It is a mistake to underestimate the importance of naming speed to the development of fluent reading. This is the ability to pull from long term memory the names of letters, numbers, objects, colors. Children with poor rapid naming scores are very likely to be dysfluent readers and to have difficulty reading multisyllabic words.
The CTOPP is the instrument I use to determine RAN or Rapid Automatic Naming.
The results are very useful in determining what kind of intervention is required. Poor Rapid Naming can be remediated, but it takes practice and perseverance. The sounds, syllable types and rules of syllabication must be over learned. This process makes the information more accessible more quickly, thus resulting in more fluent reading.
Smart, well behaved youngsters are more likely to have rapid naming problems overlooked in the earliest grades. The smarter the child is, the longer this problem can go undetected.
Rapid Naming Evaluation
I recently evaluated a new 4th grader who finally began showing her weakness at the end of third grade, earning a 2 on the 3rd grade NYC, ELA & Math tests. Her mom recognized that she was a pretty dysfluent reader, but all her previous teachers were more impressed by her great comprehension and less concerned with her dysfluency.
Her CTOPP results were very revealing. Her phonemic awareness was average, her phonemic memory was above average but her rapid naming was lower than the 1st percentile. When I told her mom about this everything finally made sense to her.
Her very slow reading, her terrible spelling, her compensating for her deficiency most easily in grade 1, a bit less in grade 2, her NYS scores in grade 3 and her teachers in grade 4 finally recognizing that she had a problem.
I just evaluated a grade 1 student, who's parents contacted me describing their daughter as "an average reader with little confidence who feels frustrated with her ability". Her CTOPP scores were almost identical to the 4th grader I described above.
With immediate intervention this 1st grader can avoid being behind in 4th grade.
