Teste de Fluência em Leitura (TFL): desenvolvimento, evidências de validade e precisão.

Reading fluency is a relevant skill in discriminating between readers with and without reading problems, especially in postliteracy grades and in more regular languages such as Brazilian Portuguese. Reading fluency measures help monitor students' progress in response to reading interventions. Objective: To develop and investigate the psychometric properties of a test to evaluate reading fluency of isolated words and texts in Elementary School-II. Method: The study had 3 phases: 1) Development of Reading Fluency Test (TFL); 2) Pilot study; 3) Study for evidence of validity and accuracy. In phase 1, the test was developed with two parts, reading single words and reading texts. In phase 2, 48 students from a state school in São Paulo participated, being 29 students from the 6th grade and 19 from the 9th grade. This phase revealed the 9th grade had greater performance than 6th grade, as expected, and led to changes in the instructions. In phase 3, another 145 students from 6th to 9th grade participated, 74 of them male (51%) from the same school where the pilot study took place. Results: Analysis of Variance revealed, in general, a significant increase in performance with school progression, with differentiation especially between initial years. There were moderate correlations between measures of fluency of isolated words and text. Correlations with Portuguese school grades were low. Reliability analyzes indicated adequate internal consistency, however, there are items with low discrimination index. In this way, the TFL proved to be a promising instrument, but more suitable for the evaluation of 6th and 7th years. Changes must be made to make it more sensitive to the final grades of Elementary School. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]