Effects of reading fluency stimulation with emphasis on prosody.

PURPOSE To characterize the reading ability of children with five years of education according to temporal standards, as well as to compare the reading fluency performance of these children before and after a reading program based on prosody standards. METHODS Thirty two fourth-grade children participated in this study. They performed reading aloud and picture description tasks in order to verify reading rate, speech rate, text comprehension and the adequacy of prosody variation. Afterwards, it was carried out a reading stimulation program with emphasis on prosody, composed of five 15-minute sessions of reading tasks. At the end of the program, children were re-assessed, in order verify their performance after stimulation. RESULTS Changes were observed in reading rate, number of words misread, and quality of prosody during the reading task. CONCLUSIONS The reading program promoted positive changes in reading fluency measures.