The Contributions of Oral and Silent Reading Fluency to Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Silent reading fluency has received limited attention in the school-based literatures across the past decade. We fill this gap by examining both oral and silent reading fluency and their relation to overall abilities in reading comprehension in fourth-grade students. Lower-level reading skills (word reading, rapid automatic naming) and vocabulary were included in structural equation models in order to determine their impact on reading fluency and comprehension. Results suggested that oral and silent reading fluency represent separate constructs, but only oral reading fluency contributed to reading comprehension. Vocabulary was found to contribute uniquely to comprehension even after controlling for reading fluency.

Notes

¹The procedures originally included a third, group-administered silent reading fluency measure that utilized the QRI-4 passages. Passages were counterbalanced, taking in account the need to counterbalance including this third measure. Due to time constraints during the group assessment, this third measure was dropped from the study, and therefore each student read only four of the six possible QRI-4 passages. Students were equally likely to read any combination of the four passages across the remaining oral reading fluency and underlining tasks. Permission was obtained from the test publisher to present the QRI-4 passages on a Tablet PC during the underlining task.

²Two passages were administered for each measure in order for the six fourth-grade QRI-4 passages to be utilized. Additionally, a third passage was not administered due to concerns about the length of testing time.

³The final models were run with and without the missing participants and results were comparable, which suggests the removal of these eight participants did not have a large impact on the final results.