A fifth-grade student participates in a reading intervention where he rereads a passage aloud (about 100 to 200 words) and the teacher provides a word for misreadings or hesitations over five seconds. The passage is reread until very few errors occur. This intervention is intended to remediate which construct?

A fifth-grade student participates in a reading intervention where he rereads a passage aloud (about 100 to 200 words) and the teacher provides a word for misreadings or hesitations over five seconds. The passage is reread until very few errors occur. This intervention is intended to remediate which construct?

• A. Decoding
• B. Fluency
• C. Comprehension
• D. Phonemic awareness

Answer: (B)

Reading fluency is the ability to read aloud smoothly, quickly, and with appropriate expression, so comprehension isn’t knocked off balance by word-by-word decoding. In this intervention, the student rereads a passage aloud multiple times while the teacher gives feedback for misreads or hesitations that last several seconds. This approach directly targets fluency by reducing hesitations and improving accuracy and rate through practice, leading to more automatic word recognition and a more natural, flowing read. As fluency improves, cognitive resources free up to understand the text better, which is why fluent reading supports comprehension even though the primary aim here is to build fluency itself. Phonemic awareness and decoding are not the main targets of this activity, and while better fluency can aid understanding, the method is specifically designed to enhance fluent reading.

Reading fluency is the ability to read aloud smoothly, quickly, and with appropriate expression, so comprehension isn’t knocked off balance by word-by-word decoding. In this intervention, the student rereads a passage aloud multiple times while the teacher gives feedback for misreads or hesitations that last several seconds. This approach directly targets fluency by reducing hesitations and improving accuracy and rate through practice, leading to more automatic word recognition and a more natural, flowing read. As fluency improves, cognitive resources free up to understand the text better, which is why fluent reading supports comprehension even though the primary aim here is to build fluency itself. Phonemic awareness and decoding are not the main targets of this activity, and while better fluency can aid understanding, the method is specifically designed to enhance fluent reading.