Data Analysis

4.6.1 Different Techniques in Miscue Analysis

For analysing the data – reading miscues made by the participants of the research – during the piloting stage, and later the data of the main study, there was need to create a coding system to be used with the data. The Goodman Taxonomy of Reading Miscues (Goodman & Burke, 1973) served for the basis of this system. The taxonomy distinguishes between two kinds of responses on the part of the reader: the expected response (ER) – the text to be read out loud – and the observed response (OR) – the way the reader reproduced the text. The OR can vary from the ER in five dif-ferent physical ways: insertion, omission, substitution, reversal, and regression (see Appendix 4).

Since its appearance, the taxonomy has been used in various studies (e.g. Barrera, 1980;

Hudelson, 1980; Mott, 1980; Romatowski, 1980; Tatlonghari, 1984; Rigg, 1988; Rha, 2002; etc.).

These studies analysed and discussed miscues of non-native English speakers, e.g. Spanish in Barrera, 1980 and Hudelson, 1980; Polish in Romatowski, 1980; German in Mott, 1980; Filipino in Tatlonghari, 1984; Navajo, Samoan, Spanish and Arabic in Rigg, 1988; Korean in Rha, 2002, therefore they might be of interest in the present study, because the participants of this research were non-native English speakers, too.

There have been attempts to alter the Goodman Taxonomy and the process of miscue analy-sis the result of which was a diagnostic method called the Modified Miscue Analyanaly-sis (2000).

This procedure was believed to be “valuable for teachers wanting to find out more about students who seem to have trouble gaining meaning from print” (Modified Miscue Analysis, 2000). The technique considers that miscues can be of six types: substitution, insertion, omission, repetition, correction, and reversal. Unlike the original taxonomy of Goodman, it deals with repetition and correction as two different types, whereas in the taxonomy these were united in one type called

‘regression’ (Goodman & Burke, 1973), used for print that was repeated and either corrected or not. The technique analyses miscues by seeking answers to the following eight questions:

To what extent does the OR look like the ER?

a)

To what extent does the OR sound like the ER?

b)

What is the grammatical function of the OR and the ER?

c)

Is the OR grammatically acceptable within the text?

d)

Does the OR produce a structure that is acceptable in terms of meaning?

e)

To what extent does the miscue change the intended text meaning?

f)

Is a different intonation pattern involved?

g)

Is the reader’s dialect involved in the miscue? (Modified Miscue Analysis, 2000).

h)

All of the above eight questions correspond to the eighteen categories in the Goodman Taxonomy, e.g. questions a) and b) equal to categories 3 and 4 – graphic and phonemic proxim-ity, questions d) and e) coincide with categories 6 and 7 – syntactic and semantic acceptabilproxim-ity, etc. The technique also distinguishes between high quality and low quality miscues. High qual-ity miscues indicate that the reader is reading for meaning, it includes miscues like familiar language, e.g. contractions instead of full forms, dialect, self-correction, and omissions. Low quality miscues show that the reader is insecure in reading and may not be deriving meaning from the text being read. These miscues include omissions, frequent self-corrections, and reversal/

omission/addition of letters.

In the past few years, some new systems appeared on the Internet, providing English teach-ers with valuable pieces of advice on how to create so-called running records of a child’s reading in English as their native language or English as their second language. These are generally used for assessing a child’s ability to read in English. During the process of assessment, the learner reads aloud a passage from a book that corresponds to their level of interest, cognitive development, and linguistic difficulty – but with which the child was not familiar previously – while the teacher records the learner’s reading behaviour, i.e. all the deviations or miscues that occur in the child’s reading. It is said that through analysing the results of running records the teacher can gain insights into a child’s reading and get information about their particular reading difficulty, and also, ideas about how to best help the child. With the help of running records, the teacher can learn whether the child can use semantic, syntactic, and phonographic cues (or ‘graphophonic’, as Goodman (1970) puts it). If the learner cannot use these cues properly, the teacher needs to teach some strategies to them in order to be able to derive meaning from the text they have read. These strategies include paired or shared reading followed by discussion about the text’s meaning – in case the learner cannot make use of semantic cues in the text, prediction exercises and cloze procedures – in case the learner cannot make use of syntactic cues in the text, using questions that direct the pupil to looking at the text, e.g. ‘What does the word begin with?’, or ‘Can you see any smaller words you recognize?’ – in case the learner cannot make use of graphophonic cues in the text. Running records single out seven types of miscues:

refusal – when the learner does not read the word or any part of it – indicated by _ _ _ _ _ _ _; self-correction, indicated by the word ‘error’ written above the miscue and then ‘SC’ for ‘self-corrected’;

omission, indicated by a circle drawn round the word which was omitted; insertion, indicated by a caret in the place of insertion above which the inserted word is written by the teacher; hesitation, indicated by the letter ‘H’ or a slash; reversal, indicated by the letter ‘S’ on its side; and substitution, indicated by the misread word crossed out and the substituted word written above it.

Based on the different methods and techniques applied in miscue analysis, a new system was developed for the purposes of the present study, which is described in the following section.

4.6.2 The Miscue Coding System Used for Coding the Data

Based on the descriptions and explanations in the previous part of this section on different techniques in Miscue Analysis, the following coding system has been adopted for application in the present study (Table 18):

TABLE 18. The miscue coding system applied in the present study

Name of miscue Abbreviation Marking

Substitution S Substitution is written above the line of the text

Insertion I The sign ^ (caret) is used to signal it; also, the inserted word is

written above the caret

Omission O The omitted item in the text is circled

Reversal R ‘S’ on its side (a curved line)

Repetition REP The repeated word or phrase is underlined as many times as it

is repeated

Correction C The miscue is written above the word and ‘C’ is written if the miscue is corrected, or ‘UC’ if it is not corrected

Hesitation H ‘H’ is written in the place the reader began to hesitate

Intonation INT ↑ or ↓ to indicate rising or falling intonation, put in front of the

incorrectly intonated word or phrase

Stress STR The sign ' put in front of the incorrectly stressed syllable Marking of the miscues was carried out in the researcher’s worksheets of the text the par-ticipants read out loud. The abbreviations of miscue names were needed and used during the class observation sessions when the researcher indicated the types of miscues corrected by the teacher.

Substitution meant that the ER was substituted by another word or phrase during the learn-er’s reading out loud. The substituted word was written above the line of the text. Insertion meant that the learner inserted an extra word or phrase during their reading aloud. This inserted word or phrase was indicated in the official researcher’s worksheet by a caret, and also, the inserted item(s) was/were written above the caret. Omission was considered to be a case when the reader omitted a word or phrase in the printed text. In the worksheet such omitted items were circled. Reversal miscues were departures from the printed text when the reader reversed the order of letters in a word or words in a phrase, or phrases in a sentence. Reversals were indicated in the worksheet with the help of a curved line. Repetition miscues were the ones when the child repeated one word, or part of it, or a phrase once or more times. In the researcher’s worksheet, repetitions were shown by underlining the repeated word or phrase as many times as it was repeated. Correction meant that the child misread a word – deviation from the print occurred, but the reader noticed this deviation

and corrected himself or herself. The miscue was written above the word that was misread and it was marked ‘C’ (corrected) if the child corrected the miscue and ‘UC’ – uncorrected – if the child did not correct it.

There were instances when the foreign language learner did not know how to read a word.

In such cases, first he usually hesitated not wanting to take the risk of being erroneous. This type of behaviour was believed to be a separate miscue category, marked with the help of the letter

‘H’ written in the place the reader began hesitating. Again, it often happens that foreign language learners make intonation and word stress miscues. Intonation miscues in this study were indicated by means of two arrows, one for the rising tone (↑) and another one for the falling tone (↓). The different intonation subpatterns, e.g. fall-rise or rise-fall, was not dealt with in this study. A stress sign (') was put in front of the incorrectly stressed syllable in the researcher’s worksheet to indicate a stress miscue.

In sum, the description of nine miscue categories in the miscue coding system has been presented in this section. The ways of indicating miscue types has also been explained above.

4.6.3 Other Analyses

Data from all the interviews with learners, teachers, and educational managers were analy-sed qualitatively. The interviews were transcribed and the transcripts were searched for different patterns to emerge.

The audio-recordings of classroom observation sessions were also transcribed and analysed both qualitatively, e.g. different miscue types were identified, and quantitatively, e.g. the frequency of occurrence of miscues was established.

Comprehension test items were examined quantitatively with the help of item discrimina-tion tests and calculating facility values. Learners’ reading comprehension test results were also examined quantitatively by working out percentages, and drawing performance scales or orders.

Where appropriate, statistical data were calculated and presented.

Textbook and curriculum analysis was performed qualitatively by describing the crucial issues in both documents and giving a comprehensive evaluation about them.