Relationship between Oral Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension among ESL Students

Ching Pey Khor, Hui Min Low, Lay Wah Lee

Abstract


Fluency is one of the five components of reading competency alongside with phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary and comprehension. It is related to reading comprehension and it can be used to predict the reading competency of a reader. However, research on such relationship is limited in ESL context. Hence, the purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between three sub-skills of fluency (accuracy, reading rate and prosody) and reading comprehension among a sample of ESL students in a Malaysian school. It also aims to examine the concurrent validity of using the objective (i.e. reading accuracy and rate) and subjective (reading prosody) measures of fluency. It is hoped that the findings could shed light in identifying the possible methods of assessing oral reading fluency in ESL classrooms. The participants were 67 lower secondary school students who learn English as their second language. The students completed a reading comprehension test and then they were asked to read aloud the texts used in the test, individually. The individual reading sessions were audio recorded for the analysis of three sub-skills of reading fluency. Bivariate correlation analysis was then conducted to measure the strength of relationships with reading comprehension. The results revealed that all three sub-skills of fluency were strongly correlated with reading comprehension. Both objective (accuracy and reading rate) and subjective (prosody) rating scales were strongly related, and thus could be used in parallel or interchangeably in the assessment of oral reading fluency. The findings provided evidence that in line with the research findings in English as the first language contexts, reading fluency is closely associated with reading comprehension in an ESL context. 

 

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/GEMA-2014-1403-02

 


Keywords


reading; ESL; fluency; comprehension; assessment

Full Text:

PDF

References


Benjamin, R.G. & Schwanenflugel, P. J. (2010). Text Complexity and Oral Reading Prosody in Young Readers. Reading Research Quarterly. 45(4), 388-404.

Binder, K. S., Tighe, E., Jiang, Y., Kaftanski, K., Qi, C., & Ardoin, S. P. (2013). Reading Expressively and Understanding Thoroughly: An Examination of Prosody in Adults with Low Literacy Skills. Reading and Writing. 26(5), 665-680.

Breznitz, Z. (2006). Fluency in Reading. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Courbron, C. (2012). The Correlation between the Three Reading Fluency Subskills and Reading Comprehension in At-risk Adolescent Readers. (Doctoral dissertation, Liberty University).

Dowhower, S. L. (1991). Speaking Prosody: Fluency’s Unattended Bedfellow. Theory into Practice. 30(3), 165-175.

Falke, L. G. (2008). Measures of Reading Comprehension: Effects of Text Type and Time Limits on Students’ Performance (Master dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Digital Dissertations database (Publication No. 1471262).

Fletcher, J. M. (2006). Measuring Reading Comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading. 10(3), 323-330.

Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., Hosp, M. K. & Jenkins, J. R. (2001). Oral Reading Fluency as an Indicator of Reading Competence: A Theoretical, Empirical and Historical Analysis. Scientific Studies of Reading. 5(3), 239-256.

Gagen, M. R. (2007). Actual Reading Errors Made by Struggling Readers. Retrieved from http://www.righttrackreading.com/errors.html

Gay, L. R., Mills, E. G. & Airasian, P. (2006). Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application (8th Ed.). Columbus, OH: Pearson Education, Inc.

Geva, E. & Farnia, F. (2012). Developmental Changes in the Nature of Language Proficiency and Reading Fluency Paint a More Complex View Of Reading Comprehension in ELL and EL1. Reading and Writing. 25(8), 1819-1845.

Gilbert, J. B. (2008). Teaching Pronunciation Using the Prosody Pyramid. Retrieved from http://www.cambridge.org/other_files/downloads/esl/booklets/Gilbert-Teaching-Pronunciation.pdf

Grabe, W. (2010). Fluency in Reading – Thirty-Five Years Later. Reading in a Foreign Language. 22(1), 71-83.

Hook, P. E. & Jones, S. D. (2002). The Importance of Automaticity and Fluency for Efficient Reading Comprehension. International Dyslexia Association Quarterly Newsletter, Perspectives. 28(1), 9-14.

Huang, H. L., & Chen, Y. C. J. (2004). Prosodic Reading: Alternative Measure for Reading Comprehension. Unpublished manuscript, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology.

Hudson, R. F., Lane, H. B. & Pullen, P. C. (2005). Reading Fluency Assessment and Instruction: What, Why and How? The Reading Teacher. 58(8), 702-714.

Hudson, R. F., Pullen P. C., Lane, H. B., & Torgesen, J. K. (2009). The Complex Nature of Reading Fluency: A Multidimensional View. Reading & Writing Quarterly. 25, 4-32.

Kariuki, P. & Baxter, A. (2011). The Relationship between Prosodic Oral Reading Assessments and Standard-Based Reading Assessment in a 2nd Grade Classroom. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Mid-South Educational Research Association, Oxford, Mississippi.

Kaur, N. (2013). The Need for Autonomous Vocabulary Learners in the Malaysian ESL Classroom. GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies. 13(3), 7-16.

Kaur, S., Ganapathy, M. & Kaur Sidhu, G. (2012). Designing Learning Elements Using the Multiliteracies Approach in an ESL Writing Classroom. 3L: Language Linguistics Literature®, Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies. 18(3), 119-134.

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview. Theory into Practice. 41(4), 212-218.

Kim, Young-Sik, Petscher, Y., Schatschneider, C., Foorman, B. (2010). Does Growth Rate in Oral Reading Fluency Matter in Predicting Reading Comprehension Achievement? Journal of Educational Psychology. 102(3), 652-667.

Klauda, S. & Guthrie, J. (2008). Relationship of Three Components of Reading Fluency to Reading Comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology. 100(3), 31-321.

Kruger, L. (2008). The Relationship Between Reading Fluency and Comprehension in Spanish Language Measures (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Digital Dissertations database (Publication No. 3339311).

Kuhn, M.R., & Stahl, S. A. (2003). Fluency: A Review of Developmental and Remedial Practices. Journal of Educational Psychology. 95(1), 3-21.

LaBerge, D. & Samuels, S. (1974). Toward a Theory of Automatic Information Processing in Reading. Cognitive Psychology. 6, 293-323.

Lems, K. (2005). A Study of Adult ESL Oral Reading Fluency and Silent Reading Comprehension. In B. Maloch, et al., (Ed.). 54th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 240-256). Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference.

Logan, G. D. (1997). Automaticity and Reading: Perspectives from the Instance Theory of Automatization. Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties. 13(2), 123-146.

Mostow, J., & Duong, M. (2009). Automated Assessment of Oral Reading Prosody. In Proceedings of the 2009 conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education: Building Learning Systems that Care: From Knowledge Representation to Affective Modelling (pp. 189-196). IOS Press.

Munro, M. J. (2011). Intelligibility: Buzzword or buzzworthy? In J. Levis & K. LeVelle (Eds). Proceedings of the 2nd Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, Sept. 2010. (pp. 7-16), Ames, IA: Iowa State University.

Mustafa Yildiz, Kassim Yildirim, Seyit Ates & Cetin Cetinkaya (2009). An Evaluation of the Oral Reading Fluency of 4th Graders with Respect to Prosodic Characteristic. International Journal of Human Sciences. 6(1), 353-360.

National Reading Panel (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read. An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and its Implications for Reading Instruction. Washington, DC: U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health.

O'Connor, R. E., Swanson, H. L., & Geraghty, C. (2010). Improvement in Reading Rate Under Independent and Difficult Text Levels: Influences on Word and Comprehension Skills. Journal of Educational Psychology. 102(1), 1-19.

Palmer, M. L. (2010). The Relationship between Reading Fluency, Writing Fluency, and Reading Comprehension in Suburban Third-Grade Students. Retrieved from ProQuest Digital Dissertation database (Publication No. 3435802).

Pasquarella, A. D. K. (2009). Reading Comprehension in Adolescent First and Second Language (Unpublished doctoral dissertation), Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada.

Penner-Wilger, M. (2008a). Building and Assessing Reading Fluency: Academy of Reading with Oral Reading Fluency. Retrieved from http://eps.schoolspecialty.com/downloads/other/acad-read

Penner-Wilger, M. (2008b). Reading Fluency: A Bridge from Decoding to Comprehension. Retrieved from http://www.autoskill.com/pdf/fluency_research.pdf

Rasinski, T. V. (2000). Speed Does Matter in Reading. The Reading Teacher. 54, 146-151.

Rasinski T. V. (2004). Creating Fluent Readers. Educational Leadership. 6, 46-51.

Rasinski, T., Rikli, A. & Johnston, S. (2009). Reading Fluency: More than Automaticity? More than a Concern for the Primary Grades? Literacy Research and Instruction. 48, 350-361.

Scarborough, H. S. (1998). Predicting the Future Achievement of Second Graders with Reading Disabilities: Contributions of Phonemic Awareness, Verbal Memory, Rapid Naming, and IQ. Annals of Dyslexia. 48(1), 115-136.

Shankweiler, D., Lundquist, E., Katz, L., Stuebing, K.K., Fletcher, J.M., Brady, S., Fowler, A., Dreyer, L.G., Marchione, K.E., Shaywitz, S.E., &

Shaywitz, B.A. (1999). Comprehension and Decoding: Patterns of Association in Children with Reading Difficulties. Scientific Studies of Reading. 31, 69-94.

Torgesen, J. K., & Hudson, R. F. (2006). Reading Fluency: Critical Issues for Struggling Readers. In S. J. Samuels & A. E. Farstrup (Eds.). What Research Has to Say about Fluency Instruction (pp. 130- 158). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Zutell, J., & Rasinski, T. V. (1991). Training Teachers to Attend to their Students’ Oral Reading Fluency. Theory into Practice. 30, 211-217.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2131

ISSN : 1675-8021