This Research Topic is the second edition of Fluency and reading comprehension in typical readers and dyslexics readers: Volume I This Second Edition Research Topic is focused on the characterization of the reading-writing difficulties and their comorbidities and in the analysis of evidence-based recommendations for early interventions and treatment of these difficulties within the fields of neuropsychology, speech-language pathology, and educational psychology. Reading involves decoding and comprehension components, and to become efficient it requires a large number of cognitive and linguistic processes. Among those, decoding failures can have different origins, such as deficits in phonological and/or visual processing. In addition, a child with reading difficulties might also have problems in the acquisition of writing and handwriting performance. This is an important point to be discussed, as reading and writing both suffer interference from vocabulary acquisition, linguistic skills, memory skills, reading and writing practices, and literacy methods. These processes become important only when the professional needs to deal with students presenting learning difficulties. Difficulty in using the knowledge of conversion rules between grapheme-phoneme to word reading construction or phoneme-grapheme for writing can be identified in schoolchildren with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dysortography, being a specific learning disorder with a neurological etiology. In addition, there is established evidence of a speech-language processing basis, students with specific learning disabilities can show a range of cognitive difficulties (e.g., rapid naming, executive functioning, working memory). These presented difficulties interfere in their learning process, impairing their learning development.

Reading fluency has been identified as a key component of proficient reading. Research has consistently demonstrated significant and substantial correlations between reading fluency and overall reading achievement. Despite the great potential for fluency to have a significant outcome on students’ reading achievement, it continues to be not well understood by teachers, school administrators and policy makers. The chapters in this volume examine reading fluency from a variety of perspectives. The initial chapter sketches the history of fluency as a literacy instruction component. Following chapters examine recent studies and approaches to reading fluency, followed by chapters that explore actual fluency instruction models and the impact of fluency instruction. Assessment of reading fluency is critical for monitoring progress and identifying students in need of intervention. Two articles on assessment, one focused on word recognition and the other on prosody, expand our understanding of fluency measurement. Finally, a study from Turkey explores the relationship of various reading competencies, including fluency, in an integrated model of reading. Our hope for this volume is that it may spark a renewed interest in research into reading fluency and fluency instruction and move toward making fluency instruction an even more integral part of all literacy instruction.

Introduces oral reading teaching methods for developing word recognition and comprehension in students.

Reading involves decoding and comprehension components and, to become efficient, it requires a large number of cognitive and linguistic processes. Among those, the phonological awareness, the alphabetic principle, the decoding, the fluency, the lexical development and the text comprehension development. The reading comprehension is strongly related with the development of vocabulary, oral language, linguistic skills, memory skills and ability to make inferences, and the world experiences of each individual. These processes become important only when the professional needs to deal with students presenting difficulties in learning how to read. The difficulty using the knowledge of conversion rules between grapheme and phoneme to the word reading construction characterizes the dyslexia, which is a specific learning disorder with a neurological source. These difficulties presented by students with dyslexia interfere in their learning process impairing the learning development. Knowing and following the reading development and its processes, as well as obtaining the punctuation of fluency abilities and students comprehension allow us to understand what happens when the student presents difficulties to read. This could help in the identification of learning disabilities and in the development of intervention programs.

We’ve been teaching reading wrong—a leading cognitive scientist tells us how we can finally do it right

The second edition of the comprehensive accessible textbook is a practical guide to how learning disabilities affect behavior and what to do about it.

The book is dedicated to the blessed memory of Prof. Zvia Breznitz, whose groundbreaking research has made a tremendous impact on the understanding of fluency in reading. The book presents a multidimensional perspective of recent research and reviews on fluency in reading. The first part presents recent brain-imaging findings from studies into the neurobiological basis of reading, as well as cognitive and language studies exploring the underlying factors of fluency in reading and its development. The second part comprises reviews of intervention studies that address reading ability, and in particular, fluency in reading. The book provides a unique multilingual perspective on reading research by including studies of readers of different orthographies and speakers of different languages. Both scientists exploring the different aspects of reading and language, and clinicians of reading intervention will find this book not only of great interest but extremely useful in its clear and in-depth presentation of current reading research.