"Like the Whole Class Has Reading Problems": A Study of Oral Reading Fluency Activities in a High Intervention Setting.

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this empirical study which used a mixed-method approach, researchers sought to understand how participation in dramatic oral reading interventions affects both reading fluency and comprehension. The study also investigated how that participation is ultimately limited or promoted by social context of high schools. Qualitative data are supported by significant quantitative results to identify many factors at play when adolescents who were identified as struggling with literacy performed oral readings in front of their peers. What goes through minds of adolescents when they are asked to read aloud in secondary school settings? What pressures do they feel from their peers and teachers? Many students in American high schools are competent oral readers, but most teachers have experienced awkward moments as redfaced, sweating students stutter and stammer their way through a passage as their sympathetic peers look away, and their not-so-sympathetic peers sneer. At heart of these struggles is often a deficiency in oral reading fluency, a construct that plays a shrinking role in school curriculum at each instructional level past fourth grade (Pinnell J Anderson, 1985; Perfetti, 1985; Posner & Snyder, 1975; Schneider & Shiffrin 1977; Venezky, 2002) have extended understanding of theory. Venezky (2002), for instance, found that adult learners still struggling to read needed more focus on automaticity to become successful readers, so it stands to reason that adolescents should require more practice as well. The second major construct explaining oral reading fluency is Theory of Prosody, attributed to Schreiber (1991), which describes fluent oral reading as smooth and expressive (p. 161). This side of oral reading consists of observable features - stress, intonation, duration - that are discernable when listening to someone read. Prosody is also described as rhythmic and tonal features of speech, (p. 166). Six markers can be directly linked to expressive, or prosodie reading: pausai intrusions, length of phrases, appropriateness of phrases, phrase-final lengthening, terminal intonation contours, and stress (Dowhower, 1991). Historically, oral literacy was core of American curriculum from colonial times until English became a school subject in late nineteenth century (Applebee, 1974; Hyatt, 1943; Smith, 2002). Oral reading was spurred on by lack of printed materials. Typically, each household would have one designated oral reader (Hyatt, 1943). Philosopher William James (1892) stated the teacher's success or failure in teaching reading is based, so far as public estimate is concerned, upon oral reading method (p. …