What aspect of reading fluency has gained more emphasis in teaching since 2000?

The emphasis on accuracy and rate as aspects of reading fluency reflects a comprehensive understanding of how proficient reading is developed. Since 2000, educational research has increasingly highlighted the importance of not just recognizing words but doing so quickly and accurately, as these factors are critical for overall reading comprehension.

Accuracy ensures that a reader understands the words correctly, while rate focuses on the speed of reading. The combination of these two elements facilitates a smoother reading experience, allowing learners to devote more cognitive resources to comprehension rather than decoding words. This shift has led to instructional strategies that incorporate timed reading exercises and assessments aiming to improve both how quickly and how correctly students can read text, underpinning the essential role that these components play in fluent reading.

In contrast, while expressiveness, automaticity, and decoding and encoding are important elements of literacy, the comprehensive focus on both accuracy and rate marks a significant shift in pedagogical approaches in recent years, aligning with research that links fluency directly to improved reading comprehension.