Praxis SLP Licensure Exam

A 12-year-old student shows fluent reading but poor comprehension. This pattern of literacy behavior is associated with deficits in which area?

1. Phonological awareness and grapheme-phoneme correspondence

2. Word recognition and rapid automatic naming

3. Oral vocabulary and sentence processing

4. Sight word reading skills and structural analysis

The correct answer is: Oral vocabulary and sentence processing

The situation described, where a student demonstrates fluent reading but struggles with comprehension, typically indicates issues related to oral vocabulary and sentence processing. Fluent reading suggests that the student can decode words efficiently but lacks a robust vocabulary, which is crucial for understanding and interpreting text meaningfully. When a reader possesses a limited oral vocabulary, they may be able to pronounce words correctly without grasping their meanings, leading to difficulties in making sense of the text as a whole. Additionally, challenges in sentence processing can affect how a student understands relationships between ideas and constructs meaning from sentences, further impairing overall comprehension. In contrast, the other areas mentioned—such as phonological awareness, word recognition, sight word skills, and grapheme-phoneme correspondence—are more closely associated with the initial stages of reading development. Students with difficulties in these areas typically struggle with decoding and may not necessarily exhibit fluent reading. Thus, while they are important skills, they do not directly explain the observed pattern of fluent reading paired with poor understanding.