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How Fluently Do Our Children Read?

Fluency means reading quickly and accurately with proper phrasing, expression, and attention to syntax (or word order). Find out what percentage of America's fourth graders read fluently in this report of a national assessment of oral reading.

What is fluency?

NAEP defines fluency as the ease or "naturalness" of reading. The key elements include

• Grouping or phrasing of words as revealed through the intonation, stress, and pauses exhibited by readers
• Adherence to author's syntax
• Expressiveness of the oral reading – interjecting a sense of feeling, anticipation, or characterization

Table 1 describes the NAEP fluency scale. Students at levels 3 and 4 are generally considered to be fluent, and those at levels 1 and 2 non-fluent.

Two other aspects of oral reading measured in the NAEP assessment are accuracy and rate. Accuracy was determined through an analysis of students' oral reading deviations from the words in the text (misread words), and rate was measured in terms of words-per-minute.

Table 1: NAEP's oral reading fluency scale

Level 4

Reads primarily in larger, meaningful phrase groups. Although some regressions, repetitions, and deviations from text may be present, these do not appear to detract from the overall structure of the story. Preservation of the author's syntax is consistent. Some or most of the story is read with expressive interpretation.

Level 3

Reads primarily in three- or four-word phrase groups. Some smaller groupings may be present. However, the majority of phrasing seems appropriate and preserves the syntax of the author. Little or no expressive interpretation is present.

Level 2

Reads primarily in two-word phrases with some three- or four-word groupings. Some word-by-word reading may be present. Word groupings may seem awkward and unrelated to larger context of sentence or passage.

Level 1

Reads primarily word-by-word. Occasional two-word or three-word phrases may occur-but these are infrequent and/or they do not preserve meaningful syntax.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2002 Oral Reading Study.

How was fluency assessed?

NAEP's 2002 report is a follow-up study to the 1992 study, Listening to Children Read Aloud: Data From NAEP's Integrated Reading Performance Record (IRPR) at Grade 4 (Pinnell et al. 1995). Both were commissioned by the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB). The 1992 study was NAEP's initial attempt at large-scale measurement of oral reading abilities and one of the first ever performed.

NAEP's 2002 data collection on oral reading used much of the same methodology and approach to understanding and reporting oral reading as the 1992 study; however, the results of the two studies are not comparable because different reading passages and administration procedures were used.

1992 Study on Oral Reading in Grade 4

A representative sample of 1,136 fourth-grade students who participated in the study were initially asked to read aloud a brief passage from Highlights magazine. The process served both to familiarize the students with the tape-recording process and to enable the interviewer to determine whether the student should be asked to read aloud from the more difficult assessment passage later in the interview.

Following the introductory session, students silently read a complete narrative passage titled "The Hungry Spider and the Turtle," which they had read during the main NAEP assessment. Narrative text was chosen because the use of dialogue and narrative structure was deemed more appropriate for eliciting expressive oral reading.

Students answered three comprehension questions about the passage orally and then read a portion of the passage aloud. Thus, students' oral reading of the passage took place after they had read the passage twice silently once previously as a part of the main NAEP written assessment and once before answering the comprehension questions. Students were instructed to read the story as if they were reading to someone who had never heard it before. The oral reading was audio-taped and later analyzed for overall fluency.

The information obtained from these oral reading sessions was linked to data from the main NAEP reading assessment, including the overall reading proficiency of students participating in the study, and their reading experiences both in and out of school.

2002 Study on Oral Reading Fluency in Grade 4

The data in this study were collected from a subsample (1,779) of the sample (140,000) of fourth-graders who participated in the NAEP reading assessment during the early spring of 2002. The data were derived from electronic recordings of the participants reading aloud a 198-word excerpt of "The Box in the Barn," one of the passages the students had encountered one week earlier when they sat for the main NAEP assessment.

What did we learn?

Oral reading fluency

As shown in Table 2, 61 percent of the fourth-grade students read at the higher fluency ratings of levels 3 and 4. However, only 10 percent of the students met the criteria for the highest rating, level 4, even though they had read the passage silently twice before.

Table 2: Percentage of fourth-grade students at each fluency level and their average proficiencies

Fluency Level	Percentage of Students	Average Proficiency
4	10	252
3	51	234
2	32	207
1	8	177

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2002 Oral Reading Study.

These students read in larger phrase groups that consistently preserved the author's syntax, and they read some or most of the story with expressive interpretation. Those students who received lower fluency ratings read primarily in one- or two-word phrases with little or no recognition of the text's sentence structure.

Higher levels of fluency were associated with higher average reading proficiency (Table 2). For example, students who were rated as the most fluent (level 4) exhibited an average reading proficiency of 252, whereas students who were rated as least fluent (level 1) had an average proficiency score of 177. The main NAEP reading scale ranges from 0 to 500.

In NAEP, reading proficiency is determined by the ability of students to provide an initial understanding of text, develop a more complete interpretation, connect knowledge from text with their own personal background knowledge, and to stand apart from the text and demonstrate a critical stance (National Assessment Governing Board, 1994).

Accuracy, rate, and fluency

The study also examined the role of accuracy and rate in the observed relationship between reading fluency and reading proficiency. Accuracy was defined in terms of the number of misread words (omitted, inserted, or substituted), and rate in terms of words per minute.

As shown in Table 3, students who read more fluently read the passage considerably faster (126 to 162 words per minute) than those who read less fluently (65 to 89 words per minute). These more fluent readers were, on average, somewhat more accurate (96 to 97 percent) than less fluent readers (94 percent).

Table 3: Percent accuracy and words per minute, by fourth graders' oral reading fluency

	Nonfluent		Fluent
	Fluency Level 1	Fluency Level 2	Fluency Level 3	Fluency Level 4
Percent accuracy	<90	90-94	95-96	97-100
Words per minute	<80	80-104	105-129	130-162

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2002 Oral Reading Study.

Discussion

After reading a passage twice silently, about 10 percent of the fourth-graders in the NAEP study could read with expressive interpretation and consistent preservation of the author's syntax. Higher levels of fluency were associated with higher average reading proficiency. What does all this mean for instruction?

Some researchers (Anderson, Wilkinson, & Mason 1991; Hoffman and Isaacs 1991), assuming that fluency results from good comprehension, suggest that oral reading instruction should emphasize conveying meaning rather than simply reading accurately. Others (Reutzel and Hollingsworth, 1993) claim that fluency affects comprehension as well.

The results reported here do not rule out the possibility that as students are asked to pay attention to elements of fluency such as phrasing, syntax, and expressiveness (and not merely to read aloud), they will become more attentive to the meaning of the passage.

Note that the relationship between reading fluency and good comprehension may be influenced by other factors such as reading accuracy and rate.

The findings indicated that more fluent readers are substantially faster than less fluent readers, covering more text without sacrificing accuracy. Such information may have diagnostic value. It may be easier to detect poor comprehension from students' slower rate than from their degree of word accuracy.

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