How to Develop Your Reading Fluency (Faster Reading Series 2)

We have looked previously at the physical aspects of reading and how these aspects change as reading fluency develops. But these signs are the result of mental processes.

One of the mental processes involved in reading is decoding, that is, turning the written form of a word into a familiar spoken form with a known meaning.

Recommended – The Nature and Limits of Reading Speed (Faster Reading Series 1)

Readers develop skill in decoding in two related ways:

–      Through practice they become faster at recognizing the unit they are working with, and

–      Secondly they change the size of this basic unit. When someone begins to read an unfamiliar written script there are many things to notice.

Say for example a Thai speaker is learning to read English. Because Thai uses a different script from English, learning to read the English letters p b d g is quite difficult because although the letters have some similarities, there are important differences.

Where is the circle part of the letter, at the top or at the bottom, on the left of the stalk or on the right? p b d have straight stalks, g has a bent stalk.

At a very early stage of reading English, each part of a letter is an important piece of information.

With practice, fluency in recognizing the different letters develops and soon the basic unit that the reader is working with is no longer the parts of the letters but the letters themselves.

With further reading experience the basic unit will change from letters to word parts and words.

At early stages of word recognition, learners may rely on only some of the letters, usually the initial letters, for word recognition.

As they become more accomplished readers, they may no longer need to notice each letter but can recognize whole words and if necessary apply rules or use analogy to quickly decode unfamiliar words.

What this means is that reading fluency development involves not just becoming faster, it also involves changing the size and nature of the basic unit that the reader is working with.

Another way of putting this is to say that reading fluency develops when complex activities like reading are made less complex by the fluent mastery of some of the sub skills involved in the activity.

Research on speaking fluency that was conducted by Nation in 1989 provides evidence for this.

The 4/3/2 speaking activity involves learners working in pairs and one member of the pair speaking on a familiar topic to the other (the listener) for four minutes. Then they change partners.

The speaker remains as a speaker and the listener stays as a listener. The speaker now has to give the same talk to the new partner in three minutes.

The partners change again and the same talk is given for two minutes. When the two minute and four minute talks are compared, it is typically found that:

(1.)  the speed of speaking has1ncreased in terms of words per minute,

(2.) the number of hesitations has decreased per 100 words,

(3.) the number of grammatical errors in repeated sections of the talk has decreased, and

(4.) there are two or three more complex sentences in the two minute talk compared with the four minute talk.

For example if in the four minute talk the speaker said “We went to Paraparaumu. Paraparaumu is outside Wellington”, in the two minute talk they may say “We went to Paraparaumu which is outside Wellington”.

Two simple sentences become one complex sentence. Fluency is thus accompanied by improvements in accuracy and complexity (Schmidt, 1992).

This is because as parts of the task become more under the control of the speaker, other parts of the task can get better attention.

There are two main paths to fluency. One could be called “the well-beaten path” and the 4/3/2 activity is an example of this.

In such activities, repetition of the same material is used to develop fluency. By doing something over and over again you get better at doing it.

The second path to fluency could be called Athe rich and varied map. In such activities, the learners do things which differ slightly from each other but which draw on the same kind of knowledge.

A good example of this is easy extensive reading where learners read lots of graded readers at the same level.

The stories differ but the same vocabulary and grammatical constructions reoccur and the learners develop a rich range of associations with the words and constructions.

Activities that develop your reading fluency:

If an activity is going to contribute effectively to fluency development then it needs to meet certain conditions.

Let us look at a very useful fluency development activity for reading aloud to see what these conditions are.

Repeated reading has been used with good results with first language readers to help reach a good degree of oral reading fluency. The learner reads a text (about 50-300 words long) aloud with help where necessary, while the teacher or another learner listens.

Then the text is reread reasonably soon after (within a day). Then the text is read again a day later. The text should only be a little bit above the learner’s present level.

Most of the running words should be easily recognized. The optimal number of repetitions is around 3 to 5.

Using texts intended to be read aloud, like poems, plays, jokes or stories can increase the purposefulness of the activity.

Repeated reading and repeated reading while listening to a taped passage give similar positive results.

The first condition needed for a fluency development activity is that the learners should be focused on the message. In repeated reading this condition is met by having a listener.

The reader is trying to communicate the message of the text to the listener. The second condition needed is that the material should be easy.

It is important to choose texts for repeated reading where all the vocabulary is known and there are not too many irregularly spelt words. The third condition for a fluency activity is that there should be some pressure to perform at a faster than normal speed.

In the repeated reading activity the repetition provides this encouragement. To strengthen this condition, the time taken to read the text could be noted for each reading and the reader should be trying to beat her previous speed for the same text.

The fourth and final condition is that there should be quantity of practice. In repeated reading, the text is not very long but the repetitions mean that there is quite a lot of reading practice.

To truly be a fluency development activity these four conditions need to be met. Let us now look at a range of reading activities that meet these conditions and that are thus very useful for developing reading fluency.

The activities are divided into three groups which are in order of development:

1.     The first group of reading fluency activities involves reading aloud.

2.    Such reading is a very important first step towards the second group of activities which involve careful silent reading.

3.    The third group involves “expeditious reading“, or skimming and scanning very quickly to get a particular piece or a particular type of information.

Skill in careful silent reading is an important prerequisite to most skimming and scanning.

2015. Courtesy: Nigerian Scholars