children can talk long before they can read and write. E

An interesting new extension of this work is Pretorius and Spaull(2016), who undertook the first large scale analysis of oral reading fluency inEnglish. Regardless of the assessment tool, the majority of South African childrenperform extremely poorly in reading, writing and mathematics in the early phasesof primary education (Fleisch, 2008; Spaull, 2013b, 2010; Taylor and Yu, 2009;van der Berg, 2008). Beyond the low results across the system, it is characterisedby a stark bimodal distribution (Fleisch, 2012; van der Berg, 2008; Taylor and Yu,2009; Spaull, 2013a.) The wealthiest quintile of schools is producing some readingresults, while the remaining schools are strikingly non-productive. The wordbimodal is used to suggest that the current system of public education representstwo distinct universes of schools – a small universe serving 20% of the nation’schildren and a vast universe of schools serving the remaining childre

Numerous studies have shown strong correlations between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension

This method wasespecially popular during the 1920's and 30's, which period wasalso characterized by the shift in emphasis from oral readingto silent reading. It was found that ability to read orally didnot necessarily mean ability to read silently and that instruction in oral reading was not always adequate if silent readingwas the goal.