The first and most common reason for not being a fluent reader is that the child does not yet know how to decode very well yet. They lack automatic decoding skills, and this prevents them from being able to read accurately, much less smoothly and quickly. Decoding accuracy is the first prerequisite to fluency.

Maryanne Wolf

I have a few close friends with whom I can practice speaking Italian, but I mostly maintain fluency through reading.

Amanda Knox

Until the age of five, my parents spoke to me in Chinese or a combination of Chinese and English, but they didn't force me to speak Mandarin. In retrospect, this was sad, because they believed that my chance of doing well in America hinged on my fluency in English. Later, as an adult, I wanted to learn Chinese.

Amy Tan

There is a fluency and an ease with which true mastery and expertise always expresses itself, whether it be in writing, whether it be in a mathematical proof, whether it be in a dance that you see on stage, really in every domain. But I think the question is, you know, where does that fluency and mastery come from?

Angela Duckworth

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.

Charles Horton Cooley

Millennials regularly draw ire for their cell phone usage. They're mobile natives, having come of age when landlines were well on their way out and payphones had gone the way of dinosaurs. Because of their native fluency, Millennials recognize mobile phones can do a whole lot more than make calls, enable texting between friends or tweeting.

Chelsea Clinton

When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.

David Antin

Contrary to the negative stereotype that folks who swear have poor vocabularies, a fluency in taboo language correlates with overall verbal fluency. The more words you know, the more you know... and the more colorfully you can express yourself, with nuance, metaphor, and emotion.

Faith Salie

I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone else through my fluency in the language.

Harry Mathews

Mothers have always held such symbolic weight in determining a person's worth. Your mother tongue, your motherland, your mother's values - these things can qualify or disqualify you from attaining myriad American dreams: love, fluency, citizenship, legitimacy, acceptance, success, freedom.

Jenny Zhang

My privileged upbringing and education and linguistic fluency gave me such proximity to whiteness that it stung all the more to still find myself outside of it. My mother, on the other hand, not only accepted that she would always be an outsider in this country but also believed it to be a finer fate and home than any other she could have had.

Jenny Zhang

When a parent says about a book, 'That's not my child's world,' I remind them of the future. Social fluency will be the new currency of success. Not experiencing diversity challenges our kids' future in the global work force. It handicaps them from making America and the world more livable and just.

Jewell Parker Rhodes

Fluency in even one other language would be fantastic.

Jim Broadbent

I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish.

Joshua Foer

The government needs to invest in raising digital fluency of its citizenry.

Julie Sweet

We called our research 'Getting to Equal - How Digital is Helping to Close the Gender Gap at Work.' And at its heart we found that when men and women have the same level of digital fluency, women are better at using their digital skills to gain more education and find work.

Julie Sweet

Digital fluency can accelerate progress.

Julie Sweet

Digital fluency is about basic skills.

Julie Sweet

Digital fluency... is literally your ability to do things like banking online, to connect with people, to use a device and the Internet in a very easy way.

Julie Sweet

When I wrote 'The Giver,' it contained no so-called 'bad words.' It was set, after all, in a mythical, futuristic, and Utopian society. Not only was there no poverty, divorce, racism, sexism, pollution, or violence in the world of 'The Giver'; there was also careful attention paid to language: to its fluency, precision, and power.

Lois Lowry

Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion.

Marcus Tullius Cicero