1

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF READING FLUENCY STRATEGIES IN PRIMARY

SCHOOLERS

Erika Tatiana Soto Tabares

1088018879

UNIVERSIDAD TECNOLGICA DE PEREIRA

FACULTAD DE BELLAS ARTES Y HUMANIDADES
LICENCIATURA EN LENGUA INGLESA
2015

Table of Contents
Contents

Page

Justification 3
Objectives5
Conceptual Framework.. 6
Reading....6
Reading Comprehension.....8
Reading Fluency......9
Reading Fluency Strategies.......11
Literature Review......12
Methodology.14

References.16

Justification
Teaching children the pleasure of reading is not that easy nowadays since many of
them do not have the support to do it and that is one of reasons why the improvement of
education in a country is an important fact that goes all around the world. Countries invest
in education not only for people to be professionals in a field, but also to succeed in other
languages. According to the OCDE (2014), those countries that invest the more in
education are the ones that show the better results in the international tests, and there are
countries that have tried to imitate the others in order to succeed, but that has not worked
for them since each country is different.
One of the major problems of education in Colombia lies in the fact that the
government does not spend the required money in education according to the report shown
by the last meeting of the OCDE and that is one of the factors why students are not
motivated to learn. What is more, according to the statistics presented by the CERLALC
(2012), our country is the one that reads the less in Latin America since while an argentine
reads 5.4 books per year, a Colombian reads only 2.2 and this is also a cause of the low
results gotten in the PISA test from 2012, and one of the categories that had the worst
results was reading comprehension. All these factors happen on the grounds that the
government invests little in resources for education then they are not motivated to learn.
Londoo and Mesa (2014) argued that we need to prepare well our future professionals so
they can compete with the globalized world and as Bonilla (2012) stated in her research
paper, there are some means that are becoming necessary and those means are the new
technologies which are the tools with which teachers need to work nowadays in order to
innovate so they engage students to the classes.
However, the education is not only about teaching mathematics or physics; it is also
about teaching other languages in order for the students to defend from this new world.
Then, in our country there are some programs that aim to have a bilingual population as it is
the case of Risaralda where the government designed a program called Risaralda Bilinge
2032 and its a public referent for the bilingualism of the region. And as we have had
problems with the reading comprehension in our first language, it does not matter how hard
the government works to have programs for education in the English language, if the

reading comprehension is not worked in students, they will continue failing. Nevertheless,
reading comprehension is affected by something that many teachers are not aware of and it
is fluency, as Collins and Pressley (2002) stated, a dysfluent reader does many cognitive
efforts primarily trying to decode words and trying to read with good pronunciation, and
this leaves little memory for the part of comprehension. In an article called Reading
Comprehension and Fluency published in the web page Reading Instruction Resources
(n.d.), they claimed that a non-fluent reader is the one that takes too much time decoding
words and by the time he or she finishes the sentence, the meaning of the words have been
forgotten; on the other hand, a fluent reader is able to read smoothly without cutting out the
sentences, and this, enables the brain to comprehend the text.
Considering what has been mentioned above, the intention of this project is to report
how students react to the implementation of different reading fluency strategies in order to
promote reading and at the same time, fluency; and to complement the main idea, the use of
simple reading comprehension strategies to check if students really understand the texts that
they will read. This project is intended to take place in a public school of Pereira and the
main participants will be primary students, especially between third and fifth grade.
Students can be benefited with this project since many authors as Ford (2012), have
argued that when people read whether it is in their native tongue or in a foreign language,
they tend to increase their repertoire and, as a consequence, they will speak more fluently
since they already have the words to use; besides, they have said that because of the
increasing of the repertoire, people will also tend to write better and in this way, they will
master language easier. All this will be explained in the following chapter which provides a
wider description of the concepts previously used to describe the purpose of this project.

Objectives

Teaching Objectives
General

To select the appropriate materials that really help primary-state school students
development of the reading fluency skill.

Specifics

To provide primary-state school students with a variety of reading fluency

strategies.
To identify primary-state school students problems with the use of the language.

Learning Objectives
General

To report primary-state school students reactions towards the implementation of the

different reading fluency strategies.

Specifics

To identify the strategies with which primary-state school students engage the most.
To assess primary-state school students comprehension after the implementation of
the reading fluency activities.

Conceptual Framework
In this conceptual framework can be found the four principal or key concepts in
which the project is going to be based on and which are reading, reading comprehension,
reading fluency and reading fluency strategies. These concepts are defined individually so
they can be more comprehensible and, in this way, it can be showed that each one is
different and has different characteristics, but when they work together, they can be great
and helpful in any learning process since, as said before, reading is very important when
learning a language, but it is also important to be fluent in order to make ourselves
understood and more accurate users of the language.
Reading fluency in the Colombian context is something that is rarely found
although nowadays there are some places in the country in which fluency is worked
throughout different strategies in order to help students master the language; according to
Cuervo and Dvila (2014), there are many different research and study groups in which
reading fluency has been a topic to work on, but it is still not very known in the whole
country. In the Colombian Journal of Applied Linguistics, Castellanos (2004) reported that
many of the students with which she tried the read aloud method had shown very good
results and they were also encouraged to read books.
To start defining the concepts, it would be good to mention that they are placed in
an order so the conceptual framework can be strong and well structured, and although they
have an order, they are all connected in order to make us understand that they all are very
important parts in the making of this project. Then, the first concept that will be defined is
reading since it is the base of the project and it is the concept which is surrounded by its
derivations.
Reading
It is not correct to say that reading is the most important skill a learner must
develop, but it is correct to say that reading is as important as the others and plays an
important role in language since, in the process of learning, it helps students to master other
parts of the language such as writing. Reading is a process of multiple facets in which are
involved word recognition, comprehension, fluency and motivation (Leipzig, 2001). In this

case, the focus will be on working with different strategies to master reading fluency in
children since by my own experience and based on many readings about psycholinguistics,
the better ages to develop a language skill is when we are just children, and it is also the age
in which the habit of reading can be better imparted. Prisilya (2014) stated that a way of
mastering better language is to read, and that is why those people who read the most are
usually the ones who speak and write better since they learn to be fluent and make their
language more understandable. Besides the development of the skills, reading is a very
complex process in which the reader needs to be active so the meaning of the text can be
gotten just as Mikulecky (2008) claims:
Reading is a conscious and unconscious thinking process. The reader applies
many strategies to reconstruct the meaning that the author is assumed to have intended.
The reader does this by comparing information in the text to his or her background
knowledge and prior experience. (p.1)
This leads us to know that reading is not as easy as one can get to think since it is
not only looking at some words and reading as it would be only a mechanic act in which the
reader sees unrelated phonemes and words with no sense (Grabe 1991); reading is
interacting with the text to create meaning out of it while the mental processes that occur in
the brain, work together at different levels of consciousness. Grabe (2008) stated once that
L2 learners first need to understand what has been learned in their L1 and the way they
learned it in order to understand how reading in L2 is since much of the strategies to learn
that second language are based on the strategies for the first language. But there are still
people who do not understand the meaning of reading and that is the moment when
teachers need to work harder to try to make learners understand the meaning of it and make
them know how important it is for a person to know how to read correctly as it can show
the level of literacy that each one has, and it also help people to have more capacity to
communicate. Nonetheless, people only tend to read because they need it for school or
college or even for work purposes, and therefore they do not associate it at all with
relaxation and enjoyment (London, 2013). In fact, it has been demonstrated that Colombia
is the south American country that reads the less and it is not due to the lack of instruction
since students are in their first grades at school, but maybe because teachers do not choose

the appropriate books for children to read at school, that they do not develop the taste for
reading.
To sum up this first concept, it is important to highlight that reading is an important
skill to develop as the others, and it is maybe one of the most complete way to approach
language in any context since it helps improving writing, and with this improving of
writing, speaking can be also improved, and reading, and it also helps to raise the rage of
vocabulary of the person, meaning that communication will be easier, but if students
develop this skill and they really comprehend what they read, they will have more
opportunities to master the other parts of the language.
Reading Comprehension
As said above, Reading is a very important skill since it helps mastering a language,
but it is also important to comprehend what is being read as if the person reads but does not
comprehend, then, the reading has no sense. In this way, I will start developing the concept
of reading comprehension which according to De Corte et al. (2001) is the ability that a
person has to read a text, understand its meaning, and to be capable to explain the ideas
gotten from it; in order for a reader to approach text, there needs to be prior knowledge and
experience, and also preconceptions about the use of language; then, a mental process in
which all those experiences and knowledge are connected occurs for the reader to draw
meaning from the text and to make sense of it. The National Reading Panel (NICHHD,
2000) defines reading comprehension as a cognitive process that integrates complex skills
and cannot be understood without examining the critical roles of vocabulary learning and
instruction on its development. (p.1)
The key point of reading comprehension according to Nagy (1988) is to have first
an instruction about vocabulary and to use the correct reading comprehension strategies that
learners are taught so they can understand better the text even if it is easy or not, but the
problem is that not all English teachers are prepared to teach that important, as equal as the
others, skill that helps learners improve their other skills. According to Trejos and Jaramillo

(2014), reading comprehension is to have a solid understanding of what is being read and
not only to understand the grammatical structure of the text as one needs to connect ideas in
order to get the meaning of the text.
Since reading has become a very important part of the language, people need to
learn reading strategies and learn to connect ideas and draw meanings out of text to catch
the authors ideas and to be able to talk or to write about it when they are asked to.
However, many people do not care for having good understanding of the texts as the
majority of the time they read because they have to, and in this way, they are not really
connecting the ideas and having mind open to the reading process. Caposey & Heider cited
by Blickenstaff, Hallquist & Kopel (2013) stated that:
Research shows there are several underlying causes for poor reading
comprehension. Among the reasons are the complex process of learning to read, the
type of instruction, method for decoding, prior knowledge, a diverse population, and
development of vocabulary(p.14)
If a learner is not willing to learn, then the affective filter will be high and it will not
be easy for the learner get to understand the texts, and if there is no good instruction and an
environment that can influence the learner to learn, then the results of the process of
making meaning out of text will not be positive as Daz and Laguado (2013) point out in
their research about reading comprehension in a public school in Colombia.
Fluency
Fluency has become an important part of the learning process of a language and it
has evolved throughout the years. Many people ask themselves how reading fluency affects
the other skills of language and the truth is that it has a big impact regarding on them, and
its relation with reading comprehension is very close as in order to achieve successful
fluency, the reader needs to understand what is being read. According to Young (2011) the
names have changed, the definition has transformed, and perception of its impact on the

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reading process has become more focused. All these changes have made fluency more
understandable for those who study how it can be implemented and which are the benefits
that it brings for those who have better fluency.
Reading fluency is the ability that people have to read words accurate, fluently and
with no noticeable mental effort (Grabe 2010), it is also a way of developing speaking and
writing skills since in order to be a fluent reader, one needs to master words and to learn
how to pronunciate correctly the words in the text. For that same reason, Pikulski and
Chard (2003); Blau (2000) argue that reading fluency involves rapid, efficient, accurate
word recognition that allows readers to read smoothly and easily with expression and
understanding. When a student is going to learn a new skill, there needs to be a lot of
repetition as in this way, students learn better and then, they will have the process totally
systematized.
There are some other aspects that compose this concept which are accuracy that
refers to the ability of working without making mistakes, automaticity which refers to the
ability of doing thing almost or completely automatic, prosodic knowledge that is about the
stress the rhythm and the intonation of speech, and syntactic knowledge that is about the
knowledge of words combining to form phrases; all these are important aspects of fluency
and they need to be taken into account at the moment of working on fluency.
Furthermore, in a more complete definition, Ford (2012) states that As students
practice English text accurately, automatically, and prosodically, they are gaining valuable
information about the sounds and cadences of spoken English, and they are also developing
vocabulary skills that can contribute to oral language fluency, as well as reading and
listening comprehension. This is a support for previous definitions that show the
importance of reading and reading fluency when learning a language. But this depends
much on the strategies used by the professor in order to develop fluency in the learners of a
language since first, they can motivate student to learn and, second, they can contribute to
the development of the English language due to the fact that they are getting more
vocabulary and better pronunciation.

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On the other hand, Gorsuch & Taguchi (2010) say that maybe teachers and learners
in the L2 or FL settings cannot be aware and really convinced of the important that reading
fluency has in reading comprehension and, in this way, the result could be that they will not
expend time in class or extra-class in those kinds of activities to improve fluency.
Finally, Fluency is a bridge that gets people to have better skills like pronunciation, and a
great variety of vocabulary as when learners read they recognize words and associate and
associate meanings.
Reading Fluency Strategies
As there exist many strategies to improve reading comprehension, there are also
different strategies to improve reading fluency. These strategies for improving reading
fluency were though for more than fluency as it should focus only in reading fast, but in
reading fluently at the time of drawing meaning out of text. Neumann, Ross, & Slaboch
cited by Blickenstaff, J., Hallquist, E., & Kopel, K. (2013) claimed that:
Increasing fluency is a key way of increasing a student's comprehension skills. Teachers
can use a variety of methods to increase reading fluency. These include choral reading, echo
reading, partner reading, reading along silently as oral reading is being modeled, using
poetry, and readers theatre. These methods can be used in either small groups during
reading, or as an intensive intervention implemented three times a week in 20 minute
intervals.

Another good strategy for improving fluency when reading and guarantying comprehension
is the guided reading which helps fluent students with lack of comprehension concentrate in
the meaning of the text, and so the student can finally be a complete fluent reader.
Although the focus of the class is about fluency in reading, teachers cannot focus only on
that skill of reading since it is important to develop all the skills together and that is why the
teacher needs to also incorporate reading comprehension strategies in the class, so it can be
checked if students are really getting meanings. As comprehension is an important skill in
all the stages of literacy development, Neuman, Ross & Slaboch (2004) argued that the

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more fluent a learner is, the more s/he is able to focus on meaning and to hold information
in the memory which is constantly working, and in this way, students can incorporate
background knowledge with what they are reading as reading accurate and with effective
speed allows the reader to focus mainly on the meaning of the words.
For all these reasons, there needs to be some instruction in order to achieve fluency,
and that fluency is gained by using the different reading fluency strategies that exist such as
the following ones which are relevant for this project.

Repeated Reading
Echo Reading
Readers Theatre
Model Fluent Reading: Read aloud

Methodology

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Context
This classroom Project will be carried out at a public primary school located in
Pereira. The implementation will involve the curriculum of the educational institution
guided by the standards of the Gua 22 which is a document that presents the basic
standards of competence for English language according to the Ministerio de Educacin
Nacional.
Participants
This classroom project will be carried out with two types of participants which are
primary students from a public school and a pre-service teacher who is in eighth semester
from a language teaching program at a public university in Pereira. The role of the preservice teacher is that of implementing what has been though for this project while the class
is being filmed in order to check students responses to the implementation and to make the
observations and reflections required. Also, this project will be developed in the classroom
2 hours per week which comes to be 20 hours in total for the semester and the same number
of sessions for the implementation.
Implementation
The classroom project described in this paper is intended to promote reading skills
through the implementation of different reading fluency strategies. According to Dole et al.
cited by The British Council (2006), novice readers acquire a set of hierarchically sub-skills
of reading towards comprehension ability; when students have developed the skills, we can
say that they are experts on understanding what they read. Furthermore, Van Duzer, cited
by The British Council (2006), claimed that good readers expect to understand what they
are reading. Therefore, texts should contain words and grammatical structures familiar to
the learners(p.1), and they should also be in accordance with their sex, age range, interests
and background culture . Taking this into account, it has been decided that in order to elicit
students reading fluency, there will be developed three steps proposed by The British
Council (2006).

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Before Reading: One of the purposes of before reading is to elicit students prior
knowledge or to socialize new vocabulary. Lebauer, cited by The British Council
stated that pre-reading activities can lighten students cognitive burden while
reading because prior discussions will have been incorporated. Also, the before
reading phase is used to engage and get the attention of students by providing them
with means to predict the content of the text, and this phase is critical for
comprehension to happen (The British Council, 2006).

During Reading: In this stage, students integrate the knowledge and information
that they have brought to the text with the new or unknown knowledge or
information. Ur (1996), Vaezi (2001) and Fitzgerald (1995) use different strategies
for the during reading phase such as making predictions, integrating prior
knowledge, re-reading, pausing, paraphrasing, monitoring, among others. In
addition, this is the phase in which one of the reading fluency strategies will be
implemented.

After Reading: Here, it is necessary to say that the after reading phase depends on
the purpose of reading and the type of information selected. Barnett cited by The
British Council, stated that post-reading exercises first check students
comprehension and the lead students to a deeper analysis of the text. Then, The
British Council proposes some activities that can be made in this phase and which
are

discussing the text, summarizing, making questions, answering questions,

filling in forms and charts, writing reading logs and role-playing.

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