Tips for Tutors

by Joan Green, JCL Reading Specialist

Greetings, tutors. I am happy I’m in a position to encourage your significant work and hope I can provide the support you need when you want it. Right now let’s focus on one aspect of the reading process that contributes a great deal to successful reading — and that is FLUENCY. A major goal for our students is to develop reading fluency. Fluency and comprehension really go hand-in-hand and we’ll examine them both, but let’s look at fluency first.

Fluency is the ability to read accurately, at an appropriate rate and with appropriate expression and phrasing. Fluent reading requires what is called “automaticity.” That means recognizing words automatically, grouping words into meaningful chunks and illustrating such meaning through expression and intonation. Fluency can also be measured by timed readings, but we’re only concerned now with practice and repetition.

Fluent readers can read effortlessly. Their reading sounds like natural speech. They focus attention on ideas in the text, connecting them with their thoughts and personal knowledge. They are able to concentrate on the significance of what they read.

Less fluent readers tend to read more slowly, word by word. Their oral reading can sound hesitant or uncertain. They focus more attention on decoding words as individual items and have little energy left for comprehending the text.

Fluency develops gradually over time and through regular practice. Students who read and re-read orally with guidance become better readers. Repeated oral reading substantially improves word recognition, speed, and accuracy as well as fluency.

Here’s what you can do to help: Read to students in ways that model fluent reading and have students repeatedly read passages back to you. By reading effortlessly and expressively, you let your student know what a fluent reader sounds like and open the way to comprehension.

Pre-reading:

1. Explain to students that it’s important to read smoothly, grouping words together in ways that make sense as when they talk.
2. Give students every opportunity to connect with the material. Skim the text first to identify new or unusual vocabulary. Use flash cards, drawings, miming or a picture dictionary to illustrate the meanings of new words.
3. Do a picture walk through the book to set the scene, identify characters, location or any other new circumstance (i.e. circus, beach, geographic area)

Process Reading:

1. You demonstrate by reading fluently a passage in the book.
2. Have your student re-read the same text several times, following your model each time. This is known as Echo Reading. It may take 3–4 re-readings to achieve fluency of a passage!
3. Guide the student by helping with word pronunciation and meaningful, expressive phrasing each time before the student repeats.
4. Have the student point to the words or phrases you read. When the student reads, you follow and point. This helps with tracking and setting the pace.

Comprehension links:

1. Ask questions to reinforce “chunking” or phrasal reading. As you ask about the where, when, how or whys, the student searches for and re-reads each phrase with meaning which answers the question and promotes fluency and comprehension.
2. Demonstrate and point out the use of punctuation to convey meaning — a questioning voice (?), an excited, enthusiastic voice (!), a pause (,).

Look at the following sentence as an example:

Joe hurried back across the street to try and find the nickel he dropped!

You can ask questions about where he went and why, and you can also wonder where he was heading, what happened, why the nickel was important? Your voice can also illustrate the stress of the situation. Part of our goal is to arouse a student’s eagerness to find things out and to instill the belief that reading matters. Fluent reading provides the freedom for this to happen.

Fluency instruction is useful whenever students don’t have automatic word recognition of materials they read, do not read orally with expression or have poor comprehension of what they do read. If readers can read the words but do not understand, they are not really reading.

Fluency develops from repeated opportunities to read with success. Students should practice with material that is relatively easy — materials they know or can decode easily. Students should be able to read the text with about 95% accuracy, misreading only 1 of every 20 words. (This represents an independent reading level.) If the text is more difficult than that, students will have to focus more on word recognition, which gets in the way of developing fluency.

Good luck with all your efforts. If you try out any of these ideas, please let me know how they work. Next time we’ll examine different aspects of questioning which serve as a catalyst for comprehension.

All the best,
Joan