Teste de Fluência na Leitura Silenciosa em Contexto para o Português Europeu: Estudo Preliminar de Validação com Estudantes Universitários

The aim of this study was to develop an instrument to assess contextualized silent reading fluency in Portuguese university students. The test construction was inspired on a U.S. Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency. It includes two equivalent forms. Each of them contains a text printed in uppercase without punctuation and spaces between words. Students had to draw a line between as many individual words as possible in a time limited condition. The test was administered in small groups (5 to 10 participants) to a total of 50 Portuguese university students. An appropriate reliability for the two forms, and a good concurrent validity with a silent reading comprehension test was observed. Therefore, the test proved to be a quick, accurate and cost-efficient measure of silent reading ability now available for European Portuguese, useful for research and/or clinical purposes. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.