Fluency is an issue for adult beginning readers, intermediate readers, and perhaps for those reading at more advanced ABE levels. There are very large differences between adults with good and poor reading fluency, and adult beginning readers' fluency is similar to the fluency of children who are beginning readers.

Studies: **Gallo, 1972; **Mudd, 1987

Research Summary: In the early 1970s, a large-scale National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) study of young adults' literacy was undertaken (Gallo, 1972). The silent reading rates of 26 to 35 year-olds were recorded as they read two passages, one written at about a 10th grade level and another at about a college level. The average silent reading rate (speed) for those adults with poor fluency, those at the 25th percentile, was 145 words per minute. This was close to 100 words per minute slower than the rate for those with good fluency (75th percentile), and about 40 words per minute slower than those with average fluency (50th percentile).

In another, experimental study, a group of ABE beginning readers and a group of children, both reading at about the first grade level (GE1), were tested on oral reading rate and accuracy. Rate and accuracy were tested by counting the number of hesitations, corrections, and omissions made while reading. Results suggest that the oral reading rate and accuracy of adult beginning readers is similar to the rate and accuracy of children who are beginning to read. In addition, both groups used their decoding skills and context clues in the same way; they had similar reading strategies (Mudd, 1987).