International education policy makers, donors, and implementers have heavily emphasized correct words per minute (CWPM) to measure reading intervention impact. While fluency integrates accuracy, automaticity, and prosody, the dominant measurement approach measures rate and accuracy within 1 minute, thereby privileging the need for speed. Many practitioners pursue a universal CWPM goal; some tout CWPM as a “proxy” for comprehension. We ask whether CWPM is an appropriate, global reading goal. We review early grade reading debates and the literature regarding fluency and its relationship to comprehension. We use reading assessment data from 11 country sites to investigate the appropriateness of this goal in monolingual and multilingual populations and explore how CWPM and untimed reading accuracy relate to comprehension. We conclude that a global CWPM standard rests upon untenable assumptions: we cannot justify the need for speed. We offer suggestions to develop a more empirically informed, culturally and linguistically sensitive approach to reading improvement.

中文翻译：

---

速度的需要：质疑口语流利在国际阅读工作中的主导地位

国际教育政策制定者、捐助者和实施者非常强调每分钟正确字数 (CWPM) 来衡量阅读干预的影响。流畅度综合了准确度、自动性和韵律，主要的测量方法是在 1 分钟内测量速度和准确度，因此优先考虑速度。许多从业者追求一个普遍的 CWPM 目标；一些人将 CWPM 吹捧为理解的“代理”。我们询问 CWPM 是否是一个合适的全球阅读目标。我们回顾了低年级阅读辩论和有关流畅性及其与理解关系的文献。我们使用来自 11 个国家/地区站点的阅读评估数据来调查该目标在单语和多语人群中的适用性，并探讨 CWPM 和不限时阅读准确性如何与理解相关。我们得出的结论是，全球 CWPM 标准基于站不住脚的假设：我们无法证明对速度的需求是合理的。我们提供建议，以开发一种更有经验、更具有文化和语言敏感性的阅读改进方法。