Although automatic word reading does not, in and of itself, necessary guarantee fluency, it is obviously an important aspect.
Ehri and wilce have described the process of developing automaticity in word reading.
In itially, a young reader needs to use strategies to recognize words with repeated exposures to words, however, the process of connecting the sound, the spelling, and the meaning becomes less effortful.
Such connections allow words to be identified “by sight”.
According to Chall’s model of reading, once children have become familiar with basic sound-letter correspondences, there is a need for them to work on becoming automatic in their word reading in order to make the transition from learning to read reading to learn.
Laberge and Samuel (1794) theorized that without such automatic processing, children spend a disproportionate amount of time and attention on decoding, which limits the cognitive resources they can devote to comprehension.
Readers vary in the ease with which they develop automaticity in word reading.
In general, children with reading difficulties need many more exposures to words than average readers before they can read them automatically.
We can conclude that developing fluency is vital if children are to be successful at the primary purpose for reading constructing meaning from text.
It’s generally agreed that fluency develops from practice with contextual reading.
However, the National Reading Ranel concluded that there is not convincing evidence of the effectiveness of efforts to encourage independent silent reading through such programs as Accelerated Reader.
Getting children to read more is certainly a worthy endeavor but it may not be sufficient by itself.
The National Reading Panel found that a variety of practices that involve oral reading with feedback and guidance resulted in improvements in word recognition, fluency, and comprehension for both geed readers and those experiencing difficulty.