“She's My Best Reader; She Just Can't Comprehend”: Studying the Relationship Between Fluency and Comprehension

Abstract

If reading fluency contributes to reading comprehension, then highly fluent readers should be expected to perform well in comprehension when reading materials are at their current grade level. The authors identified 171 elementary, middle, and secondary students who had been labeled by parents and teachers as strong readers and assessed as highly fluent readers. All students were given two narrative passages from the Critical Reading Inventory to assess their ability to react and respond to the text, as well as their ability to remember it. More than one third of the sample was classified as struggling comprehenders and another one third demonstrated instructional needs. The authors concluded that instructing children in fluency as distinct from comprehension is a serious oversimplification of a delicate and complex interaction. إذا ساهمت المرونة القرائية في استيعاب القراءة فينبغي أن نتوقع من القراء المتفوقين أداء قرائياً جيداً في استيعاب مواد قرائية على مستواهم الدراسي. وقد حدد المؤلفون 171 طالب من المدارس الابتدائية والإعدادية والثانوية كانوا قد تعينوا من والديهم ومعلميهم كقراء قويين وقد تقيموا كقراء يتمتعون بمستوى عال من المرونة القرائية. وقد تم إعطاء جميع الطلاب نصين حواريين من بيان القراءة النقدية المفصل لتقييم مقدرتهم على الرد والإجابة على النص وكذلك مقدرتهم على تذكر النص. وأكثر من ثلث العينة قد اندرج تحت صنف مواجهين صعوبات في الاستيعاب وثلث آخر أظهر حاجات تعليمية. وقد توصل المؤلفون إلى نتيجة أن تمييز تعليم المرونة القرائية للأطفال عن الاستيعاب هو تبسيط للغاية لتفاعل معقد وهش. 如果流畅阅读能有助于阅读理解的话，那么具有高度阅读流畅能力的阅读者，在阅读他们所就读年级的读物时，便会有预期的良好阅读理解表现。本文作者确认了 171名小学、初中和高中学生，他们都被家长与教师认为是能力高的阅读者，亦是被考评为具有高度阅读流畅能力的阅读者。这些学生全部接受一项阅读理解能力测试，阅读两篇选自《批判性阅读能力测验》的叙述式文章，并回答评估他们对文章内容的反应能力、回应能力，以及记忆能力的问题。在这个研究样本中，超过三分之一的学生被测定为有阅读理解困难，而另外三分之一则有阅读理解教学的需要。本文作者在结论中指出，把儿童阅读流畅度与阅读理解作为两种截然不同的能力训练，是严重地和过分地简单化了两者之间的微妙和复杂互动关系。 Si la vitesse de lecture contribue à la compréhension de la lecture, alors on devrait s'attendre à ce que les lecteurs très rapides aient de bons résultats en compréhension quand ce qu'ils ont à lire correspond à leur niveau d'études. Les auteurs ont retenu 171 élèves d'école élémentaire, de collège et de lycée que leurs parents et leurs professeurs considéraient comme de bons lecteurs et qui avaient été évalués comme des lecteurs très rapides. Tous les élèves ont reçu deux passages d'un texte narratif provenant de l'Inventaire de lecture critique afin d'évaluer leur capacité à réagir et à répondre au texte, ainsi que leur capacité à le mémoriser. Plus d'un tiers de l'échantillon a été classé comme ayant des difficultés de compréhension et un autre tiers avait besoin d'une aide pédagogique. Les auteurs ont conclu qu'entraîner les élèves à lire plus vite indépendamment de la compréhension consiste à simplifier à l'extrême une interaction délicate et complexe. Если беглость чтения способствует пониманию прочитанного, тогда от очень бегло читающих учеников можно ожидать хорошего понимания материалов, рассчитанных на их возрастную группу. Авторы статьи выбрали 171 ученика начальных, средних и старших классов, которых родители...

Retell as an Indicator of Reading Comprehension

“…Most ( n = 38) did not report the ethnic composition of participants. Of the 16 studies providing, at least, some information on students’ racial and ethnic backgrounds, 5 studies reported predominately (85% or greater) Caucasian samples (Applegate, Applegate, & Modla, 2009; Kucer, 2009; Rasinski, 1990; Shinn, Good, Knutson, Tilly, & Collins, 1992; Walczyk & Raska, 1992). Three studies had samples between 30 and 50% varied with respect to ethnicity (Carlisle, 1999; Fuchs et al, 1988; Pearman, 2008), and 3 studies referred more generally to students being of diverse backgrounds (Richgels, McGee, Lomax, & Sheard, 1987; Williams, 1991; Zinar, 1990).…”

“…Just 1 of the 54 studies in this review (Rasinski, 1990) did not explicitly describe how the retells were scored, and merely 4 studies reported exclusively using a qualitative approach—all of which relied upon an analysis of narrative story grammar elements (Applegate et al, 2009; Doty, Popplewell, & Byers, 2001; Hagtvet, 2003; Pearman, 2008). Among those latter 3 studies, only Pearman (2008) provided interrater reliability information (84%), which was below the mean but within the range of the interrater reliability data from quantitatively scored retells.…”

“…Although the fastest word-readers retold the most information, less proficient readers retold more dialogue clauses that were read slowly as compared to narrative clauses read more quickly. At comparable holistic ratings of oral reading fluency (including overall quality, intonation, punctuation use, and pacing), 2nd- through 10th-grade students could be grouped into three levels of oral retell ability (Applegate et al, 2009). The lack of a relationship between fluency and a qualitative evaluation of the story grammar and personal response elements in students’ retells was true across the grade levels.…”

“…Studies indicated that foundational reading skills make less of a contribution to retell performance of older students than measures that address prior knowledge (Applegate et al, 2009; Keenan et al, 2008). Moreover, measures of fluency and retell seem to be assessing different skills among older students.…”

Reading Comprehension in Latin America: Difficulties and Possible Interventions

“…However, reading comprehension (RC) not only includes the ability to extract meaning from text but also involves the capacity to elaborate meaning by a thorough interaction with the text, integrating prior knowledge as well (Verhoeven & Perfetti, ). Indeed, being a good word decoder is clearly not sufficient to be a good text comprehender (Applegate, Applegate, & Modla, ). Success in RC involves the mastering of a large set of RC tasks: locating information found in the text, reporting main ideas, and making inferences based on both text and prior knowledge (Kintsch, ).…”