Importance Of Comprehension And Fluency

Comprehension and Fluency

According to Irwin (as cited in Tompkins, 2015), comprehension is “a reader’s process of using prior experiences and the author’s text to construct meaning that’s useful to that reader for a specific purpose” (p. 215). “Comprehension is a creative, multifaceted process in which children engage with and think about the text” (Tompkins, 2015, p. 214). Readers use four levels of thinking literal, inferential, critical, and evaluative as they comprehend. The lowest level is literal comprehension. At this level readers identify the big ideas, sequence details, notice similarities as well as differences, and identify explicitly stated reasons. The highest level is evaluative and at this level readers integrate their own knowledge with the information presented in the text.

Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with expression (“Fluency”, 2013, para. 1). Fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. Fluent readers read aloud effortlessly and with expression. Readers who have not yet

As mentioned above fluent readers can comprehend a text because they automatically recognize words. As we know, fluent readers can read smoothly, with intonation and expression, and at the same speed one would use when talking. “Being a fluent reader allows one to focus on the content in the reading, rather than focusing on the decoding of each individual word” (Cotter, 2012, p. 5). As children become fluent readers, they can interact with text on a higher level. When speaking of reading fluency, there are three components that develop children’s fluency and comprehension, automaticity, and prosody. Accuracy allows students to read words correctly. Automaticity allow readers to recognize words automatically, without having to decode them. Lastly, prosody allows readers to use expression while