Repeated Reading1
Effects of Repeated Reading on Fluency
Bethany Linkous
RE 5040: Teacher as Researcher
Dr. Moorman
Spring 2007
Fluency has long been thought of as a neglected part of the reading curriculum. In the classic article, “Fluency: The Neglected Reading Goal,” Richard Allington (1983) argued that fluency is an important part of the reading process, but it is not receiving the attention it needs in the classroom. Recently, fluency has gained more respect and attention in the reading field. There are several believed causes for this.In 2000, the National Reading Panel identified fluency as one of five critical components needed for the acquisition and advancement of reading skills (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). This report is influential because it provides the blueprint for the No Child Left Behind and Reading First legislature (Samuels & Farstrup, 2006). Another factor in the interest of fluency is the growing research-based studies on the development of reading fluency. It is important that teachers look into this research so that we can better help our students become fluent readers.
In spite of the growing amount of research on fluency, I have noticed that there is little focus on fluency in textbooks and other supplemental reading materials. In talking to other teachers at my school, fluency is an area that we know needs attention, but are unsure of the best methods toimprove fluency. In addition, while I was conducting Informal Reading Inventories with my students, I noticed that fluency was a recurring problem. Oftentimes, it was fluency that was keeping students from moving on to a more difficult passage. These are my reasons behind wanting to investigate the topic of fluency. I recognize that it is a problem with many students, and it impacts students’ overall reading performance. The concern for reading fluency is not just at the school where I teach. The National Assessment of Educational Progress conducted a study of the fluency achievement of fourth graders and found that 44% of fourth graders were disfluent (Pinnell et al., 1995). It is necessary to make fluency development an important part of reading instruction.
As I started to research the area of fluency, repeated readings sparked my interest and I decided to pursue researching this topic. Repeated reading is one of the best known research-based practices that is designed to support fluency development. In repeated reading, the reader rereads a short, meaningful passage until a criterion level of fluency is reached (Samuels, 1979). I was interested at how repeated readings would effect the fluency of a second grader and a fifth grader that had reading difficulties. I was also curious to see if these students would be motivated towards the task of repeated reading. This led to my research question: How do repeated readings effect fluency?
Theoretical Perspective
Much of the confusion with fluency lies in its definition (Samuels, 2006). Fluency is comprised of three main components: accuracy, rate, and prosody (Hudson,Lane, & Pullen, 2006). Accuracy, also known as automaticity, refers to being able to correctly decode words. The reading rate refers to both fluent identification of individual words and the speed with which a reader moves through a text. Prosody relates to the appropriate phrasing, stress, intonation, and pauses of the reader’s speech. It is commonly known as “reading with expression”. In this research study, I have looked at how repeated readings effect these three components of fluency.
Fluency plays an important role in comprehension. There are two main theories regarding fluency’s contribution to a reader’s understanding of text (Kuhn & Stahl, 2003). One theory stresses the importance of automaticity and the other focuses on the role of prosody.
LaBerge and Samuels (1974) offers a popular theoretical explanation for the role that decoding plays in comprehension referred to as automatic information processing. According to the automaticity theory, “a fluent reader decodes text automatically- that is, without attention- thus leaving attention free to be used for comprehension” (Samuels, 1979). Beginning readers are not automatic in their decoding, which allows for little room for comprehension. Samuels identifies reading fluency as being able to decode and comprehend simultaneously (Samuels, 2006). Stanovich (1980) later contributed to this theory by stating that the major difference between good readers and poor readers was the way that they processed the text while reading.
Repeated reading has its roots in the automaticity theory. Dahl (1979) and Samuels (1979) developed repeated readings to increase the automaticity of poor readers’ word recognition skills. It was then hypothesized that repeated readings would lead to greater gains in comprehension because their attention is not on decoding the words. Repeated readings provide the practice to decode words automatically and allow for deeper understanding.
As I previously mentioned, prosody is another component of fluency. Schrieber (1980) theorized that reading fluency difficulties stem from the absence of prosodic cues in the written language. Readers who fail to use appropriate prosodic indicators do not divide sentences into meaningful phrases resulting in difficulty in comprehending the text. Fluent readers apply appropriate phrasing, stress, and intonation as they are reading. Prosodic reading provides evidence that the reader understands what is being read (Kuhn & Stahl, 2000). Schrieber (1980) speculates that the practice of repeated readings develops a greater awareness of the prosodic measures involved in oral reading and speech.
Review of Literature
S.J. Samuels initiated the repeated reading technique in 1979. His article, “The Method of Repeated Readings” (1979), has had a profound influence on the community of reading education. It has brought attention to the need of assisting our students to become fluent readers. In his extensive research, Samuels found that the reading rate of disabled readers increased while their word recognition errors decreased. With the continual use of repeated readings, Samuels observed that the students’ initial speed of reading each new passage was faster than the initial speed of the previous passage. The number of rereadings required to reach the criterion reading speed also decreased with continued use of this method. He advocates that repeated readings are an effective strategy for building fluency.
Herman (1985) did a repeated readings study with eight less-able, nonfluent intermediate-grade students, and found similar results to Samuels’ research study. She found that there was a continual improvement in their reading rate along with a decrease in their total number of miscues. The students’ rate and word accuracy improved not only within each passage but also transferred to new reading passages. Although comprehension was not a direct variable in her study, she states that the significant improvement in word accuracy is a strong indication that comprehension improved as well. Herman also addressed the effect repeated readings had on speech pauses and appropriate phrasing. She found that the number of pauses that students made decreased after each reading. However, this did not transfer to new passages that the students’ read. Herman observed that repeated reading had a strong, positive effect on the students’ oral reading and validates its use in the classroom.
Dowhower (1987) examined the effects of repeated readings on second-grade transitional readers’ fluency and comprehension. She found similar results to Herman’s study in regards to the reading rate and word accuracy. Both significantly improved and those gains also transferred to new, unpracticed passages. Conversely to Herman, Dowhower found that the students significantly decreased pausal intrusions and increased the length of phrases, both within a passage and transferring to new passages. Comprehension was also positively affected by repeated reading. It was interesting to learn that Dowhower observedthat the students’ fluency and comprehension improved more significantly over the combined practice of several studies, and not as effective with the practice of one passage. This means that there seems to be more benefits of repeated readings over time, and not in one session.
O’Shea, Sindelar, and O’Shea (1985) also examined the effects that repeated reading has on comprehension. They performed a study with third grade students and found that cueing students to read for comprehension or to read for fluency has an effect on their reading performance. Students cued to attend to fluency showed significant improvement in fluency but not as much improvement in comprehension, whereas students cued to pay attention to meaning showed better comprehension and were better able to retell the story (Meyer & Felton, 1999). O’Shea et al. (1985) suggests that a combination of cueing for fluency and comprehension using materials at the student’s instructional level may be ideal when using the repeated reading technique.
There are several variations to Samuels’ traditional repeated reading method. One popular form of repeated reading is the assisted or listening-while-reading technique. In this method, the student reads the text while simultaneously listening to a fluent model of the same text (Rasinski, 1990). Dowhower (1987) researched repeated readings with both assisted and unassisted procedures. The students in the assisted group read along with an audiotape, whereas the students in the unassisted group received no modeling. Dowhower found that through both assisted and unassisted repeated readings, the students’ reading rate, accuracy, prosodic measures, and comprehension all significantly increased. The read-along procedure slightly helped produce more prosodic reading.
Rasinski (1990) conducted a study comparing the effectiveness of repeated readings and listening-while reading to build the fluency of third grade students. Whereas Dowhower used the listening-while-reading along with independent repeated reading, Rasinski compared each method separately. Like Dowhower, he found that both repeated reading and listening-while reading techniques are effective in improving reading fluency. The students’ speed and accuracy both significantly increased. In addition, Rasinski concluded that neither technique appeared more effective than the other in improving fluency. Rasinski recommends that utilizing both methods may help sustain students’ interest and give teachers an alternative to the traditional repeated readings method.
I think many teachers feel that repeated reading is a strategy specifically for students with reading difficulties. Although it is particularly suitable for students with learning problems, it is useful for typically -developing children as well (Samuels, 1979). Sindelar, Monda, & O’Shea (1990) conducted a study to compare the effects of repeated readings on instructional- and mastery- level readers who were both learning disabled and nondisabled students. An instructional level reader was characterized as having an average reading fluency of 50 to 100 words per minute. Mastery level readers were defined as those students who read faster than 100 words per minute. The results of the study showed that with repeated readings, both instructional- and mastery-level readers benefited from the repeated reading method. Both groups showed significant gains in their reading rate and accuracy, as well as their comprehension. In addition, the researchers found that the effects of repeated readings were also comparable with learning disabled and nondisabled readers. Both learning disabled and nondisabled students increased their fluency and comprehension with each rereading of the passage. This helps support the automaticity theory. With each rereading, both groups of students were decoding better which helped direct their attention to the meaning of the text. Thus, repeated reading is an effective strategy to use with students who are learning disabled and nondisabled, reading on both instructional and mastery levels.
Many teachers use a variety of oral reading methods in their classrooms. Homan, Klesius, & Hite (1993) investigated and compared the effects of repeated readings to assisted nonrepetitive strategies that included echo reading, unison reading, and cloze reading. The researchers looked at the effects these strategies had on the fluency and comprehension of sixth-grade Chapter I students. In the seven week study, these students made significant gains in the area of comprehension. There was a small improvement in the students’ accuracy and rate. The results of the study showed very little differences between the repeated reading method and nonrepetitive methods of oral reading. The researchers believe that repeated reading is a valuable reading strategy that complements assisted nonrepetitive strategies, which can expose students to a wider range of vocabulary and literature.
Prior to this research, Rashotte & Torgeson (1985) also compared repeated reading and nonrepetitive reading methods with nonfluent learning disabled elementary students. Their results showed that word overlap is an important variable in the transfer of reading fluency from text to text. They found that gains in reading were particularly due to a large overlap of words across passages. If the stories have few shared words, then repeated readings and nonrepetitive reading strategies are equally effective.
Other important factors that may influence the effectiveness of repeated reading include text difficulty and students’ motivation towards the task. Mathes and Fuchs (1993) compared the use of easy and difficult materials and found no effect for the difficulty of materials. However, Kuhn & Stahl (2002) noted that they failed to find a difference between a repeated-reading treatment and a control group. After analyzing many repeated reading studies, Kuhn & Stahl hypothesize that more difficult materials would lead to greater gains in achievement. O’Connor et al. (2002) found that students made stronger fluency gains when the material used was at their instructional level rather than grade level. Young and Bowers (1995) also found that with fifth graders, the poor readers showed significant declines in reading rate, accuracy, and fluency with each increase in text difficulty. This supports using materials that are on the child’s instructional level when engaging in repeated readings. Many of the repeated reading research studies failed to provide information on the reading material used in the intervention, thus more research is needed on this area.
I feel that motivation towards the reading task has an impact on their reading performance. In researching studies, I did not find as much information on this topic. Samuels (1979) had students keep an individual reading graph that showed their reading rate and accuracy for each rereading. He found that the graph was an excellent motivating device for his students. The students were excited of the fluency gains that they made. Rashotte & Torgeson (1985) also commented on students’ motivation in their study. It was noted that the students did enjoy the repeated reading method, and it positively affected their attitude towards reading. Rasinki (2006) promotes the use of repeated readings to develop fluency and feels that students will have more of an interest in repeated readings if they are giving an oral performance of a passage, as in reader’s theatre.
As I was doing my research on repeated readings, I thought it was important to look at a meta-analysis on the subject. The National Reading Panel (2000) and William Therrien (2004) both conducted a meta-analysis on repeated reading. I liked the fact that these meta-analyses were current research. Being a meta-analysis, the researchers researched a wide range of repeated reading studies, several of which I did not have opportunity to read. The National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) concluded from their meta-analysis that repeated reading procedures had a consistent and positive impact on word recognition, fluency, and comprehension, as measured by a variety of test instruments and at a range of grade levels. However, a limitation of this study was that it did not separate out findings for repeated reading from the findings for other fluency strategies (Therrien, 2004). Therrien conducted a meta-analysis from 18 research studies investigating the effects repeated reading has on fluency and comprehension. He concluded that repeated readings are effective in improving reading fluency and comprehension in nondisabled and learning disabled students. Fluency and comprehension gains from repeated readings seem to appear in a single passage and also transfer to new passages.
I used the information that I found in reviewing the literature on repeated readings to prepare me in conducting my own research study. I was most interested to see the effects repeated readings had on the students’ fluency. I wanted to see the effects of repeated reading on a particular passage and to see if those effects would transfer to new passages. I engaged the students in assisted and unassisted repeated readings to compare the effectiveness of each. I am very curious to see the students’ motivation towards the task of repeated readings.
Methods
Subjects:
I conducted my research study with two students that attend the same school in a small, rural town in North Carolina. The school is located in a lower socioeconomic area. The first student, James (pseudonym), is a fifth grader. He is Hispanic and currently receives ELL services at the school. He does not have any diagnosed learning problems. However, he does receive Title I reading services. He struggles with reading, and is currently reading at a 3.1 reading level according to the informal reading inventory that was administered in January. One of the areas that brought him difficulty was his fluency levels. This was one of the reasons that I chose to work with him. He is a hard worker and cooperative student. I have worked with him before, in the area of reading. This made him feel more comfortable during our sessions together.