The Importance of Fluency

Some students absolutely love reading. They curl up with a 600-page Harry Potter book on the weekend, or stay up past their bedtime because they just can't put down the latest installment of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. For other students, though, reading is an extreme challenge. Struggling readers become frustrated not just by their lack of reading comprehension, but by the act of reading itself. If you're tutoring a child with reading difficulties, it's as important to focus on fluency as it is to focus on vocabulary and comprehension.

First, there's the big-picture question: Just what is fluency? In the broadest of terms, it's the ease with which a student reads aloud (or her ability to "hear" the words when she reads silently). Fluent readers use the appropriate pace when reading—not too slow, but not too fast, either. They use punctuation as a guide, pausing at commas, stopping momentarily at periods, and changing their voice's pitch at question marks. They read with proper intonation and inflection, bringing excitement to a mystery story or clarity to a scientific explanation.

As you can see just from its description, fluency is a multi-layered ability. True fluency depends upon proficiency in a number of areas. Children who struggle with fluency are often embarrassed to read aloud in the classroom. When the teacher selects a student to read a passage, struggling readers sink down in their seats, practically trying to make themselves invisible. In a one-on-one tutoring session, though, your child might not feel quite so self-conscious. These sessions are the perfect opportunity to help your child practice her fluency. And the keyword there really is practice; just like mastering a musical instrument or learning a foreign language, acquiring reading fluency takes plenty of persistence.

Before you begin sharing fluency tips with your child, evaluate his current ability by asking him to read a passage aloud to you. This can be from a textbook, a novel, or even the day's newspaper. Take notes as he reads. Is he reading too slowly, sounding out every word? Or is he reading too quickly, hoping that he can skip over difficult words without you noticing? Does he seem to understand the role that punctuation plays in reading aloud? Is he pronouncing words correctly? Does his inflection vary at all, or is his reading monotone?

By taking good notes in this initial session, you will be able to track your child's progress across future tutoring sessions. One of the most effective ways to teach fluency is to model appropriate pace and inflection. Do a "guided reading" with your child. In other words, read several sentences aloud, with a high level of fluency. Ask him how fluency makes the ideas easier to understand. You may also want to model a reading using poor fluency—reading too quickly, ignoring punctuation "road signs" like commas and question marks, etc.—and ask your child how you could make your reading better.

In future posts, we'll explore the ways in which fluency is linked to comprehension, and we'll discuss fun activities that help striving readers become more fluent—and more confident.

If you're looking for individualized reading tutoring for your child, check out the many qualified tutors here. You can find an online tutor to help improve your child's reading fluency.