Training reading fluency among poor readers of German: many ways to the goal

Outcomes of two training programs aimed at improving reading speed for 39 German-speaking poor readers in grades 2 and 4 were evaluated. During a 6-week training period, a specific target for children in a computer group was to improve reading of word-initial consonant clusters by practice in associating an orthographic unit with a corresponding phonological unit. Children in a paired reading group read books with an adult tutor. The results showed that, in reading words in which the computer-trained sublexical items were included, both groups exhibited similar improvement. A post hoc analysis suggested that computer training was associated with better reading skills with respect to the trained sublexical items; however, this improvement did not show large generalization effects to the words with the sublexical items. The paired reading group showed a more rapid gain in global word reading fluency than the computer group. Neither of the groups improved their pseudoword reading.