The Relationship Between Different Measures of Oral Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension in Second-Grade Students Who Evidence Different Oral Reading Fluency Difficulties

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine whether different measures of oral reading fluency relate differentially to reading comprehension performance in two samples of second-grade students: (a) students who evidenced difficulties with nonsense-word oral reading fluency, real-word oral reading fluency, and oral reading fluency of connected text (ORFD), and (b) students who evidenced difficulties only with oral reading fluency of connected text (CTD). Method: Participants (ORFD, n = 146 and CTD, n = 949) were second-grade students who were recruited for participation in different reading intervention studies. Data analyzed were from measures of nonsense-word oral reading fluency, real-word oral reading fluency, oral reading fluency of connected text, and reading comprehension that were collected at the pre-intervention time point. Results: Correlational and path analyses indicated that real-word oral reading fluency was the strongest predictor of reading comprehension performance in both samples and across average and poor reading comprehension abilities. Conclusion: Results of this study indicate that real-word oral reading fluency was the strongest predictor of reading comprehension and suggest that real-word oral reading fluency may be an efficient method for identifying potential reading comprehension difficulties.