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Reading Fluency and Vocabulary

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Assessment and Intervention for English Language Learners

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Abstract

Fluency in reading is a necessary bridge between decoding and comprehension. There is a strong relationship between students’ knowledge of vocabulary and their reading fluency. A lack of English vocabulary can present a challenge to educators who are attempting to teach English learners at their instructional level. Educators must understand the differences between the English of the classroom (cognitive academic language proficiency) and the language that is used outside of the classroom (basic interpersonal communication skills). Children with reading disabilities may have sufficient vocabulary knowledge to understand a text and may be able to decode but they do so in a slow, laborious manner. Students may have a problem with rapid automatic naming—or other cognitive correlates of reading fluency—difficulties that can exist despite the orthography of the language being learned. We explore the clinical signs of fluency disorders and the steps that can be taken to appropriately assess the reading fluency of English learners. We end with characteristics of good classroom instruction for English learners and interventions that can be put into place to help students improve their vocabulary and reading fluency.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Susan Unruh & Nancy A. McKellar

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  1. Susan Unruh
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  2. Nancy A. McKellar
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Unruh, S., McKellar, N.A. (2017). Reading Fluency and Vocabulary. In: Assessment and Intervention for English Language Learners. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52645-4_6

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