Chapter I. Introduction, Rationale and Overview of the Book
Chapter 5 Research findings
5.2 The Macro Level of Miscues: Oral Reading in the Classroom
Summary
Although there were some points on which the advisors did not agree, on the whole, it can be stated that the interviewees, despite working in different parts or districts of Transcarpathia, agreed and were of the same opinion about most of the crucial issues that were touched upon in the interview.
All the three of them strongly believed in the importance and necessity of the application of the learners’ reading aloud technique in the English lessons. They explained that the national-ity of the learners had some influence on the way they read aloud and came to the conclusion that Hungarian children had certain advantages.
Based on their experience as methodology advisors, they claimed that the reading aloud technique was widely applied by teachers in schools in the districts they were responsible for.
The application of it was not a requirement set by the National Curriculum for Foreign Languages (1998), or the Ministry of Education and Science of the Ukraine, so a possible reason why teachers applied this technique might have been that they were aware of and sure about its usefulness and value in English language teaching.
The data in the observation sheets were useful when defining learners’ reading miscue types and the way how teachers responded to these miscues. The miscues were first identified by the author and then a rater – an English teacher in a local school – was asked to listen to the re-cordings and identify the miscues. I had explained the miscue types and the miscue coding system beforehand. This was the same coding system that had been worked out for the purposes of the main study (see Section 4.6.2). No divergences were found between the author’s and the rater’s lists of miscues. At the macro level of reading miscues in the eighteen lessons when oral reading took place, 251 miscues were detected: 21 of them were not responded to, while in the case of 230 miscues the teachers responded to the miscues immediately, or provided delayed correction. Seven types of miscues were observed in the English lessons, to which teachers either responded or they did not react. They were substitutions (n=129), hesitations (n=34), corrections (n=24), omissions (n=22), intonation miscues (n=20), reversals (n=12), and insertions (n=10). The findings are sum-marized in Table 23.
As can be seen from Table 23, the most frequent miscue type was substitution (n=129), more than half of the total number of miscues observed during the lessons. This finding confirms the findings in the literature (Beebe, 1980; Rigg, 1988).
TABLE 23. Miscues in the English lessons Type of miscue Way of teacher response
to miscue
Number of
miscues TOTAL %
SUBSTITUTION
Non-response 5
129 51.39
Immediate response 73
Delayed correction 51 OMISSION
Non-response 8
22 8.76
Immediate response 8
Delayed correction 6 REVERSAL
Non-response 2
12 4.78
Immediate response 4
Delayed correction 6 INSERTION
Non-response 5
10 3.98
Immediate response 2
Delayed correction 3 CORRECTION
Non-response 2
24 9.56
Immediate response 15
Delayed correction 7 INTONATION
Non-response 6
20 7.96
Immediate response 11
Delayed correction 3 HESITATION Providing the miscue for
the learner 34 34 13.54
TOTAL 251 99.97
Teachers’ reactions to miscues were only of three types:
they chose to neglect the miscue, 1.
they corrected the miscue immediately after they heard it, 2.
the teachers provided delayed correction, i.e. they waited until the learner finished 3.
reading aloud, and only then did they mention what miscues the child had made.
The examples are taken from the transcripts, following the transcription conventions ac-cepted for the purposes of the present study (see Section 4.3.5). The lesson transcripts were pre-pared in Hungarian, and the excerpts provided here are in the author’s translation.
Substitution
When substitutions occurred, teachers treated them in different ways. In Examples 1 and 2, the teacher immediately corrected the substitution and evidently, the learners knew they had to repeat the corrected variant, because they did so without being asked to.
1) T: OK. So we know. Let’s start. The few introductory sentences will be read for us by Marianna.
L1: One day Dmytro Oleksandrovych meets Vera Ivanyivna in the tsenture T: centre
L1: centre of the town. (Substitution; Lesson 1, School F) 2) L2: A kitchen and a bedroom.
T: Bathroom.
L2: Bathroom. We have gas ... (Substitution; Lesson 2, School F)
In Example 3, the teacher asked the learners to repeat the difficult pronunciation of the word in chorus, while the teacher in Example 4 corrected the substitution immediately, and then left it as it was. She did not ask the learner to repeat the word which could have led to further failure of the learner; instead, the teacher asked for the translation of the word.
3) L1: First of all I’d like to say that I am from Transcarpia.
T: No. Let’s repeat three times Transcarpathia.
LLL: Transcarpathia Transcarpathia Transcarpathia. (Substitution; Lesson 2, School F) 4) L2: I live in Lviv. It is a big provinal
T: Provincial city. Good. I live in Lviv. How do you translate it? (Substitution; Lesson 1, School D)
Example 5 shows a situation rarely met during the observations, when on hearing the mis-cue the teacher gives an explanation of the mismis-cue and how to avoid similar ones.
5) L2: If you hear the answer and knou
T: No, no. What did I say about this word? The letter ‘k’ is mute if it stands before ‘n’, we don’t pronounce it. Know
L2: Know by the voice your friend or acquaintance.. (Substitution; Lesson 1, School D)
However, later in the same lesson a girl who had not been paying attention made the same mistake as in Example 5.
Another way of teacher response to substitution miscues was when the teacher corrected the miscue but did not ask for confirmation that the child understood the miscue and was able to improve (Example 6).
6) L4: when you have deeled T: dialed
L4: the wrong number.. (Substitution; Lesson 1, School D) Hesitation
When learners hesitated during oral reading tasks to pronounce a word, teachers most often provided the needed word or phrase, but they did not pay attention to whether learners understood the problems and were able to correct themselves or not. This happened in most schools (Examples 7, 8, and 9). The only exception was School C, where the teacher said the word for the hesitating learner, who then repeated the word, although was not asked to do so (Example 10).
7) L2: A living room, a dining room, a bedroom, a children’s room, and …
T: And of course. (Hesitation, the teacher provides the correct variant; Lesson 2, School F) 8) L5: Prolonged buzzer your call has been put thro…
T: Through.
L5: And your number will answer in a moment. (Hesitation; Lesson 2, School G) 9) L6: Don’t forget apol..
T: Apologize (Hesitation; Lesson 1, School D) 10) L1: The yard and the well are be...
T: Behind
L1: behind the house. (Hesitation; Lesson 2, School C) Correction
Correction miscues were not numerous compared to substitution ones. In Example 11, a correction miscue can be seen when the child first read the word properly, then corrected herself but in the wrong way. The teacher applied delayed correction, i.e. she waited until the child fin-ished her portion and then she indicated the miscue, although she did not ask the child to repeat the sentence or the phrase.
11) L6: On Sunday when they came come to the skating-rink they saw an interest-ing scene.
T: First you said correctly. They came. (Correction miscue with delayed teacher correction;
Lesson 2, School C)
Omission
Omission miscues were those when learners omitted usually one word. Most often teachers did not pay much attention to these miscues. Even when asked about them, six teachers replied they did not come across such miscues when their learners were reading aloud. There was only one teacher (E) who mentioned her learners sometimes made omission miscues. In the example below (Example 12), it can be seen that the teacher did not react to the omission miscue but helped the learner to overcome his hesitation by providing the word for him.
12) L6: Don’t forget apol..
T: Apologize (Omission of the word ‘to’; Lesson 1, School D) Intonation
Intonation miscues constituted inappropriate use of rising and falling tones. Children found most problems with using the rising tone in ‘yes/no’ questions instead of the rise-fall used in their mother tongue. In all the 20 cases when intonation miscues occurred the teachers asked the children to repeat the corrected variants.
13) L3: You don’t live in town.
T: You don’t live in town?
L3 ((repeats with rising intonation)): You don’t live in town? (Intonation; Lesson 1, School E) 14) L3: Is it large. ((typical Hungarian intonation: rise-fall))
T: No, is it? ((rising intonation)) This is a question.
L3: Is it large? (Intonation; Lesson 3, School A) Reversal
When learners made reversal miscues, these were mainly instances when they reversed the order of letters in a word (Example 15). Examples when the reader reversed the order of words in a phrase, or phrases in a sentence were not detected.
15) L2: Yes my five and I will be very glad to see you.
T: What is written there?
L2: Five.
T: Not five. You are reading it backwards. Wife.
L2: Wife. (Reversal; Lesson 1, School B) Insertion
Insertion meant that the learner inserted an extra word or phrase during their reading aloud.
Sometimes such miscues were meaningful, but most often they were not. During the observation sessions, only ten insertion miscues were found, five of which were completely ignored, two were corrected immediately and three were corrected later (Example 16).
16) L2: I have a mother and a my father. My mother is a doctor. She works at a hospital.
My father is a worker. He works at a big plant.
T: You read an extra word, a my father. But my is not there. A father. Could you repeat please? The first sentence in the paragraph.
L2: I have a mother and a father.
T: Good. Now translate the whole paragraph please. (Insertion with delayed correction;
Lesson 1, School B) Summary
The findings of classroom observation sessions were described in some detail, and examples from lesson transcripts were presented to illustrate and justify the theses about classroom practices in Transcarpathian Hungarian schools when the technique of learners’ reading aloud was applied in the lessons. The results showed that the most frequent miscue type was substitution (51.39%).
The least frequent was insertion (3.98%). Teachers treated the miscues in different ways: they either ignored them (n=28), or corrected them immediately after learners made them (n=147), or their correction was delayed (n=76). Teachers paid more attention to substitution miscues than to any other type, to such an extent that at times they did not even notice the miscues and let them
‘disappear forever’.