THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORAL READING FLUENCY AND OTHER READING BEHAVIORS AMONG FIRST GRADE CHILDREN

The study was undertaken to investigate the phenomenon of oral reading fluency among children in the beginning stages of reading instruction. Oral reading fluency was defined as the ability to read text with appropriate intonation patterns: pausing at punctuation, raising or lowering pitch at terminal juncture to indicate a statement or question, stressing contrastive elements, and reading a story with a minimal number of pauses. These four measures of fluency, plus a composite of the first three known as "Oral Reading Fluency," were correlated with measures of six other reading abilities and activities to see to what extent fluency skills and reading behaviors were related. The six independent variables were word recognition ability, silent reading comprehension, peer evaluation as a good reader, classroom practice time, amount of time the parent spends reading to the child, and amount of time the child spends reading orally at home.; The subjects were 106 first grade children from a midwestern, upper-middle socio-economic level suburban community. The children came from nine classrooms in three schools, and were those recommended by teachers as children who could read at Primer level or above. The measuring instruments used included a researcher-designed Oral Reading Fluency Test, the Slosson Oral Reading Test for word recognition, the Cooperative Primary Reading Test to assess comprehension, a student questionnaire for peer status rating, a classroom oral reading time questionnaire, and a parent questionnaire to gather data on the home variables.; Responses to the Oral Reading Fluency Test were scored twice, once by a group of four judges and once by the author, yielding two sets of data. Pearson product moment correlation coefficients were calculated for the five fluency measures with each of the six independent variables, and multiple regression equations were developed to assess the contribution of the independent variables to the oral fluency scores.; The major findings were that first grade subjects reading at least at Primer level used appropriate intonation 72% of the time in their oral reading of Primer level text, and were more likely to apply appropriate pause and pitch than to employ contrastive stress. Use of appropriate intonation was not highly correlated with word recognition or comprehension, but moderate negative correlations were found between total number of pauses and these two reading subskills. Total pause was also negatively related to peer status as a "good reader." Fluent oral reading had a low negative or negligible relationship with classroom practice time, and a non-significant relationship with home practice time. Level of fluency was not related to age of child when parent first began reading to the child, nor was use of appropriate intonation related to amount of time the parent spent reading to the child. The six independent variables, functioning jointly, accounted for only a small percentage of the variance in oral reading fluency scores. With increased scoring reliability, a measurement of oral reading fluency may have a useful place in the field of reading research.