Myth #3: A fluency problem is a fluency problem and a comprehension problem is a comprehension problem

Phonics Myth Busters Series

Myth #3: A fluency problem is a fluency problem and a comprehension problem is a comprehension problem

Imagine this: You are listening to a child read and you notice that they are reading slowly and robotically, word by word. You write down in your notes: needs fluency. You say to them “Today I want to teach you that readers read in phrases, scooping up their words in three to four word chunks.” Then you model what you mean, reading a sentence in the book and ask the student to repeat it the way you did. They might be able to repeat the sentence after you read it fluently, but then on the next line they go back to reading word by word. Or maybe it helps a bit today.

We have done many conferences like this one, and now we know more. We now understand that slow word by word reading is sometimes the sign of a phonics gap NOT a fluency issue. Not having a strong enough phonics base to rely on makes it hard for students to decode new words and then store them in their long term memory, which means that they can read less words with automaticity. This takes us to Myth #3: A fluency problem is a fluency problem and a comprehension problem is a comprehension problem. 

Fluency expert Tim Rasinski writes about this. Check out his article Why Fluency Should be Hot. In the section “Automaticity- The Link to Word Recognition” he says: 

“If they [readers] have to use too much of that cognitive energy to decode, then they have little remaining for the more important task in reading- comprehension. These students are marked by their slow, laborious, and staccato reading of texts. - These are the same readers who would easily understand the text if it were read to them- when someone else takes on the task of decoding words, they can easily deploy their cognitive resources to make meaning. “

Here, Rasinski touches on the comprehension issue as well. Sometimes, a child who even reads with relative fluency and presents with comprehension challenges actually has an underlying decoding need. What’s happening is that as they read, they’re decoding, leaving little space for them to think about and understand the text. In Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties, David Kilpatrick cites Perfetti (1985) and Nation (2005) when he writes, 

“Any working memory effort devoted to reading unfamiliar words compromises the amount of working memory available for comprehension.”

In practice, this means that if a child is having trouble reading with fluency or having trouble with comprehension, we conduct phonic decoding assessment (unless we have this data already) to see if there is a phonics need.

If you don’t already have assessments like these, we love this list of free assessments, compiled by Duke, Lindsey, and Brown. From the Phonics and Word Reading Out of Context section, we recommend the Informal Decoding Inventory. 

Some kids are great at compensating for phonics weaknesses, which means they rely on meaning to figure out words as they read. They can read second or third grade chapter books with relative accuracy. However, these students may read with little fluency (it doesn’t sound smooth) or make mistakes on multisyllabic words. They may read the beginning of multisyllabic words correctly, then make a guess based on a word they know for the end of the word. It seems that they need more practice reading multisyllabic words (sometimes this is the case), but it’s also possible that they are missing earlier phonics concepts like CVC or CVCe. We’re reminded by Nell Duke and Linda Farell that multisyllabic words are often made up of nonsense CVC words. Therefore, if students can’t decode nonsense CVC words they will have a really hard time decoding multisyllabic words. 

To sum up: if you notice that a kid is reading slowly, word by word, or struggling with comprehension, try a phonic decoding assessment just to see if there’s an area of phonics that they need more instruction around.

Thanks, thanks, thanks for learning with us. Reach out to let us know how we can help you on your journey!

Lizzie & Marie