Being able to read at a fluent rate confers many advantages on an individual in both educational and wider social contexts throughout life. To be a fluent reader means that the individual can sustain high accuracy while reading at a rate appropriate to the material and the setting, and implies the development of automaticity in the cognitive processes involved in reading. Fluency has not, however, been the focus of much research. In this study, an observational learning technique — feedforward video self-modelling (FFVSM) — was used to improve children's reading fluency. Eleven primary (elementary) school children aged between 72 and 108 months, four girls and seven boys, viewed edited video footage of themselves seemingly reading a difficult text at a fluent rate six times over a 2-week period. Reading performance (accuracy, comprehension and rate) was measured at pre- and post-test using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, and fluency and comprehension scores were measured across the intervention period using the Science Research Associates Reading Laboratory (SRA) graded reading texts. The results showed that the majority of the children improved their reading fluency, comprehension and accuracy as well as reader self-perception (a proxy measure of self-efficacy). These positive results suggest that FFVSM could be a rapid, cost-effective intervention to be used within educational settings to promote fluent reading.
