Hebrew Oral Reading Fluency

The predictive association between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension in English is well documented for students learning English as their first language (Shinn, Good III, Knutson, Tilly III, & Collins, 1992). To date, however, there is little research studying this relationship for Hebrew as a second language for students in American Orthodox Jewish day schools. The purpose of the current study was to determine if a predictive relationship exists between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension for first-grade to third-grade students attending American Orthodox Jewish day schools whose first language is English and studying Hebrew as a second language. Longitudinal data was also collected to determine if a predictive relationship exists between reading fluency in first grade and comprehension for the same students two years later in third grade. Data from this study were collected from 121 first, second and third graders in the spring of 2017 from two American Orthodox Jewish day schools. Students were assessed for fluency using the Mivchan Dinami shel Y'cholot Kriah (MaDYK) based on Goldberg (2010). As part of the MaDYK suite of assessments, students were assessed on comprehension through a retell measure. Students were also asked a series of explicit and implicit comprehension questions based on the stories. The findings revealed a moderate to strong relationship between Hebrew reading fluency and comprehension with stronger correlations in second and third grade than in first grade. A regression analysis demonstrated that when median words read correctly was looked at in terms of whether or not it predicts the median retell words; overall, the model was significant. Furthermore, the research revealed that oral fluency scores in first grade predict oral reading scores in third grade for the same students two years later. These findings support the claim, that Hebrew as a second language (L2) oral reading fluency scores in grades 1 — 3 are predictive of how well students comprehend the text and of future reading proficiency.