Why is fluency important?
Fluency determines much of a students performance in using the information they have learned. Just as in learning a foreign language, knowing the basics doesnt guarantee that information can be recalled when it is needed. When we can respond quickly and accurately, we experience several benefits. Information is retained longer, is available for us to generalize to novel uses and situations and reduces hesitation and errors when we perform in stressful circumstances. No one can approach any level of expertise without it.
Fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. (Reading Links, 2002, p. 9). Fluency doesnt ensure comprehension, but comprehension is difficult without fluency. If a reader is constantly stopping to decode and figure out unknown words, most likely meaning will be disrupted and the process of reading becomes long and laborious. When students make gains in reading fluency, they are able to put their energies into comprehension and are able to analyze, interpret, draw conclusions, and infer meaning from texts. The 3 Components of Fluency • Accuracy: Also known as automaticity, it refers to the person’s ability to read words in a text. • Rate: The speed a person reads. • Prosody: Refers to stress, intonation, and pauses. Commonly known as “reading with feeling”. In order to implement fluency teaching into reading instruction, teachers need to be aware of the three components of fluency. Fluency Instruction Teachers need to select and facilitat
