More Focus on Reading Fluency Needed, Study Suggests

A new examination of national assessment data suggests that students need more practice building reading fluency and more explicit instruction in comprehension strategies.

Students who can read text passages aloud accurately and fluently at an appropriate pace are more likely to understand what they are reading, both silently and orally, says the study of 4th graders who took the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading.

Some 40 percent of the students included in the study had trouble with some aspect of an oral-reading task, however. The findings, released last month, show that while few of the students displayed difficulty in reading words accurately, many needed more instruction in advanced reading...