Reading Fluency

Sociopsycholinguistic Transactional Model

The sociopsycholinguistic transactional model of reading is an alternative explanation that does not employ the construct of reading fluency. In this model, readers sample visual cues and assign wording and syntax as they construct a personal meaning in a particular social context. Reading is viewed as a language process in which the strategies of sampling and selecting, predicting and inferring, and confirming and self-correcting operate on the graphophonic, lexicogrammatical, and semantic–pragmatic cues in a text. During an uninterrupted oral reading of a whole, authentic text, a reader can produce either the expected response or a miscue (if the reader’s response is not what was expected). Reading accuracy has no place in a sociopsycholinguistic transactional model because miscues are seen as by-products of the process of making sense of text. However, if reading fluency had a counterpart in a sociopsycholinguistic transactional model, it would be described in terms of mature control over a particular text wherein reading is both effective (successful at making sense) and efficient (using the least number of print cues necessary to maintain making sense).

Reading Flow

Processing text happens in time. Reading flow refers to the flexible and dynamic nature of reading [Page 1567]strategy employment during a reading. Reading flow analysis is used with miscue analysis to extend the sociopsycholinguistic transactional model by illustrating observable instances of reading strategy use as happenings in time during a reading event.

Reading flow is reported in words per minute, but because this analysis takes into account [Page 1568]pauses, repetitions and self-corrections, omissions, insertions, substitutions, and the assignment of alternate syntactic structures such as conjoining independent clauses or shifting clause dependencies, as well as the reading of words—in short, anything a reader does during a reading—it is more useful to think of reading flow in terms of words processed per minute.

Reading flow analysis is used to document within-text variation in reading rate. Levels of analysis can focus on either the paragraph or the sentence level of text. Analysis at the sentence level results in finer detail and clearer insights into how readers use time as they read.

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