ABSTRACT
Much has been made in the research literature on reading concerning quantitative versus qualitative analysis. Alan Flurkey’s research on reading flow demonstrates that this is a false dichotomy. The research on fluency, which he thoroughly demolishes, uses a simple quantitative measure, words per minute over a text, as a measure of fluency. Using a simple program available on any computer, Flurkey was able to use a quantitative measure, the speed over any subunit of a text—word, sentence, paragraph, section—to show that rate varies from unit to unit within any one reading of a text by a reader. It was the transactional view of reading as meaning construction that led him to dispute the research on fluency in the first place, and it is the same theory that enables him to place his findings in the context of that theory and explain—using both quantitative and qualitative data—why rate varies as the reader constructs meaning.
