Reading Difficulties of Grade 5 Pupils in English

The main purpose of the study was to diagnose the reading difficulties of grade 5 pupils in English. The researchers made use of descriptive method to obtain the data on the reading difficulties, comprehension, and behavioral performance of the respondents. To gather the data, the researchers adopted the reading selections from Philippine Informal Reading Inventory as a tool in examining the reading level of the pupils. As for the respondents’ reading miscues and behavioral performance, a teacher-made questionnaire was used to determine the learning areas that require intervention. The findings of the study pointed out that grade 5 pupils had difficulties on word recognition and reading comprehension. They tend to mispronounce English words and their behavior affects their performance while reading. A proposed reading program was included in this study to provide a reading remediation to learners with reading difficulties. Alongside with this initiative, teachers may conduct drill lessons to monitor progress of the pupils on areas that need improvement. Teachers must also be aware on the common errors committed by the learners to be able to provide remedial instruction.

Preparing Special Education Preservice Teachers to Teach Phonics to Struggling Readers: Reducing the Gap Between Expert and Novice Performance

In this study, the authors examine the learning of 48 preservice teachers (PSTs) taking a literacy course in special education and the primary-grade struggling readers they tutored in a field component of the course. The primary purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the effects of the course and tutoring on PSTs’ knowledge and preparedness to teach reading. In addition, the authors examine whether the phonics scores of their tutored students improved. The results showed that PSTs improved in their knowledge of literacy, self-confidence in teaching reading to struggling readers, and analyses of oral reading miscues. Their tutored students also improved significantly on measures of their phonics knowledge and performance. The authors of this study suggest that carefully designed literacy coursework with field experiences can help PSTs perform more like mature teachers when the literacy tools and instructional scripts for teaching phonics are made explicit and transparent. Implications and limitations are discussed.

An Analysis of Reading Miscues in Three Genres of English Texts for Junior High School Students

The purpose of the present research is to compare and analyze eighth graders’ English reading performance in the three different genres, including the Comparison/Contrast, the Process, and the Cause/Effect by reading miscue analysis. After the individual interview, the participants read the three different texts, and then retell the three texts. At last, through the reading miscue inventory (Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 1987), the participants’ English oral reading miscues and retelling in these three different genres are analyzed and compared.According to the repeated measure ANOVA, there are two significant differences in the reading miscues in these three genres for the participants, including the meaning construction and the grammatical relationship of reading miscues. In terms of the retelling scores in these three different genres, there are also significant differences among these three different genres. On the other hand, according to the descriptive statistics, the participants get the best performance in the Cause/Effect, but they get the lowest retelling scores in the Comparison/Contrast.

Probing the Enactment of Reading Miscues: A Study Examining Reading Fluency

Subsequent to the National Reading Panel’s (2000) report, more researchers have been examining the role that reading fluency plays in the development of a child’s reading skills. This study investigated the efficacy of the National Reading Panel’s research claim that a child learns reading fluency skills mainly through phonics and decoding instruction. Using a methodology to track the source of reading miscues, this paper demonstrates that a student’scultural and semantic knowledge of textvitally influences the development of reading fluency skills. Specifically, the findings suggest that a child culturally enacts reading fluency both through graphophonic and semantic knowledge of words. In the process of cultural enactment, reading fluency embodies a complex interplay between graphophonic understandings and a student’s cultural domains. Lastly, this work theorizes the role that cultural and semantical influences play in the role of a student acquiring reading fluency.

أخطاء القراءة الجهرية باللغة العربية للطلبة الناطقين بالملايوية: دراسة وصفية تحليلية / Errors of Reading Aloud in Arabic among Malay learners: A descriptive and analytical study

ملخص البحث: تناول هذا البحث دراسة عملية القراءة باللغة العربية من وجهة نظر علم اللغة النفسي؛ حيث هدفت إلى الكشف عن أنواع أخطاء القراءة الجهرية لدى الطلبة الناطقين بالملايوية في قسم اللغة العربية وآدابها بكلية معارف الوحي والعلوم الإنسانية في الجامعة الإسلامية العالمية بماليزيا، ومعرفة مدى تمكّنهم من استخدام الإشارات اللغوية الثلاث - الإشارة الرمزية الصوتية، والإشاراة التركيبية، والإشارة الدلالية - أثناء قراءة النص العربي المشكّل بالحركات للوصول إلى الفهم والاستيعاب، وإظهار تأثير الاستجابات غير المتوقعة للنص العربي المكتوب في مستوى الاستيعاب القرائي. استخدمت الدراسة قائمة تحليل القراءة غير المتوقعة للنص المكتوب لجمع البيانات، تناول الباحثان الأخطاء الواقعة في قراءة المشاركات والدرجات المكتسبة في إعادة صياغة القصة واختبار الاستيعاب القرائي. أظهرت الدراسة أن الخطأ في الحذف كان أكثر الأنواع وقوعاً، ويليه الخطأ في الإبدال، ثم الخطأ في التكرار، وخطأ التنغيم، والخطأ في الإضافة. وأبرزت أيضا أن المشاركات قد اعتمدن كثيراً على الإشارة الرمزية الصوتية، وأنهن لم يستخدمن الإشارة التركيبية بشكل ممتاز، وأما مدى تمكّنهن من استخدام الإشارة الدلالية فكان متوسطاً، وتوصلت الدراسة إلى أن مستوى الاستيعاب للمشاركات لا يرتفع آلياً بانخفاض عدد الاستجابات غير المتوقعة، وكشفت عن أن الاستجابات غير المتوقعة ذات الجودة المنخفضة أدّت إلى فقدان تام للمعنى، ووجدت أن المشاركات قد واجهن المشكلات اللغوية خاصةً في قواعد النحو ومعاني المفردات. الكلمات المفتاحية: مفهوم القراءة- القراءة الجهرية- المستوى الدلالي- المستوى النحوي- المستوى الصرفي. Abstract: This study approached Arabic reading process from the psycholinguistic standpoint. It aimed at identifying the types of oral reading errors committed by Malay-speakers learners of Arabic language at the Department of Arabic Language and Literature, Kuliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia. The research addressed itself to the question of how these readers utilized the language cues- graphophonic, syntactic and semantic - to help them make sense of the vowelized Arabic text, and the question of how miscues affected reading comprehension. This study used Reading Miscue Inventory to gather information. The number of miscues made and the scores for the retellings and comprehension questions are patterned using Microsoft Excel program and are converted into percentages. The study indicated that the most common types of reading errors committed were omission, followed by substitution and repetition, and then intonation and insertion. The findings showed that most readers depended extensively on graphophonic cues, and were less efficient in using syntactic cues. Their use of semantic cues was moderate. Quantitative analysis of the miscues showed that although the number of oral reading miscues decrease, reading comprehension scores may not automatically improve. Qualitative analysis of the miscues indicated that the low quality miscues did not make sense in the context of the sentence. The study also revealed that learners have language problems especially in grammar and vocabulary. Keywords: Concept of Reading – Reading out loud – Semantic level – Syntactic level – Morphological level. Abstract: Kajian ini bertujuan untuk mendekati proses membaca dari sudut psikolinguistik dengan mengenalpasti jenis-jenis kesalahan bacaan yang dilakukan oleh pelajar Melayu di Jabatan Bahasa Arab dan Sastera, Fakulti IlmuWahyu dan Sains Kemanusiaan, UIAM. Kajian ini menangani persoalan untuk mengenalpasti cara para pembaca memanfaatkan isyarat-isyarat bahasa – bentuk tulisan, tatabahasa, semantic – untuk membantu mereka memahami teks bahasa Arab yang tidak berbaris; persoalan tentang kesan penggunaan isyarat yang salah yang mebawa kepada pemahaman bacaan yang salah akan turut diberikan perhatian. Kajian ini menggunakan Inventori Kesalahan memahami tanda bahasa dalam bacaan untuk mengumpul data. Kesalahan memahami tanda bahasa yang dilakukan, markah terkumpul untuk pengulangan bacaan dan soalan-soalan kefahaman direkodkan dengan Microsoft Excel sebelum ditukar kepada kadar peratusan. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan jenis kesalahan yang paling kerap ialah meninggalkan bacaan sesuatu, diikuti dengan menggantikan bacaan dengan bacaan lain, mengulangi bacaan seterusnya menggunakan intonasi dan memasukkan sesuatu dalam bacaan. Kajian juga mendapati kebanyakan pembaca banyak bergantung kepada tanda dan isyarat daripada bentuk tulisan dan amat kurang dalam menggunkan tanda atau isyarat daripada tatabahasa. Mereka agak sederhana dalam memanfaatkan tanda dan isyarat semantik. Kajian kuantitatif menunjukkan walaupun jumlah kesalahan bacaan disebabkan oleh salah memahami isyarat dan tanda ciri ciri tulisan, tatabahasa dan makna berkurangan, namun markah pemahaman tidak pula secara otomatiknya bertambah baik. Ia juga menunjukkan tanda atau isyarat yang lemah daripada ciri-ciri bahasa tidak dapat difahami dalam konteks sebenar sesuatu ayat. Turut disimpulkan ialah kelemahan para pelajar sendiri dalam aspek tatabahsa dan perbendaharaan kata. Kata kunci: Konsep bacaan – Bacaan Lantang – Peringkat Makna – Peringkat Tatabahasa - Peringkat Morfologi.

Reading in Two Languages: Evidence from Miscue Analysis

This paper reports on the oral reading of five grade 2 to 6 isiXhosa (L1) speakers reading isiXhosa (L1) and English (L2) texts. It examines the readers’ oral reading miscues (or errors) to understand the extent to which these miscues constitute a language or a literacy problem in this group of readers. Conclusions are that (a) these readers read better in isiXhosa than in English; (b) they are not reading as well as they could be reading in isiXhosa; (c) isiXhosa reading difficulties appear to be related to poor teaching of literacy; (d) while English reading difficulties appear to be related to both poor teaching of literacy and to low levels of language proficiency in English, this is related to classroom practices but is also independent of it.