Impact of a reading aloud training program on reading fluency and comprehension abilities in struggling 6th grade language minority and low SES readers

Research evidence supports that reading fluency is a critical component of proficient reading and that intensive intervention can improve this ability in struggling readers (Rasinski, 2010). The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of a reading aloud training program on reading fluency and comprehension abilities in language minority and low SES 6th grade poor readers. Twenty-four pupils were randomly assigned to intervention or control groups. The two groups were matched for initial vocabulary knowledge, reading and non-verbal intellectual abilities. The intervention consisted in a reading aloud training program (with activities of repeated reading, continuous reading and prosody training) provided for 40 minutes per day, 3 days a week, for a total of 20 sessions. Following the intervention, the two groups did not differ significantly from each other on a measure of reading fluency (reading aloud for one minute), but intervention group performed significantly better on a timed silent reading comprehension task (choosing the word that completes the sentence). These results suggest that a reading aloud specific intervention can improve reading comprehension in language minority and low SES poor readers.