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What is Reading Fluency? How Should it Be Taught and Assessed?

By Dr. Jan Hasbrouck

It is firmly established by decades of research that the ability to read text fluently is an essential factor in skillful reading (NRP, 2000). Elementary teachers assess their students’ fluency, often several times a year, and include lessons to build students’ fluency. We know reading fluency is important.

Defining Fluency

But — what does it mean to “read text fluently”? There are several misunderstandings about reading fluency, the primary one being that reading fluently means reading fast. While “speed” (rate) is definitely one component of reading fluency, it is not the key component, and there are other important factors for educators to consider when teaching and assessing fluency.

Hasbrouck and Glaser (2019) define passage-reading fluency as the ability to read text with

• reasonable accuracy,
• at an appropriate rate,
• with suitable expression,
• that leads to accurate and deep comprehension and motivation to read.

Accuracy. We list accuracy first in our definition to make the point that — if comprehension of text is the goal of reading — then accuracy must be first, foremost, and forever the key aspect of fluency. Numerous studies have confirmed that text must be read at a minimum of 90% accuracy (correctly identifying the words and their meanings) to be able to adequately understand what they read. The highest-performing readers (in terms of comprehension) have accuracy levels around 98% (White et al., 2021). Accuracy must be considered the foundation of reading fluency if comprehension is the goal.

Rate. The 2021 study by White et al. determined that various levels of automaticity (words read correctly per minute as measured by assessments of Oral Reading Fluency-ORF) predicted students’ performance on the 2018 4th grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) from Advanced to Proficient to Basic and Below Basic. In this study the readers who performed at the Advanced level on the NAEP on average read 160 WCPM, which is slightly below the 90th percentile (168 WCPM) on the winter 4th grade norms in the 2017 Hasbrouck and Tindal study of ORF scores. The average scores for the Proficient to Basic readers ranged from 142 to 123 WCPM which aligns closely with the 75th percentile (143 WCPM) and the 50th percentile (120 WCPM) on the 2017 study. Those students who performed Below Basic were reading closer to the 25th percentile (95 WCMP) or lower.

These results indicate that the rate of reading makes a difference in reading comprehension. The White et al. findings suggest that a rate near the 90th percentile may be necessary to optimize comprehension while the 50th percentile appears necessary for grade-level comprehension of text. It is important that this finding is not misinterpreted as a reason to simply push students to read faster! WCPM is a score of automaticity (accuracy plus rate), not just rate alone (Hosp & Suchey, 2014). Students must read with high levels of accuracy while reading at a rate that is appropriate for the task. Reading too quickly can reduce accuracy and impede the brain’s ability to process the information being read. Reading too slowly impedes comprehension because of the impact on memory. Fluency instruction should focus on optimizing rates of automaticity — reasonable accuracy PLUS an appropriate rate.

Expression. Reading with expression (the pitch, tone, volume, emphasis, rhythm, and phrasing of reading) is another component of text reading fluency. Reading expression is sometimes referred to as “prosody”. However, different from accuracy and rate which both clearly contribute to a reader’s ability to comprehend the text they are reading, researchers often discuss expression as an outcome of comprehension. While knowing how to interpret punctuation and diacritical marks in text such as periods, commas, explanation question, and accent marks help a reader make text sound like speech (Stahl & Kuhn, 2002) and therefore easier to comprehend, the ability to read with accurate expression is best seen as an outcome of comprehending the text being read (Groen et al., 2019).

Assessing Fluency

If we think about passage reading fluency as the ability to read text with reasonable accuracy, appropriate rate, with suitable expression then an assessment of a student’s ability to read fluently would need to assess each of these components. This can be achieved by having a student read aloud from a piece of unpracticed text and calculating an overall score of accuracy (the percent of words read correctly), rate (the number of words read correctly per minute), and an observation and rating of expression (perhaps using a rating scale such as one created by Zutell and Rasinski (1991). We should also do a check of the student’s understanding of the text when they have finished reading.

If a student is unable to read a passage at their current grade level with reasonable accuracy (at least 90% correct), with appropriate rate (near or above the 50th percentile on the Hasbrouck and Tindal (2017) norms, with suitable expression, and particularly if they have difficulty understanding the text, additional assessments should be administered to determine why they are struggling to read fluently at grade level. Having them attempt to read text at lower grade levels should be considered, along with assessments of phonics and decoding and vocabulary as appropriate.

Teaching Fluency

We want all students to be able to read varieties of grade-level text with fluency and understanding. To achieve this, we need to be attending to fluency at the earliest stages of reading development. Wolf and Katzir-Cohen (2001) remind us that the end goal of passage fluency develops in progressions. We begin the process by teaching students to be accurate and then automatic in identifying letter names and letter sounds. This emphasis on accuracy, followed by automaticity continues as students learn to read words, phrases, and meaningful text.

Hasbrouck and Glaser (2019) suggest using a framework of instruction for fluency called Triple A. All reading lessons should be designed to address:

A: Accuracy

A: Automaticity

A: Access meaning

Teach students how to accurately identify and know the meaning and purpose of the words they are reading (Accuracy). Then provide a demonstration of how to read the words, phrases, and text with appropriate rate and suitable expression and provide sufficient practice to achieve fluency (Automaticity). Teach students from the beginning stages that reading has a purpose: Comprehending what is being read (Access meaning). Keep students accountable for thinking about what they read throughout the lesson by explicitly drawing their attention to the fact that print carries meaning. This can start very early, even when students are just beginning to learn the names and sounds of letters: “The letter ‘m’ can stand for the sound /mmmm/. Can you think of a word or someone’s name that starts with that letter sound?”

Include Writing Instruction for Fluency

We know that learning to read is enhanced when early decoding lessons also include encoding practice (printing the letters as a word is spelled out). As the brain develops the circuits necessary to connect oral language to print (the phoneme-grapheme connection) in the early stages of learning to read, printing letters seems to enhance this learning, which is not true for typing or tracing (James & Englehardt, 2021). This supports the idea that handwriting is important for successful reading. Including explicit instruction in handwriting (accurate and fluent letter formation) is important for success in reading, writing, and spelling.

This benefit to both writing and reading success continues into upper grades. Research indicates that handwriting fluency (accuracy and automaticity) matters. Stronger transcription fluency, particularly by hand, leads to higher-quality writing, likely because less cognitive effort is devoted to transcription (Troia et al., 2020). Having students write in response to reading has multiple benefits including enhancing vocabulary, grammar awareness, deepening comprehension and critical thinking, and overall language fluency (Shanahan, 2019).

Reading fluency plays a key role in our students’ success. It is important to understand what fluency is, why it is important, how to assess it, and how to successfully teach our students to be fluent readers.

And remember — fluent reading is not fast reading!

Jan Hasbrouck, Ph.D. is an award-winning researcher, educational consultant, and author who works with schools and agencies in the U.S. and internationally. Dr. Hasbrouck worked as a reading specialist and literacy coach for 15 years and later became a professor. Her research in reading fluency, academic assessment and interventions, and instructional coaching has been widely published. She is the author, coauthor, and co-editor of several books along with some assessment tools. She continues to collaborate with researchers and school colleagues on projects related to reading interventions, assessment, and instructional coaching. She enjoys volunteering at her grandson’s K-8 school in Seattle.

References

Groen, M., Guthrie-Veenendaal, N., & Verhoeven, L (2019).The role of prosody in reading comprehension: evidence from poor comprehenders. Journal of Research in Reading, 42, 37–57.

Hasbrouck, J. & Glaser, D. A. (2019). Reading Fluency: Understand. Assess. Teach. New Rochelle, NY: PD Essentials/Benchmark Education.

Hasbrouck, J. & Tindal, G. (2017). An update to compiled ORF norms (Technical Report №1702). Behavioral Research and Teaching, University of Oregon.

Hosp, J. L., & Suchey, N. (2014). Reading assessment: Reading fluency, reading fluently, and comprehension — Commentary on the Special Topic. School Psychology Review, 43(1), 59–68.

James, K. H., & Engelhardt, L. (2012). The effects of handwriting experience on functional brain development in pre-literate children. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 1(1), 32–34.

Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read (April 2000). National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and U.S. Department of Education.

Santangelo, T., & Graham, S. (2016). A comprehensive meta-analysis of handwriting instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 28(2), 225–265.

Shanahan, T. (2019). Reading-writing connections. In S. Graham, C.A. MacArthur, & M. Hebert (Eds.), Best practices in writing instruction (3rd ed., pp. 309–332). New York: Guilford Press.

Stahl, S. A., & Kuhn, M. R. (2002). Making It Sound Like Language: Developing Fluency. Reading Teacher, 55(6), 582–584.

Troia, G.A., Brehmer, J.S., Glause, K., Reichmuth, H.L., & Lawrence, F. (2020). Direct and indirect effects of literacy skills and writing fluency on writing quality across three genres. Education Science,10, 297.

White, S., Sabatini, J., Park, B. J., Chen, J., Bernstein, J., and Li, M. (2021). The 2018 NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Study (NCES 2021–025). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: Institute of Education Sciences (IES), National Center for Education Statistics.

Wolf, M., & Katzir-Cohen, T. (2001). Reading fluency and its intervention. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5(3), 211–239.

Zutell, J., & Rasinski, T. V. (1991). Training teachers to attend to their students’ oral reading fluency. Theory Into Practice, 30, 211–217.