Fluency in reading—Thirty-five years later

Abstract

Paul Nation’s talents and interests extend well beyond vocabulary to include research on speaking, writing, classroom learning and teaching, reading, and fluency. In keeping with Nation’s interests in fluency, extensive reading, and reading instruction, I outline current perspectives on reading fluency and its role as a key component of reading comprehension abilities. This discussion will include the rapidly increasing importance being given to reading fluency, extensive reading, and reading speed training in English as a first language (L1) contexts in the past decade. While this extraordinary growth in fluency research in English L1 contexts might not be well known to many second language (L2) practitioners, it offers many implications for L2 reading research and instruction (and Nation is one of very few L2 researchers to have been out ahead of this curve). The article will also address reasons why fluency research studies often do not demonstrate extraordinary gains in reading comprehension outcomes, pointing to the incremental nature of both fluency and reading comprehension development. Finally, the article will connect messages consistently advocated for by Nation over the past 35 years with current views on reading fluency.