Reading fluency is a critical component that is essential to student success. Being able to smoothly read passages without distracting breaks upon encountering perplexing words serves to increase reading comprehension. At the primary school level, student inability to understand what is being read "is rare among young elementary school children, but increases later as texts become more complex," according to the College of Education at the University of Georgia. In order to avoid problems at higher educational levels, educators often try to remedy concerns regarding reading fluency during a student's childhood.
A student's proficiency with regard to reading fluency facilitates his active engagement in the learning process. In describing a theory proposed by psychologist Keith Stanovich, called the "Matthew effect", Melanie R. Kuhn and Paula J. Schwanenflugel explain that "the gap in skill level between good and poor readers widens as poor readers avoid reading whereas skilled readers engage in additional opportunities to read." Thus, a student's reading fluency is often known to influence his eagerness to participate within a classroom context.
Reading fluency promotes automaticity. In their article "The Importance of Automaticity and Fluency for Efficient Reading Comprehension," Pamela Hood and Sandra Jones define "automaticity" as "fast, accurate and effortless word identification at the single word level." Students who demonstrate automaticity are usually able to focus on meaning when reading passages, since they do not need to devote undue attention to decoding the meanings of words contained in the material.
Being able to read fluently helps a student to communicate effectively with her peers. A student's development of fluency permits her to read passages expressively, speaking with prosody and rhythm when speaking aloud. These attributes of speech help him to establish and convey influential perspectives on written works.
Aside from affecting a student's intellectual growth, reading fluency may influence the emotional growth of a student. Students with low-fluency perceive themselves to be inferior to high-fluency peers and tend to suffer from bouts of low self-esteem as a result.