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

Developing Culturally Relevant Literacy Assessments for Bahamian Children

The strong presence of culturally relevant materials in classrooms is seen as an indicator of good teaching but the development and use of these materials is under-investigated. Similarly, the actual construction and use of culturally relevant materials for literacy assessment purposes is under- reported. This paper examines the development and field-testing of culturally appropriate reading assessment materials for primary-school children in the Bahamas. The construction of culturally relevant assessment materials relies on the deep and intimate knowledge of the context and the use of the materials involves analyses from several perspectives: estimation of readability levels, creation of a range of question and activity types, analyses of students’ performance and comparison with other literacy performance indicators. This paper describes the development and field-testing of culturally relevant materials in the Bahamas

"WHEN YOU WRITE 'FOUR' IN CHINESE, YOU WILL FIND TWO 'J'S' IN IT": A CASE STUDY OF FOUR CHILDREN LEARNING TO BE LITERATE IN ALPHABETIC AND NON-ALPHABETIC PRINT

Thesis (PhD) - Indiana University, School of Education, 2006Framed within sociocultural, sociopsycholinguistic, and socio-semiotic views of language and literacy learning, I employed a qualitative case study approach to examine the nature of bilingual and biliteracy learning process of four young ethnic Chinese children living in a community where mainstream American culture and English predominated. I used observations, interviews, and analysis of documents to collect data over a 3.5-year period at a community-based, weekend mother tongue (Chinese) class where I was also the teacher of my research participants. A constant comparison approach was used to analyze and interpret the data gathered. Because of their heritage and life experiences, these children had access to two sets of cultural and semiotic resources in both minority (home and the weekend mother tongue school) and dominant (community where they lived and school they attended daily) sociocultural contexts. Findings from this research revealed that meaning making began when these children responded to existing or created texts while involved in semiotic engagements, and through this process these young learners acquired culturally and semiotically specific knowledge. Experiences with and exposure to these two sets of specifics enabled children to transfer knowledge they acquired in one context to the other, as well as to transmediate between sign systems across sociocultural borders. Finally, within the context of the classroom, these children also experimented with different ways of meaning making, drawing knowledge they possessed from both contexts to create new meaning, from which new specifics were generated

Reading in English and in Chinese: Case Study of Retrospective Miscue Analysis with Two Adult ELLs

Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) has proved to be a useful instructional tool in language arts classrooms and for English learners from various cultures. However, it has not been used with native Mandarin-speaking English learners. This qualitative case study explored the reading process of two adult Mandarin-speaking ELs through RMA. They read two pieces in simplified Chinese and two in English respectively. This study demonstrates that RMA supports adult ELs to become more metacognitive about their reading process, uncover reading strategies they use, build their confidence to read, acquire more agency, and learn more about the English language. RMA is a powerful instructional strategy for adult ELs. This qualitative case study explored the reading process of two adult Mandarin-speaking ELs through Retrospective Miscue Analysis. It demonstrates that RMA supports adult ELs to become more metacognitive about their reading process, uncover reading strategies they use, build their confidence to read, acquire more agency, and learn more about the English language

Biliteracy development : a case study.

Literacy as a process has been the object of study in different languages. Research has also been devoted to literacy development in bilingual settings both in native and second languages. Early bilingualism, has also been studied. However, the research in the area of biliteracy development, is scarce. This is the case study of a bilingual kindergarten child\u27s journey through a year as she tries to accomplish biliteracy although formal literacy instruction was not provided in both languages. The data was gathered through participant observation at home, where Spanish was spoken, and at school, where English was the language of instruction. Informal and formal interviews where also used. Reading Miscue Inventories in English and Spanish were administered twice in the study. Parallels were found between the child\u27s biliteracy development and the studies on literacy with monolingual children implying that literacy as a process is the same across and among languages. Through the process of constructing and reconstructing, through experimentation, creating and confirming hypotheses we observed the child\u27s movement from nonstandard to standard spellings along with the exploration of different genres, styles and uses of writing. The child\u27s strategies developed parallel across both languages, however where the languages differed, the strategies differed too. The child used decoding as an initial Spanish reading strategy because of an early exposure to a phonics approach to English reading, which she transferred to Spanish reading. When the child was exposed to other English reading strategies, she began to use these for Spanish reading. Finally, this study suggested that research findings in the area of bilingual language acquisition are congruent with the study of biliteracy development. Features such as language differentiation, influence of the environment over the language choice, audience sensitivity and the transfer of strategies from one language to another, are present in this study. The use of different theoretical approaches to literacy instruction, along with the need for maintenance programs of bilingual education where holistic theories of literacy instruction are exercised are educational practices recommended by this study

When Reading Goes Digital: Conceptual and Methodological Reviews on Technology and L2 Vocabulary Learning

Existing research syntheses on technology and second language acquisition have called for further systematic investigation of the theoretical frameworks and methodologies used in research of this field. Additionally, although vocabulary has been one of the most popular areas in technology-integrated second language acquisition research, a majority of the previous studies have examined college students or other adult populations. To fill these gaps, this dissertation systematically reviewed the theoretical and methodological trends in research on technology-integrated L2 vocabulary learning for PreK-12 learners of English. A total of 60 studies published between 2008 and 2018 were selected for analysis. The types of vocabulary knowledge, affordances of technology, and major theoretical frameworks were analyzed to uncover conceptual and theoretical trends; study context, participant demographics, research design, and outcome measures were analyzed for the methodological characteristics of the selected studies. The theoretical review showed that the current research on technology-integrated L2 vocabulary learning for young learners was mostly guided by information/cognitive processing theories, social constructivism, and sociocognitive theories. However, a large body of the studies indicated a lack of direct reference to a theoretical framework, which demonstrated a need to strengthen the connections among theory, research, and practice in this field. The analysis of methodological characteristics has revealed several areas for further improvement, such as more complete reporting of the participant’s English proficiency level, consistent reporting of study duration and length of treatment, and more research in English as second language contexts

Towards a new model of readability

This thesis attempts to develop a new model for a renewed concept of readability. The thesis begins by discussing the rationale for carrying out this research. Next, the extensive literature around the topic of readability is reviewed. The literature suggests that most research into readability has stemmed from a positivist paradigm, and has used quantitative methods to assess text comprehensibility. This approach has been widely criticised and, recently, more qualitative methods stemming from an interpretive paradigm have been employed. It seems that both quantitative and qualitative methods have strengths and limitations. Therefore, the research I have carried out has explored the concept of readability by combining these two research approaches. The data collection methods include readability formulae; text feature analyses; miscue analyses; retellings and interviews. This research has been conducted in the United Kingdom and involved 16 male and 16 female pupils with an age range from 6 to 11 years old. All the participants were fluent readers. Data were analysed using; (1) six online readability formulae - ATOS (1997); Dale-Chall (1948); Flesch-Kincaid (1948); FOG (1952); SMOG (1969); and Spache (1953); (2) Reading Miscue Inventory (Goodman, Watson & Burke, 2005); (3) Judging Richness of Retellings (Irwin & Mitchell, 1983); (4) text feature analysis forms; and (5) a cross-interview analysis approach. Two computer software programmes i.e Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 17) and Qualitative Data Analysis (Nvivo 7) were used to organise and analyse the quantitative and qualitative data. The findings suggest that the concept of readability is influenced by both reader and text factors. The reader factors involve a complex relationship of nine embedded elements within the reader, namely interest, prior knowledge, attitude, reading ability, motivation, purpose of reading, engagement, age and gender. The text factors include eight elements, these being the physical features of the text, genre, content, author, linguistic difficulties, legibility, illustrations and organization of the text. This research comes to the conclusion that the concept of readability is a complex matching process involving the dynamic interaction between both reader and text factors and bound by certain contexts

Readability formulas: An analysis into reading index of prose forms

Text comprehension will suffer if the readability level is not accessible to the students. Readability formulas predict text complexity, assisting in appropriate text selection that complements students’ reading abilities to improve their language development. Therefore, the study aims to find out the reading index of the prose forms in the literature component catered to lower secondary school students ages 13 and 14 years old in Form One (seventh grade) and Form Two (eighth grade) classrooms in Malaysia. The reading index is measured by using four readability formulas which are Dale-Chall, Fog, SMOG, and Flesch-Kincaid that focuses on the words, sentences, syllables, and polysyllable words. These formulas are used to predict the level of difficulty of the prose forms. The reading index calculated from these readability formulas reveals the grade level of the prose forms. The grade level indicates the best age for reading and understanding the prose forms. Two prose forms were chosen as samples in the study. A passage is chosen from each prose form to be uploaded using the online tool. The indices obtained from the readability formulas predicted that both of the prose forms were below students’ reading age. The study implicates reading index must be taken into consideration in literary texts selection because it is an indicator of the years of education that an individual requires to comprehend the literary text clearly. Suitable reading material at students’ age level can enhance literature learning and teaching in the ESL classroom