1. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Vol. 5. No. 4. July, 2013
C. Cetinkaya. A neglected skill: silent reading fluency. International Journal of Academic Research Part B; 2013; 5(4),
475-480. DOI: 10.7813/2075-4124.2013/5-4/B.67
A NEGLECTED SKILL: SILENT READING FLUENCY
Cetin Cetinkaya
Duzce University, Faculty of Education (TURKEY)
fatihcetincetinkaya@gmail.com
DOI: 10.7813/2075-4124.2013/5-4/B.67
ABSTRACT
The aim of this research was to draw attention to one of the neglected skills which is silent reading fluency.
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With this aim, the present study was conducted with a total of 378 4 and 5 grade students. Test of Silent
Contextual Reading Fluency (TSCROF) was used to measure the students’ silent reading fluency skill. The results
showed that most of the students have poor silent reading fluency skills. Additionally, there was a significant
difference in favor of fifth grade students among fourth and fifth grade students and in favor of male students
among male and female students.
Keywords: silent reading, reading fluency, elementary school students
1. INTRODUCTION
Reading is a complex intellectual process which consists of various constituents such as seeing, perception,
comprehension and detailed or different thinking (1). One of the basic imperatives to realize this challenging
process is fluent reading (2). As has been in every country, bringing skills of fluent reading to the individuals has
gained importance in Turkey in recent years. While fluency in reading is an important feature of good readers,
inadequacy in fluency is a feature of the readers that cannot read well. Varieties in fluent reading not only
distinguish good and poor readers from each other but also are amongst the most important predictors that affect
reading comprehension (3).
Fluent reading is constructing meaning from the text by using accurate, fast and prosodic reading skills (47). These skills show themselves as recognizing words easily, reading in an accurate speed, intonation and
reading by separating the sentences into proper phrases in terms of semantics and syntax during oral reading
studies. These features, during both oral and silent reading, either ease or limit understanding according to the
existing competence of the reader.
Most of the definitions for fluent reading associate fluent reading with oral reading. Most of the researches
carried out especially on the level of primary school show that there is high level of relationship between the skill of
fluent oral reading and reading comprehension (8, 9). Though the process of oral reading is in the focus of
improving fluent reading, the recent researches stress that silent reading is also important for reading success (5,
7). Silent reading is the commonly used way of reading after the first grades during which teaching of reading is
performed. Oral reading is not as practical way of reading as silent reading.
Oral reading is much slower when compared to silent reading. Researches show that the number of pausing
times that readers do during oral reading is higher than they do during silent reading. Increase in the number of
pausing times decreases the speed of reading. This does not improve the fluent reading of the kids (10, 11, 12).
Some researches (13) assert that individual oral reading or shared reading studies are commonly used in
the classrooms. These studies generally occur in such a form that a student reads orally and the others follow.
While these kinds of reading help teacher measure various reading skills, Gilbert (14) suggests that these
measurements provide limited data. Moreover, the pausing times and comebacks of readers that listen to the oral
reader doubles (15). In case a poor reader reads, learning process of the followers is affected negatively due to the
possibility of lack of attention and regression in their own reading and learning process.
Miller and Smith (16), who analyzed the effects of fluency of oral reading and silent reading to
comprehension, found out that the participants' levels of comprehension during oral reading and silent reading
differ. A student who can read silently and fluently comprehends much better. Focusing on oral reading cause
some habits -such as reading word by word, letter by letter, tracing with finger, wiggling lips, moving tongue and
vocal cords, nodding, reading with inner voice, repeating comebacks frequently during silent reading whichhamper
comprehension and last a lifetime. Oral reading slows down the speed and in case of syllabication or reading the
words orally, the time of reading the text increases four-five times more (17).
In addition to all of these, oral reading, especially during the ages which are entitled as critical periods for
the students during which they can develop learned helplessness, may result in shyness, fear, decrease in the self
confidence and accordingly the reader student may dispense reading skill through developing learned
helplessness. Lots of studies conducted in the literature (18-21) argue that there is a relationship between the
classroom atmosphere and learned helplessness. Making poor readers among the primary school students read
orally in the classroom, on the critical period during which success vs. inferiority complex is experienced, may result
in learned helplessness about reading skill.
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The constraints mentioned above put forward the fluency of silent reading. Oral reading helps students, who
just started to read, learn how the written language gains meaning in oral language.Thus, lots of researches have
been conducted to define and develop fluency of oral reading (5, 22).However, after the importance of silent
reading during reading process is realized, it is observed that defining and developing the fluency of silent reading
have been concentrated on recently (23, 24). The student's silent reading ability at sufficient level is possible by
canalizing the teaching process that we started with oral reading towards the silent reading and by building a
balance between oral and silent reading (25).
When the studies conducted within Turkey are examined, it is observed that the researches on the
measurement and development of silent reading fluency are very limited. In a research conducted by Yildirim and
Ates (26) it was studied whether the fluency of silent reading predicts comprehension or not and the findings
gained set forth that silent reading fluency is an important predictor of reading comprehension. Limitedness of the
researches about the subject shows that more researches are needed for either the measurement or development
of silent reading fluency. Through this research, it is aimed to define the primary school students' silent reading
fluency and draw educators' and academicians' attention to the subject.
2. METHOD
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The aim of this research was to define silent reading fluency of 4 and 5 grade students. In line with this
purpose, survey method was utilized through the research.A survey method is a part of quantitative research
approaches and in this method the aim of the researcher is to try to define the level, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes etc.
of the participants towards a case (27). In this research, it was tried to define the levels of silent reading fluency of
the participants through prepared texts.
2.1. Participants
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The data of this research was collected from a total of 378 4 and 5 grade students from three primary
schools, having an average socio-economical level, randomly selected in the central district of Yozgat. Gender and
grade distribution is given in the table below:
Table 1.Demographic features of the students participated in the study
Grade
Age
Gender
Male
Female
Total
4
9-10
f
91
109
200
5
%
45.5
54.5
100
10-11
f
82
96
178
%
46.1
53.9
100
The reason for choosing 4th and 5th grade students as the participants of the study is that there is more
acquisition in these grades to develop the skills for fluent reading and reading comprehension when compared to
the lower grades. In the first years of the primary school, teaching of reading is at the forefront rather than
comprehension and fluency.Also, reading fluency is actualized mainly through oral reading in these years. During
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nd
rd
the 1 , 2 and 3 grades of primary school, group teaching is intensely applied and in these studies oral reading is
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preferred rather than silent reading.For these reasonsthis research was conducted with 200 4 grade and 178 5
grade students.
2.2. Instrument
The measurement tools used in the research were created by examining the related literature.Many various
methods exist in the literature to evaluatethe silent reading fluency of the students. Test of Silent Contextual
Reading Fluency (TOSCRF) which is used in this research as it was used in the similar studies (28, 29, 30), is
composed of words that are independent from context and unconnected to each other. Silent reading fluency of the
participants is defined through these texts. TOSCRF shows whether the student is above or below the average. It
does not suggest why he is below the average. In order to define the reason, additional measurements are needed
to be done for definitions (30).Two informative texts were used for the preparation of measurement tools.The texts
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were selected from the books of 4 and 5 grades’ Turkish Language books which are published by the Ministry of
National Education and not instructed in the schools where this study was carried out. The reason for excluding the
books from the ones that are instructed in these schools is to ensure that the students have not encountered the
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text. During the text selection, frequently used words list, prepared by Cetinkaya (31) for 4 and 5 grades, was
taken into consideration. The lengths of the sentences in the text differ from 4 to 11 words. After defining the texts,
they were written with a font style to which the students are familiar, the words were displaced in such a way that
they would not form a context and all the punctuation and the spaces between the words were removed.Besides,
all the words were written in capitals and the measurement tools became ready by copying the texts. Scoring of the
data collected from the measurement tool starts in the line marked lastly and goes on towards the text's beginning
line. Student gets a point for every word that he distinguishes correctly. The application is disannulled in case a full
line is omitted and if so, the test needs to be applied again to that student. The students are warned not to cross
lines in the center of a letter, not to cross lines that are not precisely separating the words and not to cross
excessively italicized lines.
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2.3. Procedure
To ensure data collection to be error-free, informative meetings were held with the teachers of the
classrooms defined beforehand. During the meetings, the aim of the research, features of the data collection tools,
timeframe specified for application, the materials that the students may need during application, the classrooms
that would be preferred during application and sitting arrangement were explained to the teachers and their
questions about application were answered. Next, sample applications were carried out in the classrooms defined
for data collection and application awareness for the students was created. During the sample applications, the
displaced words of the sentences written in capitals without spaces on the board were separated with different
colors of chalks. This activity was repeated for a few times with the participation of the teacher and the voluntary
students.
Before starting the application, the students were asked to empty the desks and prepare their pencils and
erasers. The students were also informed that the application would be started and finished all together and no one
should break the silence. The applications were started with “Start” and finished with “Finish” instructions of the
teacher after a warning of “you have one minute left” after two minutes. The forms were collected without deranging
the sitting arrangement.
Evaluations were done on the data collected by two independent raters. During these evaluations, the total
of the words that were distinguished correctly by each student was specified as silent reading fluency of each
student. Average coherence between the independent raters was calculated as.86. Statistical analyses on the
collected data, which will be answers to research problem and questions, were performed.
3. RESULTS
Table 2.Descriptive Ratings for Standard Scores
Index Score
Intervals
>130
121-130
111-120
90-110
80-89
70-79
<70
Descriptive Ratings
Very superior
Superior
Above Average
Average
Below Average
Poor
Very poor
Percentage Included
In Each Interval
0.80
2.91
8.73
26.71
60.85
Silent reading fluencies of the participants were shown in Table 2 by taking Allen and Hammill's
classification (32) into account. No students out of a total of 378 participants were rated as “superior” or “very
superior” because none of them could distinguish 120 or more words in the specified timeframe. The number of the
participants who scored between 110 and 120 and were rated as “average” or “above average” is only 14.Scoring
between 80 and 89, 32 participants were rated as “below average” according to Allen and Hammil’s
classification.87.56 % of the rest of the participants were rated as “poor” or “very poor”.
Table 3. Silent reading fluency mean and standard deviation
scores of the students according to grade levels
Grade
4
5
N
200
178
X
25.98
33.82***
SS
12.73
15.44
p<.001
The independent-samples t-test (or independent t-test, for short) compares the means between two
unrelated groups on the same continuous, dependent variable was used to assess whether or not the students'
silent reading fluency differs according to grades. The result showed that there was a significant difference
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between silent reading fluency scores of the students in favor of 5 grades (t(376)=-5.410, p=.000).
Table 4. Silent reading fluency mean and standard deviation scores of the students according to gender
Gender
Female
Male
N
173
205
X
31.54
28.10
SS
15.21
13.90
p<.05
The independent-samples t-test (or independent t-test, for short) compares the means between two
unrelated groups on the same continuous, dependent variable was used to assess whether or not the students'
silent reading fluency scores differs according to gender. The result revealed that there was a significant difference
between silent reading fluency of the students in favor of female students (t(376)=-2.300, p=.022).
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4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In this research, the importance of silent reading which is thought as a neglected skill was concentrated on,
the level of significance between the silent reading fluency of male and female students and the silent reading
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fluency of 4 and 5 grade students were examined with the help of method used for measuring silent reading
fluency.
In the research, it is seen that most of the participants’ silent reading fluency is poor. Focusing on teaching
oral reading too much may cause some skills of this ability to be transferred into the silent reading process. In
literature, there are researches on that oral reading studies decrease silent reading fluency (10, 17, 26). For not
transferring the skills in oral reading to the silent reading, silent reading should be passed balancedly and practices
should be done to increase silent reading fluency.
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Another finding in the research is that 5 grade students are more successful in terms of silent reading
fluency level. It is an expected situation that the higher is the level of the grade, the higher is the fluency of the
students’ silent reading ability. After the period of teaching reading ended and the period of reading for learning
started, as the level of the grade gets higher, the teachers should use more silent reading and comprehension
activities in learning environments. In the classification defined by Chall (33), the development processes of
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reading-writing skills were defined in separate stages. According to this classification, 5 grade students were
considered as in “reading for learning new information” stage, it was expressed that in this stage, the skills and
habits of silent reading are more important than oral reading skills in reading success. Such a case in this research
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may have contributed significant difference to occur in favor of 5 grade students.
That there is a significant difference in favor of girls among the averages of the participants’ silent reading
fluency can be explained with that girls’ attitudes towards reading are higher than boys. Besides, there are
researches which correlates the significant difference in favor of girls in reading which includes a complicated
mental process with teacher expectations (34,35), with higher amount of female teachers (34,36,37).
During teaching fluent reading, silent reading fluency is as important as oral reading fluency. Whereas both
of the reading types include similar skills, they are not completely the same. Reading on a proper speed with
correct pronunciation and as prosodic as to reflect that a meaning is inferred from the text is the accepted
description for oral reading fluency (38). Silent reading fluency is reading by a proper speed and comprehensibly
with a constant attention and concentration in an easy and comfortable way (38). Comprehension variant is the
common key for both definitions.
Silent reading fluency measurements should be applied in schools. If the students cannot read the test
items correctly and precisely in the specified time frame, or cannot infer the correct meaning from the text, this
situation affect their academic success (3). This situation requires the silent reading fluency of the students to be
evaluated. Determining tracing methods proper to silent reading fluency and using them in schools are also
required.
Besides, that the teachers cannot support the students during silent reading activities indicates that the
studies do not support the silent reading fluencies of the students. During the silent reading studies, teachers can
contribute to the fluency and comprehension of the students by presenting a broad alternative list to the students,
by choosing texts in appropriate difficulty level, by controlling silent reading of the students at school and at home
and by creating environment that the students can read the books which are their own choices (39).
With this study, silent reading fluency which is regarded as a neglected skill, which is focused in recent
years in the world, about which there are very few researches have been made in Turkey, is tried to be brought
forward. Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency (TOSCRF) that had been used in the researches such as (29,
30, 31), was used as measurement tool and the levels of silent reading fluencies of the participants were
determined. In this research, the levels of silent reading fluency of the participants were found as poor. The
reasons for this situation should be researched deeply. To increase the reliability of the results, silent reading
fluency should be measured with different measurement tools and the correlation between them should be
examined.Additionally, complex studies may be conducted to study the relation between silent reading fluency and
oral reading fluency. The effect of silent reading fluency on comprehension also seems another question to be
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studied in the field. Furthermore, the study group of this research consists of 4 and 5 grade students. Similar
studies for different grades may also be conducted. Whereas this study was performed with average socioeconomic participants, different researches may be done for different socio-economic levels.
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