ELLs Running Records/Miscue Analysis Results

Entry #7

I tested a Spanish speaking student who has just completed fourth grade.  I used a level M text which was above her independent reading level so to produce miscues. 

Her accuracy rate was 88%, error ratio was 1:9, and self-correction ratio was 1:5.

I noticed that her errors were predominately visual errors.  She used the graphophonic cueing system to guess words, and word similarities would usually match the beginning letter and often the end letter also.  She rarely used the syntactic or semantic cueing systems, but did show she could make self-corrections when there was a familiar word to her.  Her guesses were often non-words, for example:

            Book               Student

great                grote  

female              fleem

Native English speakers will also make visual errors, but they will be more likely to substitute a real word, or realize the word they have said is not a real word and try to work it out again.

Problematic areas she showed, that can be common to all readers, include not knowing the different ways that the vowel sounds are represented in words.  For example, she read por for pair, and read crals for crawls.  She consistently mixed up the words ‘for’ and ‘from’ because of the visual similarity.  She didn’t notice to pronounce the nasal /n/ in the words crunches, munches and hang.  In spelling, children often have difficulty hearing the nasal sound, so they don’t write the /n/ sound.  She also made many errors by either adding an ‘s’ to the end of a word to make a plural, or by not pronouncing the ‘s’ at the end of a word where there was one.  I tried to find out if Spanish speakers pronounce plurals differently, but I still don’t know if this is a factor special to ELLs.  Does anyone know? 

My reader made an error that I think was affected by her being a Spanish speaker.  On two occasions she read the word ‘happens’ as ‘open’, and this may be because in Spanish the letter h is silent. 

1) The main learning target I would have for this student would be to have her focus on making meaning from the text, and be taught to monitor her own reading for meaning.  She should be shown how to use context cues to help with unknown words.  I would use an exercise such as giving her a cloze passage which forces her to use the other words in a sentence to guess a suitable word to go in the blank.  Also use a maze exercise which is similar to the close passage, but this time the blank has three possible answers.  This way the student will be forced to think about grammar (the type of word needed), as well as focusing on building meaning. 

2) Focus on building spelling awareness for the different ways to make the vowel sounds.

Work on problem-solving spelling exercises such as searching a text to find words that show different ways to make the vowel sounds.  Add these words to class lists, as well as having the student keep her own personal list.  Words can be added to the lists as the student comes upon more words.  Freeman & Freeman (2004, p.112) recommend this method as being more effective than memorizing spellings.

3) Phonemic awareness listening exercises for hearing the /h/ sound in words.  For instance, listen to a list of words, when you hear a word that begins with an /h/ raise your hand.

4) Explicitly teach plurals, and being aware of noticing and pronouncing the ‘s’ and ‘es’ at the end of words.

The second student was a Nepali speaker who had also just completed fourth grade.  The Nepalese language has a different alphabet system to English.  This student read a level P text, which was above his independent reading level.  His accuracy rate was 91%, with an error rate of 1:11.  He made no self-corrections.

He actually read aloud very well and at a reasonable pace.  He had a good sight word recognition, and was able to read words like – ancestors, obey, and predator – without slowing down.  When he made an error, he used more of the semantic and syntactic cueing systems combined, compared to how often he used the graphophonic cueing system.  This shows that he is trying to make meaning as he reads and he is using context cues.  For instance he read:

                Text                             Student

            Live indoors                live in neighborhoods

            Human families           human female

As with the other student, he also made many errors with missing out the letter s at the end of plurals.  Whether this is affected from his first language, I was unable to find out.  He made five errors by simply reading over a word and missing it out, and also errors with reading small words incorrectly, such as saying ‘a’ for ‘an’. These errors are common with native English speaking readers too.

He did find new vocabulary difficult to remember how to pronounce, such as the word ‘instinct’ which was in the title.  Even when he was told the word by the teacher he would mispronounce it throughout the text.  He also found two western names difficult to decode and pronounce.

For this reader the main targets would be:

1) Focus on making meaning from the text, and be taught to monitor his own reading for meaning.  We want to encourage self-correction by realizing that a sentence did not sound right.

2) Explicitly teach plurals, and be aware of noticing and pronouncing the ‘s’ and ‘es’ at the end of words.

3) When student skips over simple words he knows, ask him to reread the sentence and point to each word so he notices all of the words, and explain that all words are important to read.

4) As with all ELLs, explain and discuss new vocabulary before reading.  Listen to and repeat pronunciations of new words.

References

Freeman D.E. & Freeman Y.S. (2004).  Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, grammar.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.