Factors Affecting Reading Fluency

There are many different views regarding reading fluency during past decades of years, and as time goes by, the definition of reading fluency has gone through several stages.

In traditional definitions, according to Schreiber (1980), fluency is the level of reading competence at which textual material can be effortlessly, smoothly, and automatically understood. Zutell and Rasinski (1991) note that, rather than a single dimension, fluency encompasses multiple elements such as pitch, stress, prosody and intonation, meanings of sentences and emotions. And in 2001, they revise that, effortless and automatic reading, proper chunking of sentences, and appropriate expression are the major necessities to achieve reading fluency. Mathes and Simmons

2.1.2.Factors Affecting Reading Fluency

After reviewing different definitions of reading fluency and its role in overall reading process, it is important to dig out those factors that may have influence on a learner’s reading fluency. On the basis of their research findings, we synthesize the four major ones within three linguistic levels: the word level, the prosodic level, the semantic level, along with fluency strategies application as follows.

2.1.2.1.Word Decoding

Extensive researches conducted indicate the critical role of automatic word recognition in fluent, skillful reading. For example, readers fix their eyes on about 60% of the content words but 40% of the function words. When skillful readers do skip, they rarely skip more than one word (e.g., Adams, 1990; Just and Carpenter, 1980, 1987). Skillful readers seem to execute word recognition tasks automatically and effortlessly, thus allowing them to direct their cognitive resources to comprehending passage. (e.g., Adams, 1994; Just and Carpenter, 1987; LaBerge and Samuels, 1974; Samuels, 1994;) It is likely, however, that efficient word recognition is not the sole foundation of fluent reading. Background knowledge and higher-order comprehension skills, such as generating predictions and making inferences also influence readers' comprehension of the passage (e.g., Anderson and Pearson, 1984; Carrell and Eisterhold, 1983).

This situation is quite common in our daily learning or teaching experience. Unfortunately, just as Allington (2004) points out that, although educators have long attached the importance of prosody to fluent reading and an explicit definition has never been provided by teachers or researchers. Prosodic reading has become rather obscure, which is hard to measure and evaluate. The absence of sensitivity to syntactic clues, as Schreiber (1980) notes that, results in a lack of prosody and rhythm in oral reading; and prosodic reading is an important part of reading fluency( Perfetti, 1985; Stanovich, 1991, 1992). During the reading process, Schreiber says that, readers have to experience a stage of transformation from written passages to oral production. They need to form proper prosodic makings based on clues in the written passage in order to realize this transforming process. Schreiber further explains the reason of lacking of fluency among poor readers lies in their failure to perceive the prosodic and rhythmic characteristics of the language in the written passage. Prosodic or reading with appropriate phrasing, is considered as a symbol of being a fluent reader (Dowhower, 1991; Rasinski & Zutell, 1990). As they have stated that, prosodic reading includes inflection, pitch, and stress patterns, all of which make reading sound smooth and natural. Similarly, Dowhower (1991)