Reading Fluency Instruction: Moving Beyond Accuracy, Automaticity, and Prosody

Abstract

Three key elements of reading fluency are accuracy in word decoding, automaticity in recognizing words, and appropriate use of prosody or meaningful oral expression while reading. These three components are a gateway to comprehension. Readers must be able to decode words correctly and effortlessly (automaticity) and then put them together into meaningful phrases with the appropriate expression to make sense of what they read.