[Reading-hall-of-fame] What is fluency? Bob Calfee's comment

[Colin Harrison]

Just in case you didn't receive it, this is the full message Bob Calfee
tried unsuccessfully to post to the RHoF list, earlier this week: 

Let me join with others in appreciating the exchange on this topic among
colleagues, from both universities and the field of practice, especially
the more extensive and reflective notes. The exchanges do indeed
exemplify what might happen through the list serve platform. 

      The purpose of the following comment is to discuss an underlying
assumption of many of the contributions and, in one note, the explicit
statement that reading fluency is necessarily defined as a
characteristic of oral performance. I question this presumption for a
variety of reasons, both conceptual and practical. Like the inebriated
person who looks for keys under the lamplight rather than where he
dropped them, our understandable tendency is to define problems based on
convenience rather than close analysis. Speed is easy to measure,
certainly compared with qualitative. We don't know how quickly Lincoln
read the Gettysburg address, but probably neither too quick nor too
slow, and speed was not the issue in any event (unlike conference
presentations). For that matter, we don't know about his prosody or
syntactic phrasing either, and perhaps his delivery was actually rather
dysfluent. When a high school student recites the address during
President's Day ceremonies, these criteria are much on the mind of the
public speaking instructor, with an emphasis on ensuring that the
delivery carry a message - not how quickly the presentation can be
given. The critics of sole reliance on speed as a measure of oral
reading fluency are numerous, but have done little to slow the advance
of Dibels.

      But let me turn to a different matter, and my main point - is it
possible to define fluency from non-oral reading activities? I think the
answer is clearly positive, and that exploring this arena might offer
some important insights into the underlying concept. I'm sure that a
qualitative investigation of David Pearson's interaction with his Apple
as he deals with email exchanges could serve as evidence that he is a
fluent "reader/writer" in this domain, even though not a word may leave
his lips. An eye movement study of AP students in the middle and high
school years as they make their way through science textbooks searching
for information about critical characteristics of the planet Jupiter
would likely reveal patterns associated with greater or lesser fluency,
some related to speed, but many others associated with where they
search, when they speed up and when they slow down, and what they
scribble along the way. Think-aloud protocols would probably enhance
this investigation, but that might seem to verge on oral performance. 

      Fluency springs from fluid, from "flow-ness." The movement of a
stream depends on a variety of dimensions, including the volume, the
topography, and so on. A fluid performance is the mark of an expert.
Speed may work for Bach or Chopin, less so for Mozart, and questionably
so for Rachmaninoff. The marks of fluidity/expertise can surely be found
in a range of reading behaviors, from the sublime - a reading from
Sandburg - to the practical - a course assistant scanning the catalogue
to help a student decide among a set of statistic options. 

      Having suggested that oral reading performance is not the only nor
necessarily the best arena for capturing the concept of fluency, let me
end with the suggestion that it does pose rather interesting options.
Oral reading performance of poems and plays are obvious possibilities.
Readers' theater, while it is on neither NAEP nor most other tests,
provides opportunities that are engaging for students and interesting
for audiences. It will be interesting, as we move to the common core and
the associated assessments, to see how such opportunities are realized
in the Race to the Top - or wherever.... 
Robert Calfee

1207 Sproul Hall

Graduate School of Education

University of California

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Stanford School of Education

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