But, what makes a text difficult to read fluently? Vocabulary is the first thing students blame when they find a text difficult (Shanahan, Fisher & Frey, 2012). Current readability formulas usually measure the difficulty of words and sentences. Higher-frequency and short words versus rare or long words is one of the criteria. The second criteria refer to the length and complexity of sentences. But these are only two of the factors to check to be sure if a book fits a child.
It is important to look at several other factors that affect readers' abilities to comprehend text, like structure, coherence, organization and required background knowledge (Shanahan, Fisher, Frey, 2012). Students are right that vocabulary is a foundation to reading fluency, but word knowledge does not solve all problems. It is crucial to give students awareness of text structure because text structure determines how words operate together. To understand long sentences, which may include multiple phrases and greater density, students would need to learn how to make sense of the conventions of text such as punctuation, language, and word order (Shanahan, Fisher, Frey, 2012).
Fluent reading is not only to read fast but also to comprehend what is read. Shanahan, Fisher, Frey´s research has shown that a good teaching strategy is to guide children to find the keys to understand the purpose of a text. For example, determining if a text is science or fiction is useful to perceive which are the main ideas. Text coherence is also an important aspect to focus on in reading instruction. For example, young readers may find it difficult to identify the author's use of pronouns, synonyms, ellipses and other tools to connect ideas. Text coherence can be pointed out explicitly, as can text-specific organization, like compare-contrast and problem-solution structures present in science texts or flashback patterns in fiction (Shanahan, Fisher, Frey, 2012).
Content also matters, and its measures are subjective and so not easily provided by a readability formula. Children's background knowledge and emotional maturity vary according to life experience. Sometimes a reading with easy wording and simple sentences matches a child's content interests but sometimes it doesn't. This may happen with Ernest Hemingway´s novel The Old Man and the Sea -- in terms of word- and sentence-complexity, it's easy to read, but the content can even be complicated for middle school students (Shanahan, Fisher, Frey, 2012). The same mis-fit may happen when Brazilian author Machado de Assis is recommended for middle-school students. Most middle-schoolers can probably read his novels, but it is impossible for most children to make sense of the irony and philosophical content. The result is that students get a bad impression of an extraordinary author.
So, how might a teacher offer increasingly complex texts to children while providing the support that they need? A particularly interesting way of improving reading fluency is part of Sherri Faver's teaching practices (Faver, 2008). Faver found that if a student's reading is slowed due to an inability to decode or automatically recognize the words he or she is reading, a useful strategy for teaching fluency is repeated reading. Repeated reading is a process in with a student reads a particular passage daily over several days to enhance his or her reading fluency. Previous research findings have noted that this old-fashion way of achieving fluency is beneficial to students (Rasinski, Padak, Lined, and Sturtevant, 1994, Meyer and Felton, 1999, Rasinski, 2003, and Therrien and Kubina, 2006).
Faver has been applying the repeated reading strategy at 2nd-grade level, and the continued practice resulted not only in boosting reading fluency but also in developing self-confidence and increased love for literature. The class used around 15 minutes a day to read and practice the week's poem as a community. Through activities and special performances, the practice brought layers of learning that went beyond fluency. The children who were not confident at the beginning of the year, after some weeks of practice, became highly motivated students, eager to perform their readings. Needless to say, that these children will not grow up avoiding poems, one of the most sophisticated uses humans make of language.
Shanahan, T., Fisher, D., Frey, N. (2012). The Challenge of Challenging Text. Educational Leadership, 69(6), 58-62.
Faver, S. (2008). Repeted Reading of Poetry Can Enhance Reading Fluency. The Reading Teacher, 62(4), pp. 350-352. DOI:10.1598/RT.62.4.8
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