fast (National Reading Panel, 2000) and to fluency instruction manifesting itself as, unfortunately, getting students to read fast. This misunderstanding between the measure of fluency and the way it is taught has led to some unintended and negative consequences.

In many classrooms, students now spend 15-20 minutes per day working on reading a passage, graphing their reading rate, then reading the passage again for the purpose of reading it faster—with minimal regard for the meaning of the text. It is this practice that had led reading experts to consider fluency as no longer relevant. Where in real life, they might argue, are readers encouraged to read faster for the sole purpose of reading faster? The answer, of course, is nowhere.

Understanding Fluency and How It Should be Taught Reading fluency will regain its relevance when we understand its full and authentic nature. Fluency, indeed, involves automaticity in word recognition. And, as it was for anyone reading this article, automaticity developed through reading practice.

But fluency also involves reading with meaningful expression or prosody. Readers develop their reading expressiveness through practice. In particular, repeated practice develops prosody. When individuals read passages more than once, they begin to intuit how they should sound when read orally. Moreover, when they move to another text, there is a positive carryover effect in prosody.

Interestingly, this same sort of repeated practice of one text has also been shown to improve automaticity (Samuels, 1979; Rasinski, et. al, 2011). By reading a text several times through, students not only improve their reading rate, they also demonstrate improved reading rate and comprehension with new passages.

Thus, repeated practice in reading, better known as repeated readings or rehearsal, improves automaticity, prosody, and comprehension. This practice has terrific potential for improving students' proficiency in reading. Yet, a challenge remains: How can repeated readings be integrated into the curriculum in ways that are authentic, engaging, and that focus on the true goal of reading, which is comprehension?

Why would a person, child or adult, want to read a text over and over again? The answer is performance. Individuals who be acting in a play, reciting a poem, singing a song, or delivering a speech, have a natural reason to engage in repeated practice, or rehearsal. Moreover, the purpose of this practice is to communicate meaning through appropriate oral expression. Hence, when practice (repeated reading) is motivated by performance, the focus is on the authentic task of making meaning, or comprehension.

Readers theater scripts, poetry, song lyrics, speeches, monologues, dialogues, jokes, and stories all lend themselves to performance. Moreover, these texts are usually written in a rich voice. Voice in writing is the flip side of prosody in reading.

Rehearsing materials written with voice strikes me as the most authentic and engaging way for fluency to be nurtured in classrooms. Classroom-based research has demonstrated that this approach to fluency actually works. Martinez, Roser, and Strecker (1999) have found that a regular routine of practicing and performing readers theater scripts by second-grade students over a period of three months resulted in reading gains generally reported after one year of instruction.

Students were also found to make substantially greater improvements in reading rates over a comparison group even though practice and performance never emphasized reading speed. In a study of practice and performance fluency, Griffith and Rasinski (2004) report struggling fourth-grade students making average gains of nearly three years in reading achievement after one year of instruction.

Rasinski and Stevenson (2005) also found that authentic, repeated reading practice can be beneficial at home as well. In their study, first-grade students considered most at risk, who engaged in repeated readings of poems and nursery rhymes with their parents, made significantly greater gains in fluency and word recognition than a comparison group that had similar, in-school, reading instruction but minimal parental involvement. Moreover, the parents participating in the first group found reading poetry with their children enjoyable.

Authentic fluency instruction does work. The challenge for teachers is to commit to daily instructional time with authentic reading practice and performance. The challenge for school library professionals is to provide performance materials such as scripts, poetry, song lyrics, and speeches in a variety of reading levels for teachers and children. Both tasks can be a bit daunting. However, when authentic fluency instruction happens, the results can be pure magic!

References

Allington, R.L. 1983. Fluency: The neglected reading goal. The Reading Teacher 36 (6): 556-561. Cassidy, J., and D. Cassidy. 2010. What's hot for 2010. Reading Today 26 (4): 1, 8, 9. Cassidy, J., E. Ortlieb, and J. Shettel. 2011. What's hot for 2011. Reading Today 28 (3): 1, 6, 7, 8. Griffith, L. W., and T. V. Rasinski. 2004. A focus on fluency: How one teacher incorporated fluency with her reading curriculum. The Reading Teacher 58: 126-137. Martinez, M., N. Roser, and S. Strecker. 1999. "I never thought I could be a star": A Readers Theatre ticket to reading fluency. The Reading Teacher 52: 326-334. National Reading Panel. 2000. Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read. Report of the subgroups. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. Rasinski, T. V., C. R. Reutzel, D. Chard, and S. Linan-Thompson. 2011. Reading Fluency. In M. L. Kamil, P. D. Pearson, B. Moje, and P. Afflerbach (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research, Volume IV: 286-319. New York: Routledge. Rasinski, T., and B. Stevenson. 2005. The effects of Fast Start reading, a fluency based home involvement reading program, on the reading achievement of beginning readers. Reading Psychology: An International Quarterly 26: 109-125. Samuels, S. J. 1979. The method of repeated readings. The Reading Teacher 32: 403-408. Timothy Rasinski, Ph.D., is a professor at Kent State University and the author of several best-selling books including those in the "Building Fluency Through Practice and Performance" and the "Texts for Fluency Practice and Increasing Fluency with High Frequency Word Phrases" series (both Shell Education) and numerous articles on reading education, word study, and reading fluency. For more information on the author's books, visit Shell Education.com. Belinda Zimmerman, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of education in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum at Kent State University. A former first-grade teacher, Zimmerman's interests include teacher education, literacy education, and, in particular, working with children who struggle in reading. This article was provided courtesy of Shell Education.

Additional resources on fluency

Assessing Reading Fluency Pacific Resources for Education and Learning presents a scholarly paper by Dr. Rasinski that includes several helpful charts and scales for measuring student success.

Teacher Created Materials Podcasts In these brief videos, teachers discuss, for example, "Fluency 101" (Episode 1), "Making and Writing Words and Building Vocabulary" (Episode 3), and "Reader's Theater: The Fluency-Comprehension Connection."

IRA Podcasts These resources from the International Reading Association include "Rasinski on Reading Fluency," a podcast that is accompanied by information on the professors "Fluency Development Lesson" and a link his book on the subject.

Scholastic Teacher Resources Get "Five Surefire Strategies for Developing Reader Fluency"—it lists helpful companion books of poetry and reader's theater.