[Reading-hall-of-fame] what is fluency?

[William Teale]

One of my doc students did a very interesting study of writing fluency a few years ago:

Hester, J. L. (2001). Investigating writing fluency in seventh and eighth graders' narrative and expository first drafts.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago. 

-----------------------------------------
William H. Teale
Early Reading First
University of Illinois at Chicago
1640 West Roosevelt
Chicago, IL 60608
312.413.1423
wteale at uic.edu
http://www.uic.edu/educ/erf/ 
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On Nov 18, 2009, at 12:25 PM, Arthur N Applebee wrote:

Jim's comment on fluency in the writing literature is interesting.  In
six traits, which is a step child of Paul Diederich's (1961) work at
ETS, "sentence fluency" reflects what Diederich called "wording" and
"phrasing"-- the choice and arrangement of words. Diederich thought this
was at least in part a vocabulary factor in the original study.

In the more general writing literature, fluency seems closer to "ease"
or "speed" of writing when dealing with familiar material, more closely
related to process than product. I don't know of any work that has
thought closely about the distinction, or how the two version of fluency
are related.. Or how either is related to the version of fluency
implicit in saying that someone is "fluent in English."    


Arthur N. Applebee
Distinguished Professor & Chair, Department of Educational Theory &
Practice
Director, Center on English Learning & Achievement

-----Original Message-----
From: reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf
Of Robert Calfee
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 12:55 PM
To: HOFLists
Subject: Fwd: Re: Fwd: RE: [Reading-hall-of-fame] what is fluency?

Let's see if this works -- I haven't participated that much, but two
topics, one on NRC and the other on HOF, attracted  my attention. Sorry
for the confusions. 

And let me second Jim's comment on fluency in reading and writing -- the
parallels seem worth applauding. If speed is an important factor in the
writing process, it's probably knowing when to speed up and when to slow
down -- and the time frame is not the start-finish writing of a passage,
but the allocation of time to various aspects of the process, from
planning to the completion of a text. The fluency (or fluidity) of the
final product, which Jim emphasizes, is a totally different matter. Both
merit attention, and I don't think there is much of a literature,
conceptual or empirical, on either. Arthur A might know?  Bob Calfee

Robert Calfee
1207 Sproul Hall
Graduate School of Education
University of California
Riverside CA 92521 Fax 951-827-3942
Stanford School of Education
Stanford CA 94305
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