Repeated Reading and Reading Fluency in Learning Disabled Children

Abstract:
This study investigated whether improved fluency and comprehension across different stories in repeated reading depend on the degree of word overlap among passages and whether repeated reading is more effective than an equivalent amount of nonrepetitive reading. Non-fluent, learning disabled students read passages presented and timed by a computer under three different conditions. In Conditions 1 and 2 (repeated reading) the same passage was read four times before proceeding to a new story in the next session. Stories in Condition 2 contained three times as many overlapping words as stories in Condition 1. In Condition 3 (nonrepetitive reading), each of the four passages in a session was different.

Results suggest that over short periods of time, increases in reading speed with the repeated reading method depend on the amount of shared words among stories, and that if stories have few shared words, repeated reading is not more effective for improving speed than an equivalent amount of nonrepetitive reading.