Despite a long-standing awareness of academic language as a pedagogically relevant research area, the construct of academic-language proficiency, understood as a more comprehensive set of skills than just academic vocabulary, has remained vaguely specified. In this study, we explore a more inclusive operationalization of an academic-language…

Developing silent fluent reading is an important goal to be achieved in elementary literacy instruction. This article reviews characteristics of effective silent reading fluency instruction and practice. Next, the authors make the case for four components of effective silent reading fluency practice routines. Finally, the authors describe two…

Although several different reading fluency intervention approaches appear promising for adolescents who are struggling readers, few studies have directly compared various approaches. The purpose of this study was twofold: 1) to determine the relative effects of word-oriented, fluency-oriented, comprehension-oriented, and multi-component…

This study examined oral reading fluency (ORF) of bilingual and monolingual students. The author selected a sample of 510 (258 males and 252 females) native Arabic-speaking sixth-graders (62 bilinguals and 448 monolinguals) in Egypt. The purposes were; (a) to examine oral reading rate, oral reading accuracy, prosody, and oral reading comprehension…

Nearly 90% of intermediate and middle school students from low-income families in the United States are not proficient in reading. This action research project used a quasi-experimental design to determine the effectiveness of a multi-component reading intervention program for students in grades four through eight at Mother of Sorrows Catholic…

This study was conducted to ascertain if repeated reading or question generation was more effective at improving reading fluency and comprehension of fourth- through sixth-grade students with learning disabilities or reading problems. Adult tutors trained by the investigator conducted the interventions. Instructional components and training within…

Examines the effect of variations in syntactic structure (noun and participle, or verb phrase of a subject-verb-object clause) on oral reading of fourth graders and college students. Finds that children experienced many disruptions while reading the less common noun and participle structure, and that adults experienced few disruptions. (RS)

Compares the influence of text difficulty on the growth of poor readers' reading ability over 18 weeks of 1-to-1 tutoring. Significant differences favored tutored children. Between approaches, the only significant difference was oral reading fluency, which favored students who read material at their reading level. Students who began with lower…

Examines the effects of adding a repeated reading intervention in the context of the "Corrective Reading Decoding Strategies B2" program on the oral reading fluency of three alternative middle school students for practiced and nonpracticed passages. Concludes that the repeated reading had positive effects for practiced passages but not…

Discusses Readers Theatre, an instructional activity that combines several effective research-based practices, and leads to increased engagement with literacy even in very resistant readers. Considers the theory and research behind Readers Theatre. Describes the process of choosing and writing texts for performance, and preparing for performances.…

This study examined the effectiveness of repeated reading and assisted nonrepetitive strategies such as echo reading, cloze reading, and unison reading on reading and error rate, comprehension, and fluency with sixth-grade Chapter 1 students. Findings indicated equivalent benefits for both methods, with significant comprehension improvement over…

This study of 67 intermediate grade students with reading difficulties found that students in a peer-mediated sustained reading condition performed better than peer-mediated repeated reading students and control students receiving typical reading instruction, on fluency but not on comprehension. No effect for the level of text difficulty was…

Two studies with poor readers in grade 4 (total N=68) examined the relationship between word identification speed and story reading fluency. Benefits were found for single-word practice prior to reading stories containing those words, even for children who were particularly poor namers. Results are related to theoretical links between fluency and…