What Is Reading Fluency—
the Skill of Reading English Quickly and Smoothly?

The ability to read English quickly and smoothly is the ability to look at an English sentence, have its sounds arise in the mind immediately, and keep reading while preserving phrase groupings and the flow of the sentence.

Here, “quickly” does not mean reading English in a rush. It means not stopping word by word, preserving phrase units, reading with English stress rhythm, and understanding the content as you go. When children can read this way, English sentences begin to be processed as language with sound, much like the Japanese they use every day.

By contrast, if a child stops at each word, hesitates over pronunciation, and forgets the beginning of the sentence by the time they reach the end, comprehension will not move forward even if it looks as though they are reading. The ability to read English quickly and smoothly is the foundation for developing reading comprehension.

When people think about English reading comprehension, many treat it as one broad ability: “the ability to read and understand meaning.” In reality, it helps to divide it into two parts.

One is phonological encoding, which converts print into sound. The other is the ability to understand what has been read and build a mental representation. Here, we will call the former decoding ability and the latter comprehension ability.

If decoding ability is not yet well developed, trying to build reading comprehension all at once rarely works. That is because when working memory is consumed by converting print into sound, there is little room left for understanding meaning.

The state of “I can read it, but I don’t understand it” becomes much easier to understand from this perspective. The child can vocalize the print, but the process is so effortful that it never fully reaches meaning. To move beyond that stage, the first step is to make the process of converting print into English sound lighter and more automatic.

When we read English, many processes are happening in the mind at the same time. We look at print. We convert it into sound. We recognize words. We retrieve meaning. We grasp relationships within the sentence. We connect ideas across sentences. We build an overall mental image. Working memory is used for all of these processes.

If most of working memory is used just to convert print into sound, there is little capacity left to think about how sentences connect, imagine the content, or hold and integrate the overall meaning. As a result, children experience the frustrating state of “I’m reading, but I don’t understand.”

By contrast, when English sounds rise quickly from print, the processing load becomes smaller. That allows working memory to be used for understanding meaning.

There are several kinds of practices used to build English reading ability, including reading aloud, sodoku, and extensive reading. They are similar, but they do not serve the same role.

In other words, the relationship among the three can be organized like this:

Extensive reading is important. However, if children stop every time they read English, hesitate when turning words into sound, and become tired before they can grasp meaning, extensive reading will not last. That is why there is value in using sodoku beforehand to lighten the reading process.

Children and adults whose first language is Japanese already possess a Japanese phonological system. That system is indispensable for understanding Japanese. However, when they decode English into sound, their Japanese phonological knowledge can interfere.

English has phonological rules that differ from Japanese, including distinct phonemes, consonant clusters, stress rhythm, linking, reduction, and elision. But when people read English through the lens of Japanese phonology, they may insert vowels after consonants, pronounce function words too strongly even though they should be weak, or replace English stress timing with Japanese mora timing.

For example, a child may read an English sentence one word at a time in a flat Japanese-style mora rhythm—“ta-ta-ta-ta.” In that case, even though the child is looking at English print, it is not being decoded accurately as English sound.

Reading Fluency in English means being able to vocalize print quickly and smoothly in a way that follows the English phonological system.

Sodoku originally refers to reading text aloud without dwelling on meaning or detailed content. In Japan, the term is often used in contexts such as “reading the Analects aloud” without focusing on interpretation.

In English learning as well, sodoku means temporarily setting aside translation into Japanese and detailed grammar analysis. The first goal is simply to keep converting English text into sound with correct pronunciation and stress rhythm.

If a child stops every time they look at the text, hesitates over word pronunciation, takes a long time to finish a sentence, and feels that reading itself is burdensome, they will become tired before they ever reach comprehension.

Through sodoku, children repeatedly practice converting print into English sound, and as they do, frequent words, expressions, and sentence chunks begin to be processed instantly. As the act of reading becomes lighter, decoding ability and comprehension ability can finally be integrated into true reading comprehension.

What matters in sodoku is reading English as accurately as possible. The key points are correct pronunciation and the stress rhythm of English.

Japanese is a language in which every sound is pronounced with an even rhythm—“ta-ta-ta-ta.” English works differently: some words and syllables are stressed, while others are weak. In particular, function words such as prepositions, articles, auxiliaries, conjunctions, and pronouns are often reduced within a sentence. English also links words together, joining consonants and vowels, weakening certain sounds, and sometimes dropping them altogether.

That is why, when doing sodoku in English, children should not read each sound evenly as they would in Japanese. They need to read while attending to English stress, rhythm, and linking.

It is important to listen to the audio and read in sync with it as closely as possible. By continuing to read large amounts in step with correct English audio, children gradually internalize English-like pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and sound connections.

Reading Fluency is not simply reading fast. It is the ability to read smoothly while maintaining accuracy, an appropriate pace, phrasing, rhythm, and attention to meaning.

Fluency includes being able to read accurately, read without stopping, read with English rhythm, and read while preserving meaningful chunks.

As this ability develops, children rely less on translating into Japanese or analyzing grammar point by point every time they read. Instead, they begin processing English continuously from left to right.

At PalKids, sodoku of English passages is positioned as the entry point to that process.

When English is read slowly, there is room to translate word by word into Japanese. But in sodoku, where children keep reading at a steady pace, there is no time to translate one word at a time or keep going back. As a result, they are compelled to process English continuously from left to right.

At PalKids, we use 150 words per minute as a practice benchmark. This speed is a guide for practicing continuous left-to-right reading. The goal is not simply to read at that speed, but to do so while maintaining stress and rhythm.

Sodoku transforms reading. It moves children away from a slow style of reading that depends on going back, translating, and analyzing, and toward a style that processes English continuously in English word order.

Extensive reading is extremely important input for English acquisition. However, if children stop every time they read, hesitate over turning print into sound, and become tired before they can grasp meaning, extensive reading will not continue. One reason extensive reading fails to take root is simple: when children do not understand what they read, reading is not enjoyable—and when it is not enjoyable, they do not keep doing it.

If children move into extensive reading in that state, comprehension becomes too effortful to sustain. As a stage before extensive reading, sodoku first helps children read English smoothly as English sound. It lightens the process of turning print into sound. It helps them get used to reading with English rhythm. Then, when they move on to extensive reading, reading English becomes a task in which they can focus on understanding. That is why sodoku comes before extensive reading.

One program designed specifically for speed-oriented reading practice is 7-day English. It is built specifically to develop the ability to read English quickly and smoothly. Children look at the print and convert it into English sound. They read with English stress rhythm. They continue at a steady pace. They read again and again. The load involved in reading becomes lighter. That frees them to move toward meaning. 7-day English is a program designed around that sequence.

The central practice is repeated sodoku of multiple stories while relying on the model audio and the printed text and paying attention to English pronunciation, stress, and rhythm. It also includes activities that ask children about the content of the stories they read, not just how fast they read them. In other words, it is not merely a reading-aloud drill. It is designed to develop both reading speed and content understanding.

By having children do large amounts of sodoku in sync with audio and in English rhythm, 7-day English helps build the power to read English quickly and smoothly and move on to real reading comprehension.

Reading English accurately is related not only to reading, but also to listening. If the pronunciation a child uses when reading English aloud is shaped by Japanese-style sounds, it will not match real English audio. In other words, the English they hear and the English they produce are different.

As long as children are reading English by guesswork, interference from Japanese tends to appear: they read with Japanese beat timing, insert vowels after consonants, pronounce function words too strongly, and cannot process linking or reduction. Once that reading habit takes hold, the incorrect version of English sound in the child’s mind no longer matches the correct English they actually hear.

Reading in sync with audio that includes English rhythm, reduction, and linking helps build a match between the sounds children produce and the sounds they hear, which in turn supports listening comprehension.

The ability to read English quickly and smoothly is the ability to look at an English sentence, have the sounds of English arise naturally in the mind, and keep reading from left to right while preserving phrase groupings and sentence flow.

When we read English, we look at print, convert it into sound, recognize words, retrieve meaning, connect sentences, and represent the content in the mind. If too much load is placed on the process of turning print into sound, there is not enough working memory left for understanding. That is how children end up in the state of being able to read the words without understanding the meaning.

To develop the ability to read English quickly and smoothly, children need experience reading English text as English sound—including English pronunciation, stress rhythm, linking, reduction, and elision. Sodoku is the practice that lightens this reading process. By first reducing the load of sound conversion, it frees working-memory space for comprehension.

7-day English is built on this idea. Through large amounts of sodoku in sync with audio, it develops the ability to read English quickly and smoothly and move on to real comprehension.

Helping children read English. And then helping them understand what they read. The vital bridge between those two stages is the ability to read English quickly and smoothly.