Oral Reading Errors of First Grade Children Taught by a Code Emphasis Approach

ANALYZES ORAL READING ERRORS made by 50 children during the last 8 months of first grade. Children were instructed by a phonic method. Reading errors were categorized in 2 ways: first by general type, such as Word Substitution or No Response, and then by the extent to which the error and the written word had letters in common. In addition, word substitutions were judged as to whether they could be grammatically correct in the sentence. Error trends of the total group and then of good and of poor readers were analyzed to identify strategies used in word recognition. There were 2 contextual presentations. At first No Response errors predominated for all groups. This appeared to show the learners' early uncertainty as to how to express the relationship between letters, sounds, and words in the reading act. Poor readers, in particular, revealed that they were not aware of oral-to-written word correspondence. This was shown in their high proportion of story errors. In contrast, Good Readers rapidly shifted from No Response to Nonsense errors and then predominantly to Word Substitutions. This trend produced a rapid growth of graphic and grammatical accuracy. Poor readers showed only a gradual increase in Nonsense errors. Their increase in Nonsense did not precede an increase in Word Substitutions, but instead developed parallel with it. Poor readers continued to use mostly first or last letter clues. Early predominance of Nonsense errors for Good Readers appeared related to their ability to explore words and learn salient letter combinations prior to their using semantic clues. However, Poor Readers' strategies were less systematic. There were no sustained differences in trend between presentations.