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Using Peer-Mediated Fluency Instruction To Address The Needs Of Adolescent Struggling Readers, Nikki L. Josephs

Communication Sciences and Disorders Dissertations

Teaching oral reading fluency is an important aspect of effective literacy instruction. Researchers have investigated a number of strategies shown to be effective with beginning readers; however, less empirical evidence is available for older, struggling readers. The secondary curriculum presents adolescent struggling readers with different challenges, including successful completion of higher level comprehension skill activities, high-stakes assessments, and limited classroom time with practice with oral reading fluency exercises. These conditions may lead to academic failure or school drop-out for students who have limited reading ability. An alternating conditions design (Kazdin, 1982) was used to examine the influence of peer-mediated fluency …