Reading Skills of Students At-Risk for Academic Failure in High School

Linda O'Neill, M.S.
Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois

Heidi Harbers, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois

Tom Parton, M.S., CCC-SLP
Normal West Community High School
Normal, Illinois
Correspondence to Heidi Harbers
hmharbe@ilstu.edu

Abstract

This study examined the reading skills of thirty-six 8th grade students identified by their teachers as "at-risk" for high school failure. Reading rate (fluency), oral reading and reading comprehension measures were collected. Results indicated that 6 of 10 measures were significantly (p <.01) correlated. However, reading rate (a measure of reading fluency) was not found to be associated with measures of comprehension in older children.

Introduction

Fluency has been described as effortless reading (Lipson & Lang, 1991), reading with automaticity and accuracy (Nathan & Stanovich, 1991) and rapid and accurate oral translation of text (Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001). Fluency has also been described as a goal, ingredient, instrument, prerequisite, and by-product of skilled reading (Lipson & Lang, 1991). The National Reading Panel (2000) defined fluency as the immediate result of word recognition competence. Historically, fluency was viewed along a continuum leading to reading competence, and was one of many tools used to teach reading. Today, fluency is viewed more as a product of reading, and the term "fluency" itself is used to define a characteristic of the reader, separate and distinct from comprehension. (Stayter & Allington, 1991).

There are many benefits to being a fluent reader. When fluent, the reader provides little attention to decoding tasks (Wolf & Katzir-Cohen, 2001), punctuation, or prosody (National Reading Panel, 2000). As a result, the fluent reader's brain is free to use higher-level cognitive skills (Fuchs, et al., 2001). These higher-level cognitive skills include understanding, synthesizing, and thinking about the material (Nathan & Stanovich, 1991).

Reading fluency improves with practice. As a result of being fluent, readers read more, which in turn, increases fluency (Rasinski, 2000). Referred to as the "Matthew Effect" (Stanovich, 1985), fluency and the amount of time spent reading are cause and consequence of one another. Being a fluent reader allows one to manage text with more ease. Stanovich purported that superior readers are better decoders and as a result, understand text better. Further, disfluent readers have less comprehension due to insufficient decoding skills. For the disfluent reader, reading becomes laborious and learning from text is limited.

Because word recognition is a high capacity demand task (Nathan & Stanovich, 1991), readers who are just learning or who are disfluent use most of their cognitive resources for letter and word recognition (Wolf, 2001). Skilled readers automatically recognize words and occasionally use controlled effortful decoding strategies, whereas unskilled readers must always rely on controlled, effortful decoding strategies (National Reading Panel, 2000). Due to the time requirements for holding text in his/her memory, the reader may be unable to remember what he has read. (Mastropieri, Leinart, & Scruggs, 1999).