Oral Reading Fluency with English Learners

What did this study want to accomplish?

This research study sought to determine if assessing oral reading fluency with English Learners would be an effective way to accurately identify students' reading ability and level of risk.

Guiding Questions:

WHAT

What is the relationship between ORF scores and reading comprehension measures for emerging biliterates?

What is the relationship between ORF scores and other reading outcome measures for emerging biliterates?

To what degree does evidence support the use of ORF as a tool to accurately identify emerging biliterates at-risk for poor reading outcomes?

Why was this study conducted?

Using Oral Reading Fluency as a screener is a research-based and reliable method for determining student reading ability

WHY

The number of emerging biliterates in U.S. schools is ever-increasing

The validity of using ORF to determine reading ability of students of diverse populations and language backgrounds needs to be examined in comparison to mainstream populations

Reviewed Studies

Trends in Results

Articles were coded on:

• The meta-analysis intended to study emerging biliterates in K-8, but ended with a focus on EL's
• Students read leveled passages, but not word lists
• Some of the reviewed studies used DIBELS, some also tested in Spanish
• There were a variety of dual language programs represented

Type of dual language education

1.

2.

Characteristics of participants

Type of validity evidence

3.

Quality of study description

4.

“Decreased correlations as grades increase is also seen with monolingual speaking students” (p. 1218).

Trends in Reviewed Studies

“Results suggest that growth on ORF scores over time is strongly related to language proficiency, and that ORF growth for ELs in L2 is generally slower than growth for monolingual English speakers” (p. 1212).

1.

Study Criteria

ORF scores were generally a better predictor for reading comprehension scores in the lower grades than upper

2.

“Results suggest that ORF measures predict more than just decoding” (p. 1219).

Correlations are stronger in English than within Spanish or across other languages

Literacy Skills

Comprehension

• Fluency is affected by comprehension
• Readers use semantic clues to help them decode
• This makes comprehension even harder for EL’s

“It is possible that for ELs, ORF functions as a measure of the extent to which L1 literacy skills like phonological awareness have transferred across languages to support English decoding" (p. 1220).

Language

• ”Language background is important to describe to understand the relationship between ORF and L2 reading outcomes at different grades for ELs” (p. 1220)

• Some studies did not describe student language background well

• Several studies “suggested that correlations between L2 ORF and L2 reading outcome measures are different for ELs with different levels of English language proficiency” (p. 1219), but it is unclear what variables cause this

Remember:

1.

Measure reading skills in both languages

Implications

2.

Teach vocabulary and oral language skills alongside fluency and decoding

• Emerging biliterates have different language proficiencies and backgrounds
• Using ORF as a screening tool with EL's is experimental and not proven to effectively provide the same data as native speakers
• Consider comprehension and language factors when assessing EL's

3.

Provide language-based early intervention

Newell, K.W., Codding, R.S., & Fortune, T.W. (2020). Oral reading fluency as a screening tool with English learners: A systematic review. Psychology in the Schools, 57(8), 1208–1239.

Resources

Click link to read full article:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OgMExLtzbTtPPDXEW0T_2akmqZ_n_PZS/view?usp=sharing

https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/ells-and-reading-fluency-english

https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/reading-101-english-language-learners

https://www.aworldoflanguagelearners.com/reading-fluency/

Additional Resources