The Role of Reading Fluency and Vocabulary in Meeting the Goal of the American Graduation Initiative

• In Event: Research on Adult Education Outcomes

Abstract

A study was conducted to identify reading components that differentiate college students reading at or below the post-secondary level (13th grade). This cutoff aligned with the goal of the American Graduation Initiative in helping an additional 5 million students to graduate from college by 2020. A stepwise discriminant analysis on data from 62 college students indicated vocabulary and silent reading rate as the best predictors of group membership out of a set of variables that also included verbal working memory, sight word reading, and decoding. Together vocabulary and reading rate predicted group membership correctly for 82.3% of the cases. Implications will be discussed of the use of vocabulary and reading fluency for diagnostic and instructional purposes with college readers.

Author

• Omer Ari, Georgia State University