Intervention for Dyslexia - The British Dyslexia Association

2.5.10 Torgesen et al. (2004)
Torgesen, Alexander, Alexander, Voeller, Conway, Wagner & Rashotte (2004) also used
the Lindamood programme with students whose average age was 9 years 10 months.
133 hours of 1:1 and 1:2 instruction were provided but, in addition, 25 hours of
instruction in reading comprehension delivered in groups of 2 students using a
programme called Visualizing and Verbalizing for Language Comprehension and Thinking
(Bell, 1991).
2.6 Fluency
Reading fluency may be defined as the ability to read connected text rapidly, smoothly,
effortlessly and automatically, and with little conscious attention to the mechanics of
reading, such as decoding (Meyer & Felton, 1999; Torgesen & Hudson, 2006). Fluency
is, first and foremost, a function of the extent to which children have been able to
practise the application of decoding skills in reading extended texts, in order that these
skills can become automatised and so that the number of words that can be read
instantly on sight increases substantially. Disabled readers read substantially less than
normal readers (Torgesen, Rashotte & Alexander, 2001) and so have less practice and
consequently their reading fluency remains poor. This creates ‘Matthew effects’, i.e.
children who are good readers read more than poorer readers and hence further
strengthen their reading skills, thus progressively widening the gap between the most
skilled and the poorest readers (Stanovich, 1986). In turn, fluency is essential for good
comprehension (see Chard, Vaughn & Tyler, 2002; Kuhn & Stahl, 2003). Children who
read very slowly and struggle with decoding many words in text will experience a
greater working memory load, which affects comprehension (Gathercole, Alloway, Willis
& Adams, 2006; Pickering & Gathercole, 2004).
In several of the intervention studies described above (e.g. Rashotte, McPhee and
Torgesen, 2001; Torgesen, Alexander, Wagner, Rashotte, Voeller, Conway and Rose,
2001) it was noted that, while students typically made substantial and significant gains
in word attack, reading accuracy and comprehension, gains in reading rate or fluency
tended to be much weaker and non-significant. Denton, Fletcher, Anthony & Francis
(2006) reported on a tertiary reading intervention study that incorporated activities
designed to promote fluency. The et al.study targeted 27 students (average age 8.6
years) who had severe reading difficulties. Fourteen of the students had already
demonstrated an inadequate response to secondary reading intervention. The
participants received two hours per day of direct instruction targeting decoding over
eight weeks using the Phono-Graphix programme (McGuinness & McGuinness, 1998).
Over the following eight weeks, the students were given, by experienced teachers, one
hour of daily instruction which was designed to promote reading fluency and was based
on the Read Naturally programme (Ihnot, Matsoff, Gavin & Hendrickson, 2001). The
latter involves features such as reading along with an audiotape, repeated reading, goal
setting and progress monitoring and has been shown to promote reading fluency
(Hasbrouck, Ihnot & Rogers, 1999). The study employed a multiple baseline design, with
commencement of instruction for one group of students (Group 2; n=11) being delayed
until the rest (Group 1; n=16) had completed the first phase of the intervention.
The students showed significant growth in decoding, fluency and reading
comprehension during the eight weeks of intervention with Phono-Graphix, with effects
sizes of 1.77 for word attack, 0.93 for word identification, 0.88 for phonemic decoding
fluency (TOWRE), and 0.67 for passage comprehension (all p