Type of Document	Dissertation
Author	Wright, Julie Adele
Author's Email Address	jwrig35@lsu.edu
URN	etd-11082011-220644
Title	The Impact of Oral Fluency and Silent Fluency on the Comprehension of Fourth Graders
Degree	Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Department	Educational Theory, Policy, & Practice
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Cheek, Earl Committee Chair Blanchard, Pamela Committee Member Mitchell, Roland Committee Member Wandersee, Jim Committee Member Sarkar, Husain Dean's Representative
Keywords	Comprehension Oral Fluency Silent Fluency
Date of Defense	2011-10-26
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract The purpose of this quantitative study was to discover if a connection exists between oral fluency and silent fluency. Comprehension was used as the consistent measurement instrument for the study. Understanding how oral fluency transitions to silent fluency helps educators understand how to assist students with this process. Most reading done to acquire knowledge after the fourth grade is performed silently. Students need to be an effective silent reader to be successful in school. In addition, reading comprehension and most other parts of standardized testing is read silently by the student unless accommodations are put in place before testing. If a connection exists between oral fluency and silent fluency then instructional methods could be implemented to make both modes of reading equally successful. Also indicators that signal the teacher that the student is prepared to move to silent reading may be identified. Students reading eight grade level passages both orally and silently allowed data to be collected to determine if a connection was present for the two types of fluency. A slight connection between oral and silently was found, but was not strong enough to make blanket statements. Although data collected about prosody was strong enough to determine that if a student reads orally with prosody, their comprehension will be strong for both oral and silent reading. This study also used five different types of comprehension questions and it was determined that vocabulary questions were statistically more difficult to answer than the other four types of questions.
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