Promoting Generalization of Oral Reading Fluency: Providing Drill versus Practice Opportunities

Abstract

Extensive evidence exists demonstrating the benefits of repeated readings (RR) interventions at increasing students’ fluency on intervention passages. Few studies however have examined the extent to which repeatedly reading one passage improves students’ reading fluency on similar passages. Using an alternating treatment design, we examined the extent to which two interventions resulted in improvements in students’ fluency on generalization passages. While both interventions incorporated RR, one intervention involved students reading one passage four times and the other involved students reading two similar passages each twice. Intervention effects were evaluated by having students read a generalization passage prior to and following intervention implementation. Results indicate that both interventions were effective in increasing students reading fluency on generalization passages. For 3 participants the RR intervention produced greater gains in fluency on the generalization passages, while data for the remaining 3 participants are inconclusive. Implications of these findings for practice and for better understanding application of the instructional hierarchy to the development of reading interventions are discussed.