Are faster readers also better readers? : exploring the role of reading fluency in Chinese children's reading development

Abstract

Recently, reading fluency, the ability to read with accuracy, automaticity and prosody, has gained wide attention in the field of reading research. Prior research on alphabetic readers has suggested that reading fluency plays an additional role in children’s development of reading comprehension. Yet, the specific definition and the role of reading fluency in a theoretical framework remain elusive. To better understand the role of reading fluency in children’s reading comprehension, the present work aimed to examine the language and literacy factors that contribute to reading fluency and how they interact with each other to support children’s reading in Chinese, a language with morphosyllabic writing system. Study 1 was a one-year longitudinal study, examining the developmental effect of reading fluency on children’s reading comprehension skills. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that reading fluency measures were significant longitudinal predictors of children’s reading comprehension. Follow up analyses showed that reading fluency’s role in children’s reading comprehension may differ depending on children’s age. This finding suggested a developmental role for reading fluency in predicting reading comprehension and provided further implications for the types of reading fluency measures used. To further understand the specific role of reading fluency within the context of a model of reading comprehension, namely, Simple View of Reading, Study 2 showed that reading fluency measures bridge the relationship between decoding and reading comprehension, after accounting for linguistic comprehension skills. Results from the Structural Equation Modeling analyses showed that decoding and reading fluency are two separable constructs that play distinctive roles in a model of reading comprehension. While studies 1 and 2 examined reading fluency in typical readers, Study 3 investigated whether reading fluency deficit exists in Chinese dyslexic children by comparing the reading performances of 30 dyslexic children with the chronological-age and reading-level matched counterparts. Results from the multivariate analysis of variance indicated that dyslexic children performed worst on all reading fluency measures than those of the typical readers in both groups, suggesting that reading fluency deficit may be one of the core deficits in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Further analyses demonstrated that orthographic awareness and vocabulary knowledge contributed to children’s reading fluency performances. Collectively, the present work showed that reading fluency contributes uniquely to children’s development of reading comprehension in Chinese. As better decoders become fluent and proficient readers, they develop better abilities to quickly recognize visual-orthographic patterns, decipher phonological information and access the semantic lexicons. Efficiency in applying these skills contributed to their reading fluency development at both word and text levels, which supported children’s reading comprehension skills. On the other hand, deficits in reading fluency may play a key role in dyslexic reader’s reading network. The present findings provide both theoretical and educational implications for considering reading fluency as one of the key constructs in a reading theory and reading intervention programs.