A student with labored oral reading struggles to comprehend grade-level texts. To improve reading comprehension, instruction should primarily focus on:

• A. Phoneme substitution drills
• B. Sight-word automaticity and fluency
• C. Vocabulary memorization
• D. Comprehension strategy instruction

Answer: (B)

Fluency is what turns decoding into understanding. When a reader labors over words, most cognitive effort goes to sounding out each word, leaving little mental capacity to grasp meaning. Improving sight-word automaticity helps recognize common words instantly, and boosting fluency—speed, accuracy, and expression—lets the reader process text more smoothly and chunk it into meaningful phrases. With less effort wasted on decoding, the reader can focus on comprehension, make inferences, and connect ideas across the text.

Phoneme substitution drills boost decoding and phonemic awareness, which are important early on, but they don’t directly address the bottleneck of slow, effortful reading that impedes understanding. Vocabulary memorization helps with word meanings, yet it doesn’t ensure the reader can access those words quickly enough to follow the text. Comprehension strategy instruction is crucial, but when fluency is the barrier, the most impactful first step is building automatic word recognition and fluent reading, so strategies can be applied effectively afterward.