Fluency - Importance of Punctuation

Fluency refers to the reader's ability to develop control over surface level text processing so that he or she can focus on understanding the deeper levels of meaning embedded in the text. The Rasinski article focused mainly on the three important "dimensions that build a bridge to comprehension." 1. Accuracy in Word Decoding; 2. Automatic Processing; and 3. Prosodic Reading. These steps mainly talked about how a child (or someone learning to read) needs to be able to sound out words in a text with minimal effort and few errors, as well as not ignoring the punctuation.  I wanted to focus on the third dimension of fluency.  Although being able to know words and their meanings is very important in reading, having expression and emotional understanding is important as well.  Prosodic Reading allows the reader to understand the feeling and depth of the text.  Without including punctuation an article, story, etc. would be very boring.   If skipping over the commas, periods, and exclamation points is taking place, the reader may not fully understand the text. Punctuation is put into literature to stimulate the reader, if ignored, the exciting aspect of learning new things becomes just some words on a page.  BOOORING!