What exercises most dramatically improve a student's reading rate?

Repeated reading is a highly effective strategy for improving a student's reading rate due to its focus on practice and reinforcement. This technique involves having students read the same text multiple times, which helps to build fluency and confidence with the material. Each reading offers opportunities for the student to become more familiar with vocabulary, sentence structure, and overall text organization.

As students engage in repeated reading, they often begin to recognize words more quickly and effortlessly, leading to improved speed. The familiarity developed through this practice also allows for better automaticity in word recognition, which is a key component of reading fluency. Additionally, repeated reading helps students to internalize the rhythm and flow of language, further enhancing their reading fluency over time.

While other methods like modeling reading or timed testing can also have their benefits, they do not focus as specifically on the repeated practice of the same text, which is crucial for significant improvements in reading rate. Timed testing primarily assesses reading speed rather than actively building it, and comprehension drills focus on understanding the content rather than increasing the speed at which it can be read.