The effects of oral, silent, and listening repetitive reading on the fluency and comprehension of learning-disabled students

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of oral, silent, and listening repetitive reading of expository text on the fluency and comprehension of learning disabled students at the intermediate level. The effects of these methods were assessed on two measures of fluency (words per minute and errors per minute) and two measures of comprehension (comprehension questions and passage retell).;Sixty subjects were ranked on reading achievement test score, blocked into groups of three, and randomly assigned to treatment groups. One 498 word expository text passage was divided into two parts. Subjects in the oral repeated reading condition read the first 242 words of that passage orally, twice, before reading it a third time orally. In silent repeated reading, subjects read the passage twice, silently, before reading it orally a third time. In the listening repeated reading condition, subjects listened to the passage twice before reading it aloud. Comprehension measures were then administered followed by the oral reading of passage two to assess within passage transfer. Comprehension measures were again administered.;Results of a 3 (group) x 2 (passage) MANOVA revealed no differences between the three treatments on measures of fluency and comprehension. In the analysis of within passage transfer on each of the dependent measures, repeated measures ANOVAs revealed significant decreases in rate and accuracy from passage one to passage two. A significant increase was found in passage recall. Analysis of oral repeated readings of passage one revealed a significant increase in reading rate from the first to the third reading. Implications of this study indicate that the type of repeated practice is inconsequential, but overall, repeated readings of expository text can significantly increase reading performance of learning disabled students.