There once was a dog named Thor. He loved his owner, Isabella an immigrant from Mexico, very much. 

One day at the beach, Thor noticed that Isabella was having trouble reading fluently. As a great reader himself, Thor decided it was time he give Isabella some tips.

"In order to improve your accuracy,  you need to be able to identify the words in the text and decode them. It may also help you engage in cross-language transfer! You can do this by identifying and manipulating the sounds in English and tapping into sounds you have already learned how to read and write in Spanish!"

"Got it!!! What else?"

"You will also need to focus on prosody, or, the rhythmic and tonal aspects of speech that create the music of oral language. This includes intonation (patterns of pitch), stress (the degree of force with which a syllable is uttered), tempo (not reading text at a rate that is too fast or too slow), and rhythmic patterns of language (repeatedly practice the unstressed words and syllables that help create the language’s rhythmic structure )."

"Okay! I think I can do that, but I'm still having trouble understanding the sentences..."

"That would be your reading comprehension! This means your ability to understand and interpret the words and read them in such a manner that they convey the intended message of the text. I encourage you to reread texts, rehearse intonation and phrasing, and practice methodically rather than quickly."

"It is getting pretty late. Let's head back home and we can talk about strategies that you can use to help improve your fluency!"

"Sounds great to me!!!"