Evaluating the effect of parent reading interventions on improving reading fluency of students with reading difficulties
Parents can run the exact fluency drill that works best for their child after a single coaching session and still see gains on new stories.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Doğanay Bilgi (2020) asked parents to run reading-fluency lessons at home. First the team used a brief experimental analysis to pick the best drill for each child. Then they taught the parent that drill in one short session.
Kids practiced the chosen method every night. The researchers tracked speed and accuracy on brand-new stories to see if skills carried over.
What they found
Every child read faster on both similar and totally new passages after parent coaching. Gains showed up quickly and stayed for several weeks.
Parents needed only a quick walk-through to run the drills correctly.
How this fits with other research
The result lines up with Lane et al. (1984), who first showed that four minutes of letter games during bedtime stories can teach prereading skills that transfer to school. Doğanay Bilgi extends that idea to older kids and tougher fluency work.
McGarty et al. (2018) used a 50-cent reward to keep parents on track with print lessons. The new study skips the money and still gets solid gains, suggesting brief experimental analysis alone can lock in parent follow-through.
Newell et al. (2025) found kids like to practice reading alone before reading to the class. Both papers highlight the power of repeated reading, but Doğanay Bilgi moves the practice to the kitchen table and lets parents lead.
Why it matters
You can send a one-page drill home tonight instead of waiting for extra clinic slots. Run a five-minute assessment, hand the winning method to mom or dad, and check progress with any new story. No extra staff, no extra cost, and the skill travels to fresh material.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
AbstractThe current study examines the effect of parent reading interventions on the reading fluency of students with reading disabilities. The experimental procedure was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, the Brief Experimental Analysis procedure was followed to determine the most effective reading fluency intervention for all participants, and in the next step, the parental delivery of the selected intervention procedure took place. Brief experimental analysis was used to identify appropriate reading fluency intervention for each participant. Parents were trained to use the intervention strategies with their children. They implemented the procedures during parent‐tutoring sessions at home and results were measured continuously to determine whether generalization occurred. Parent and child satisfaction with the interventions was assessed. Results demonstrated generalized increases in reading fluency in both high‐word‐overlap and low‐word‐overlap passages as a function of parent tutoring. Also, acceptability ratings by children and their parents indicated that they viewed the interventions as acceptable and effective.
Behavioral Interventions, 2020 · doi:10.1002/bin.1708