NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY

ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET

Student: Daniel Alan Coffin

THIS FORM MUST BE COMPLETELY FILLED IN

Follow these procedures: If requested by your instructor, please include an assignment cover
sheet. This will become the first page of your assignment. In addition, your assignment header
should include your last name, first initial, course code, dash, and assignment number. This
should be left justified, with the page number right justified. For example:

DoeJXXX0000-1 1

Save a copy of your assignments: You may need to re-submit an assignment at your instructors
request. Make sure you save your files in accessible location.

Academic integrity: All work submitted in each course must be your own original work. This
includes all assignments, exams, term papers, and other projects required by your instructor.
Knowingly submitting another persons work as your own, without properly citing the source of
the work, is considered plagiarism. This will result in an unsatisfactory grade for the work
submitted or for the entire course. It may also result in academic dismissal from the University.

EDU7001 Dr. Leggett

Advanced Scholarly Writing Conduct a Literature Review

<Add student comments here>

Faculty Use Only

<Faculty comments here>

<Faculty Name> <Grade Earned> <Date Graded>

Fluency Development in the Middle Grades: A Review of the Literature

Daniel Coffin

Northcentral University
CoffinDEDU7001-8 2
CoffinDEDU7001-8 3

Fluency Development in the Middle Grades: A Review of the Literature

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature related to the topic of fluency

development for struggling readers in the middle grades. The topic of fluency development is of

paramount importance for reading teachers as the development of oral reading fluency is an

important precursor to reading comprehension and overall reading achievement. While there has

been a great deal of research conducted on helping students to develop strong reading skills, a

significant number of students in the middle and secondary grades still demonstrate a serious lack

of reading proficiency, and the majority of students who demonstrate reading deficiencies in the

elementary grades show those same deficiencies in high school (Archer, Gleason, & Vachon, 2010).

These, in turn, lead to academic difficulties not only in the language arts classroom, but in the

content classrooms as well, which require strong reading skills in order to access that content. This

suggests that fluency development has not been as effective in the middle grades as it should be,

and that research on fluency development for that population is a worthwhile addition to literacy

education scholarship.

In this literature review, I will review factors influencing student fluency development, the

three dimensions of oral reading fluency, accuracy, automaticity, and prosody, the theoretical

framework explaining why and how fluency development contributes to overall reading

performance, assessment of fluency and effective fluency development interventions which may be

adapted for students in the middle grades.

Effective fluency development interventions for students in the middle grades should target

each of the three dimensions of oral reading fluency, accuracy, automaticity, and prosody, doing so

in a meaningful context which will help to develop oral reading fluency but also student self-

efficacy and interest in reading. While there has been relatively little research on fluency

development for typically developing students in the middle grades who do not evince academic or
CoffinDEDU7001-8 4

behavioral disabilities but nevertheless struggle to read proficiently, there remains a wealth of

information regarding interventions for primary grade students which may be modified to serve the

needs of older students. In order to improve the reading performance and, thus, the overall academic

achievement of struggling middle grades readers, it is imperative that teachers develop a new

paradigm for reading instruction for middle grades readers targeting those aspects of fluency

development which perpetuate reading difficulties in those student populations.

Socioeconomic Factors Influencing Oral Reading Disfluency

Oral reading fluency refers to the ability of a reader to read aloud without making errors in

decoding, at an appropriate pace, and with meaningful phrasing and intonation. These three aspects

are referred to as accuracy, automaticity, and prosody, respectively, and a reader must develop all

three aspects or fluency deficiencies will be apparent in his or her reading, including frustration

with reading and a failure to comprehend (Paige & Magpuri-Lavell, 2014). Fluency, then, is a

mediating factor between phonics and reading comprehension and an important precursor to overall

reading proficiency.

Disfluent reading is marked by inappropriate pauses and breaks in oral reading while readers

attempt to decode text on the fly, frequent errors in word decoding, and either flat affect while

reading aloud or the use of inappropriate tone (e.g., reading a sad or serious text in an upbeat

or happy tone). Extensive research has shown that readers who fail to comprehend while reading

also demonstrate reading disfluency (Hilsmier, Wehby, & Falk, 2016).

Oral reading disfluency is not solely a problem for students with academic and behavioral

disabilities. Research indicates parents of higher socioeconomic status engage in greater amounts of

child-directed speech than those of lower socioeconomic status and use speech to elicit conversation

with child rather than to direct behavior (Hoff, 2003). Because of this lack of natural language

development at home, many students of lower socioeconomic status enter into formal schooling
CoffinDEDU7001-8 5

with deficits in vocabulary size and less developed language skills, such as phonological awareness,

than their higher socioeconomic status peers (Basit, Hughes, Iqbal, & Cooper, 2015). These deficits

have been shown to persist or even increase as students progress through school, likely due to lack

of exposure to print in the home and diminished intrinsic motivation to read (Parker, Zaslofsky,

Burns, Kanive, Hodgson, Scholin, & Klingbeil, 2015). As phonological awareness is a prerequisite

for oral reading fluency, these deficits often manifest in disfluent oral reading.

By the time these students reach the middle grades however, years of oral reading disfluency

and concomitant reading frustration and avoidance frequently develop into disaffection from

reading, which in turn leads to overall diminished academic achievement, as students in the middle

grades are expected to be reading to learn rather than learning to read. The question remains,

however, as to why oral reading fluency affects reading comprehension. One theoretical framework

which helps to explain this relationship is cognitive load theory.

Cognitive Load Theory and Reading Performance

Cognitive load theory attempts to explain what happens in the mind of the learner during a

reading event. In any given event, a learner must apprehend, organize, and incorporate information

from the text into their schemas. These processes take place in working memory (Eitel, Kuhl,

Scheiter, & Gerjets, 2014). Working memory is a finite resource and thus the amount of information

that can be retained in working memory during a reading event is limited. If the constraints of

working memory are exceeded by the demands of the text with which a reader is working, the

efficiency of a readers schema may be reduced, inhibiting transfer of information, and some of the

information gained from that text will be lost (Cho, Altarriba, & Popiel, 2015; Sala & Gobet, 2017).

A good analogy for this effect is juggling: tossing and catching one ball is relatively easy, even for a

novice, but as additional balls are added, the task becomes progressively difficult, and the

likelihood grows that something is going to be dropped. When one considers the reading event in
CoffinDEDU7001-8 6

light of this analogy, what is being juggled, and what is being dropped? All too often, disfluent

readers who are able to puzzle through decoding text do so at the cost of their understanding of the

text.

Reading isnt a single event but a process made up of multiple cognitive tasks. Readers must

turn their attention as they read from decoding to considering the relationship between words in a

sentence to considering the relationship of sentences within a paragraph to the relationship of

paragraph to the text as a whole. It is only when students consider the meaning of words in a unified

context, rather than in isolation, that they are able to generate meaning and understand the

information being presented in that text.

As readers become more experienced and more fluent, cognitive resources are freed in

working memory which permit the reader to better attend to relationships between words in a

sentence and sentences in a paragraph, helping them to make meaning of the text and incorporate

that information into their schemas, improving not only comprehension but recall as well (Mikk,

2008). There is a fluency-comprehension feedback loop as well, as improved comprehension

supports improved prosody and phrasing, which are important aspects of reading fluency.

Accuracy

The first dimension of fluency is accuracy, which refers to the ability of a reader to decode

text without error. Accuracy is an important aspect of oral reading fluency and is the first emphasis

in fluency development instruction because phonetic decoding at a rate of less than 90% is

considered to be frustration level and may result in an inability of a reader to make sense of the text

to be read (Parker, Zaslofsky, Burns, Kanive, Hodgson, Scholin, & Klingbeil, 2015).

Accuracy in decoding depends on a strong basis in both phonemic awareness and phonics

(Vaessen & Blomert, 2010). Phonemic awareness is a pre-literacy skill which has to do with an

emergent readers ability to discern sounds (phonemes) within a word. Readers who are
CoffinDEDU7001-8 7

phonologically aware know that words are made up of many constituent sounds and can create new

words by identifying and manipulating those sounds (e.g., bat to cat to hat). Phonemic awareness is

developed in large part through song and rhyme (Vaessen & Blomert, 2010).

Phonics develops upon the basis of phonemic awareness. Phonics is an early literacy skill

which has to do with developing phoneme to grapheme, or sound to text, correspondences (e.g.,

phonemic awareness is knowing that the word bat is made of the /b/ /a/ /t/ phonemes, while

phonics is knowing that the /b/ phoneme is represented by the letter b, and so on). As students

progress through their early reading education, they learn increasingly complex sound combinations

through both drill and authentic reading (Vaessen & Blomert, 2010).

While decoding, or reading text, and encoding, writing text, are related to each other

cognitively in that each draws upon ones phonemic awareness and recognition of graphemes, they

cannot be said to mere reversals of each other. While some research has suggested that decoding

ability is predictive of spelling and writing ability is predictive of reading comprehension, other

studies have shown that the predictive effect of reading or writing skills is only moderate during

early literacy, and diminishing further as readers mature and tackle more orthographically complex

text (Ahmed, Wagner, & Lopez, 2014). Furthermore, studies of oral reading fluency in languages

other than English have indicated slight or no correlation between decoding ability and reading

comprehension; this suggests that the importance of decoding to overall reading performance is

relative to the orthographic complexity of the language in which the reading occurs (Veenendaal,

Groen, & Verhoeven, 2014).

For our purposes, though, we can say that without accurate decoding of text, reading cannot

occur. It is not enough, however, for students to be able to decode accurately if they are to read

successfully. They must also be able to do so in a timely fashion.

Automaticity
CoffinDEDU7001-8 8

The ability of a reader to access a whole word or word part from their memory in order to

read without pausing to struggle with decoding is automaticity, an aspect of fluency which develops

upon readers proficiency with phonics decoding (Paige & Magpuri-Lavell, 2014). In early readers,

decoding depends strongly on phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge, but with repeated

exposure to print, readers gradually build up an internal inventory of words of increasing

orthographical complexity; this inventory of sight words, which do not need to be decoded

phoneme by phoneme, but are recognized as a whole, enables readers to read more quickly without

sacrificing accuracy (Vaessen & Blomert, 2010). Research suggests that by the end of the 6th grade,

the role of phonetic decoding in reading has declined, and by high school, that effect disappears

altogether (van Steensel, Oostdam, van Gelderen, van Schooten, 2014). This would suggest that

following primary school, most readers either have become fluent or have developed compensatory

skills to make up for a lack of fluency. It must be remembered however, that while decoding

appears to be more important in early literacy than in later stages, students who have delays or

deficits in literacy learning (like the aforementioned students of lower socioeconomic status) may

still be in those early literacy stages later in their school career than is typical, and so decoding may

still have a place in a middle grades reading curriculum for these students.

Decoding with automaticity reduces the cognitive load placed upon the reader while reading

because working memory is not being used to decode text. The cognitive resources which would

have been exhausted decoding are now free to attend to relationships between words in a sentence

rather than within the word itself, enabling meaning-making (Mikk, 2008).

This, more so than any other aspect of fluency, helps to explain why fluency development is such an

important precursor to reading comprehension and overall reading performance.

This is not to suggest, however, that cognitive load in and of itself is a bad thing, or that

speed in decoding is necessarily an unvarnished good. In fact, research has suggested that there is a
CoffinDEDU7001-8 9

disfluency effect in that text which is perceived by a reader to be harder to understand may serve as

a cue to attend to the text deliberately and analytically; this germane cognitive load (GCL) may

serve as a desirable difficulty which improves recall and comprehension (Eitel, Kuhl, Scheiter, &

Gerjets, 2014). As such, automaticity in decoding should be viewed in the whole context of the

reading event and its purpose. A narrative text read for pleasure and an expository text read for

academic purposes, even when of comparable length and complexity, must necessarily be read

differently, with varying degree of attention to detail.

Prosody

The third and final facet of fluency is prosody, the ability of a reader to read aloud with

meaningful phrasing and intonation (Paige & Magpuri-Lavell, 2014). Reading that is not prosodic

sounds monotone or choppy, which makes text hard to follow and understand; reading text aloud in

a way that approximates natural speech, conversely, aids in comprehension (Rasinski, Rupley, &

Nichols, 2008).

Reading prosody conveys to a listener not only information from within the text but

circumstantial information as well through the use of pitch, stress, tone, and word boundaries

(Veenendaal, Groen, & Verhoeven, 2014). An example of the influence of pitch would be a rising

inflection at the ending of a sentence indicating an interrogative, while the placement of stress on a

particular word in a sentence communicates the especial importance of that word to an overall

message. Tone can be used to convey attitude, as in sarcasm or irony, while the use of word

boundaries, such as those following a list within a sentence, help to communicate breaks between

word units in a sentence and is correlated with phrasing and word chunking reading skills

(Veenendaal, Groen, & Verhoeven, 2014).

Research supports the idea of a bidirectional relationship between reading prosody and

comprehension. Reading prosody assists readers in assigning syntactic roles to words within
CoffinDEDU7001-8 10

sentences and segmenting sentences into meaningful phrases; these phrases may be easier to recall

and comprehend than full sentences due to decreased cognitive load (Veenendaal, Groen, &

Verhoeven, 2016). Conversely, prosody can serve as a reflection of a readers comprehension of a

text. A readers intuition of how a piece of text should be read and the assignment of circumstantial

information to that text through pitch, tone, stress, and word boundaries can only be derived from

an understanding of the meaning the author has encoded in the text (Veenendaal, Groen, &

Verhoeven, 2016). Thus, improved reading prosody leads to improved comprehension, which in

turn informs the manner in which a reader performs the oral reading of a text (Rasinski, Rupley,

& Nichols, 2008).

Assessment of Oral Reading Fluency

Accuracy and automaticity of text are generally assessed by means of words correct per

minute (WCPM); curriculum-based measurement (CBM) data collection can be used to measure the

effect of fluency development interventions on reader accuracy and speed (Ardoin, Christ, Morena,

Cormier, & Klingbeil, 2011).

Measures of reading speed are frequently used not just to assess the efficacy of reading

fluency interventions, but also to measure overall reading performance and screen students for

potential reading deficiencies and/or disabilities. However, studies indicating only slight correlation

between reading speed and reading comprehension suggest that these measures are not valid as

indicators of reading performance for more experienced readers (Wallot, OBrien, Haussmann,

Kloos, & Lyby, 2014). For example, a student who reads a given text slowly might be doing so

because of careful rereading and reflection during the reading event, which is indicative of reading
CoffinDEDU7001-8 11

skill and supportive of reading comprehension, while a student reading the same text quickly might

be doing so without attending to important details, leading to impaired comprehension.

Furthermore, there is research suggesting, as mentioned previously, that excessive reading speed

engendered by a focus on automaticity training might impair reading comprehension.

This has spurred debate among teachers and researchers as to whether replacing reading

speed with other measures of performance might more accurately predict reading performance on

standardized assessments (Baker, Biancarosa, Park, Bousselot, Smith, Baker, Kameenui, Alonzo, &

Tindal, 2015). One potential solution is to measure not just speed of reading but speed within the

context of relative text complexity, but additional research is needed to examine how complexity at

the level of word, sentence, and text affect reading speed and to disambiguate reading speed as a

reading process measure and reading speed as a reading outcome measure (Wallot, OBrien,

Haussmann, Kloos, & Lyby, 2014).

Another approach is to examine other aspects of fluency. Reading prosody, in particular, is a

valuable measure for teachers because research has shown that reading prosody explained variance

in reading comprehension scores, even when decoding efficiency and oral language comprehension

skills were controlled for (Veenendaal, Groen, & Verhoeven, 2015). Reading prosody of reading can

be measured using a multidimensional rubric like Rasinskis which assesses pacing, tone, volume,

and phrasing; these scores can also be gathered and analyzed using CBM (cited in Meisinger,

Bloom, & Hynd, 2008).

Fluency Development Interventions

When diagnostic measures and anecdotal observations have indicated that a reader has an

oral reading fluency deficiency, there are a number of interventions which can be employed to

improve oral reading fluency which have been shown through research to be effective for early

readers in the primary grades. The aforementioned decreased effect of automaticity of decoding for
CoffinDEDU7001-8 12

more experienced readers would suggest that a traditional phonics drill routine would not be

profitable for students, in addition to doing nothing to increase student motivation to read.

Thankfully, there are a number of high-interest and authentic fluency intervention techniques which

can be adapted for use in the middle grades reading classroom (Leko, 2015).

Repeated reading is an intervention in which readers practice with a piece of text over an

extended period of time. This intervention may incorporate a corrective feedback component as

well where a teacher provides readers with immediate error correction of mispronounced words in

order to improve word recognition and decoding (Sukhram & Monda-Amaya, 2017). Repeated

reading has been shown to be effective in significantly improving reader speed, accuracy of

decoding, and comprehension in both narrative and expository texts; these gains have also been

shown to transfer from a practice text to overall reading performance (Paige & Magpuri-Lavell,

2014).

Readers theater is an instructional technique in which readers perform a script by reading

aloud. Readers theater does not require props, costumes, or sets, and can easily be implemented

within the classroom space with minimal preparation beforehand. Readers theater helps to develops

all three dimensions of fluency by giving repeated reading a meaningful context through rehearsal

of a script, and inviting readers to develop prosody by placing themselves in the emotional space

of characters and conveying circumstantial information through the use of tone, pitch, and stress.

(Young & Nageldinger, 2014). Readers theater is especially effective as an intervention as it is a

high-interest activity for students; the performance aspect of the intervention harnesses student

desire to entertain their peers, and scripts for performance can be derived from books, movies, and

television shows that students enjoy. Teachers can make the experience even more memorable and

meaningful by inviting parents, peers, and other educators to serve as an audience; the presence of
CoffinDEDU7001-8 13

an audience serves as a cue to students to attend more carefully to their performance (Noltemeyer,

Joseph, & Watson, 2014).

Poetry recitation, like readers theater, leverages the aspects of rehearsal and performance to

provide a high-interest and meaningful context for repeated reading and the use of vocal inflection

to communicate meaning. Like drama, poetry is literature which is meant to be read aloud for the

appreciation of an audience. One aspect of this intervention that serves struggling readers well is

that it provides them with a safe place to practice short texts which emphasize communication of

meaning rather than grammatical structure (Wilfong, 2015). This activity can be modified to give

students an opportunity to rehearse and deliver speeches, whether classic texts retrieved from the

Internet, or students own compositions (Young & Nageldinger, 2014).

Conclusion

In summary, oral reading disfluency is a serious academic impediment which can give rise

to overall diminished reading performance. A lack of reading proficiency in the middle grades can

have serious consequences for students both within the language arts classroom and in other content

classes which require proficient reading, up to and including failure to graduate.

In spite of the prevailing paradigm for middle grades language arts education which

presumes the acquisition of developmentally appropriate oral reading fluency in the elementary

grades, teachers of middle grades language arts, and especially those serving populations of lower

socioeconomic status and English language learner students, should begin to more widely

incorporate fluency development instruction into the regular language arts classroom. A middle

grades language arts curriculum which delivers vocabulary and comprehension instruction alone is

not sufficient to enable disfluent readers to learn to read proficiently at grade level.

The means to incorporate fluency development into the regular language arts classroom

exists already. A number of fruitful interventions for developing fluency exist, such as repeated
CoffinDEDU7001-8 14

reading with corrective feedback, readers theater, and poetry performance, which have the promise

of being adapted to serve middle grade students as well as they do elementary developing readers.

It is imperative that middle grades language arts and reading teachers educate themselves on

the effects of disfluency and fluency development instruction in order to give struggling readers

their best chance for reading proficiency before frustration and disaffection with reading reach

critical levels in the later middle and secondary grades. In particular, teachers of middle grades

language arts should become proficient with the use of diagnostic assessments to identify disfluent

readers in a timely fashion so that interventions can be delivered speedily.

Moving forward, additional research is needed on the degree to which each aspect of oral

reading fluency explains variance in reading comprehension, the effect of text complexity at

multiple levels (e.g. word, sentence, and whole text) on oral reading speed and comprehension, the

role of phonetic decoding and reading speed in the middle grades for typically developing students,

and the efficacy of interventions designed for emergent and early readers which have been modified

for use with middle grades readers. Armed with this knowledge, teachers can help to ensure that

students who have missed out on the help they needed in the elementary grades can get it before it

is too late.
CoffinDEDU7001-8 15

References

Ahmed, Y., Wagner, R.K., & Lopez, D. (2014). Developmental relations between reading and
writing at the word, sentence, and text levels: A latent change score analysis. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 106(2), 419-434

Archer, A.L., Gleason, M.M., & Vachon, V.L. (2003). Decoding and fluency: Foundation skills for
struggling readers. Learning Disability Quarterly, 26, 89-101.

Ardoin, S.P., Christ, T., Morena, L.S., Cormier, D.C., & Klingbeil, D.A. (2013). A systematic
review and summarization of the recommendations and research surrounding curriculum-based
measurement of oral reading fluency (CBM-R) decision rules. Journal of School Psychology,
51(1), 1-18.

Baker, D.L., Biancarosa, G., Park, B.J., Bousselot, T., Smith, J., Baker, S.K., Kameenui, E.J.,
Alonzo, J., & Tindal, G. (2015). Validity of CBM measures of oral reading fluency and reading
comprehension on high-stakes reading assessments in grades 7 and 8. Reading & Writing 28,
57-104.

Basit, T.N., Hughes, A., Iqbal, Z., & Cooper, J. (2015). The influence of socio-economic status and
ethnicity on speech and language development. International Journal of Early Years Education,
23(1), 115-133.

Cho, K.W., Altarriba, J., & Popiel, M. (2015). Mental juggling: When does multitasking impair
reading comprehension? The Journal of General Psychology, 142(2), 90-105.

Eitel, A., Kuhl, T., Scheiter, K., & Gerjets, P. (2014). Disfluency meets cognitive load in multimedia
learning: Does harder-to-read mean better-to-understand? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28,
488-501.

Hilsmier, A.S., Wehby, J.H., Falk, K.B. (2016). Reading fluency interventions for middle school
students with academic and behavioral disabilities. Reading Improvement, 53(2), 53-64.

Hoff, E. (2003). The specificity of environmental influence: Socioeconomic status affects early
vocabulary development via maternal speech. Child Development, 74(5), 1368-1378.

Leko, M. M. (2015). To adapt or not to adapt: Navigating an implementation conundrum. Teaching

Exceptional Children, 48(2), 80-85.
CoffinDEDU7001-8 16

Meisinger, E.B., Bloom, J.S., & Hynd, G.W. (2008). Reading fluency: implication for the
assessment of children with reading disabilities. Annals of Dyslexia, 60(1), 1-17.

Mikk, J. (2008). Sentence length for revealing the cognitive load reversal effect in text
comprehension. Educational Studies, 34(2), 119-127.

Noltemeyer, A., Joseph, L.M., & Watson, M. (2014). Improving reading prosody and oral retell
fluency: A comparison of three intervention approaches. Reading Improvement, 51(2), 221-232.

Paige, D.D., & Magpuri-Lavell, T. (2014). Reading fluency in the middle and secondary grades.
International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 7(1), 83-96.

Parker, D.C., Zaslofsky, A.F., Burns, M.K., Kanive, R., Hodgson, J., Scholin, S.E., & Klingbeil, D.
A. (2015). A brief report on the diagnostic accuracy of oral reading fluency and reading
inventory levels for reading failure risk among second- and third-grade students. Reading &
Writing Quarterly, 31(1), 55-67.

Rasinski, T., Rupley, W.H., & Nichols, W.D. (2008). Synergistic phonics and fluency instruction:
The magic of rhyming poetry! New England Reading Association Journal, 44(1), 9-14.

Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2017). Working memory training in typically developing children: A meta-
analysis of the available evidence. Developmental Psychology, 53(4), 671-685.

Sukhram, D., & Monda-Amaya, L.E. (2017). The effects of oral repeated reading with and without
corrective feedback on middle school struggling readers. British Journal of Special Education,
44(1), 95-111.

Vaessen, A., & Blomert, L. (2010). Long-term cognitive dynamics of fluent reading development.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 105, 213-231.

Veenendaal, N.J., Groen, M.A., & Verhoeven, L. (2014). The role of speech prosody and text
reading prosody in childrens reading comprehension. The British Journal of Educational
Psychology, 84(4), 521-536.

Veenendaal, N.J., Groen, M.A., & Verhoeven, L. (2015). What oral text reading fluency can
revealed about reading comprehension. Journal of Research in Reading, 38(3), 213-225.

Veenendaal, N.J., Groen, M.A., & Verhoeven, L. (2016). Bidirectional relations between text
reading prosody and reading comprehension in the upper primary school grades: A longitudinal
perspective. Scientific Studies of Reading, 20(3), 189-202.

Wallot, S., OBrien, B.A., Haussmann, A., Kloos, H., & Lyby, M.S. (2014). The role of reading time
complexity and reading speed in text comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(6), 1745-1765.

Wilfong, L.G. (2015). Using poetry to improve fluency, comprehension, word recognition, and
attitude toward reading in struggling English language learners. New England Reading
Association Journal, 51 (1), 41-49.
CoffinDEDU7001-8 17

Young, C., & Nageldinger, J. (2014). Considering the context and texts for fluency: Performance,
readers theater, and poetry. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 7(1), 47-
56.