Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Feb;28(1):79-96.
doi: 10.1002/dys.1695. Epub 2021 Aug 31.

Improving English reading fluency and comprehension for children with reading fluency disabilities

Jamie L Metsala  1 , Margaret D David  1   2
Affiliations

Improving English reading fluency and comprehension for children with reading fluency disabilities

Jamie L Metsala et al. Dyslexia. 2022 Feb.

Abstract

In the English language, students who read words accurately but have impairments in reading fluency are under-studied. The associated difficulties they have with comprehending text make it particularly important to delineate effective interventions for these students. Counter to suggestions that these readers need interventions focused on text reading, we examined the effects of a decoding-focused intervention. The intervention targeted decoding-related skills, including speeded training on sublexical spelling patterns. We examined the efficacy of this program for students with fluency-defined disabilities, and compared gains to those for students with accuracy-defined disabilities. In the initial phase of the program, readers with fluency-defined disabilities made greater gains in fluency, while readers with accuracy-defined disabilities made larger gains in word reading accuracy. The mean fluency score for readers with fluency-defined disabilities came within the average range across the intervention, as did reading comprehension for both groups. Readers' mastery on speeded learning of sublexical spelling patterns predicted unique variance in fluency outcomes, beyond variance accounted for by pre-test fluency and word reading accuracy. The results support intervention approaches focused on decoding-related skills for students who have fluency-defined disabilities and are consistent with theories of reading fluency that identify a role for automaticity with sublexical spelling patterns.

Keywords: dyslexia; fluency interventions; reading disabilities; reading fluency; reading remediation.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: A practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological), 57(1), 289-300.
    1. Berninger, V. W., Abbott, R. D., Vermeulen, K., & Fulton, C. M. (2006). Paths to reading comprehension in at-risk second-grade readers. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 39(4), 334-351. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222194060390040701
    1. Blomert, L. (2011). The neural signature of orthographic-phonological binding in successful and failing reading development. Neuroimage, 57(3), 695-703. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.11.003
    1. Brasseur-Hock, I. F., Hock, M. F., Kieffer, M. J., Biancarosa, G., & Deshler, D. D. (2011). Adolescent struggling readers in urban schools: Results of a latent class analysis. Learning and Individual Differences, 21(4), 438-452. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2011.01.008
    1. Chard, D. J., Ketterlin-Geller, L. R., Baker, S. K., Doabler, C., & Apichatabutra, C. (2009). Repeated reading interventions for students with learning disabilities: Status of the evidence. Exceptional Children, 75(3), 263-281. https://doi.org/10.1177/001440290907500301

LinkOut - more resources