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This research explores the impact of accuracy and meaning maintaining miscues on the comprehension of complex texts. The issue is explored through fourth graders’ readings and retellings. Two types of reading behaviors are examined: (a) portions of text read with no miscues, and (b) portions of text read with meaning-maintaining miscues. Findings indicate that readers were significantly more likely to comprehend information that was read with meaning-maintaining miscues than when read with no miscues. Researchers and educators need to understand the deeper meanings behind certain types of miscue and their supportive role in the comprehension process.

This research investigates the ability of adult proficient readers to predict words that have been fully or partially deleted, without being able to read what came after the blank. Predictions were analyzed for accuracy and if inaccurate for their grammatical nature, syntactic and semantic acceptability, and retention of the author's meaning. Finally, the sentence and text location of the deletion were determined. Findings indicate that readers were more accurate in their predictions than commonly reported in the research and the significant saliency of beginning letter as advocated by some reading theorists. It also was discovered that various factors impacted the accuracy of readers' predictions such as the grammatical nature of the word (beyond the typical content vs. function word distinction), and its location in the sentence and the text. Given these findings, it may be the case that readers utilize whatever necessary information a text makes available and that the density or selectivity of the proc...

This research investigates the relationship among various processing behaviors and their link to comprehension. Thirty-four students from three fourth-grade classrooms orally read the first chapter of a short story. The reading was followed by an unaided recall and probes by the researcher. Each clause as finally read was evaluated for semantics (acceptable/unacceptable) and maintenance of author's meaning (yes/no). Finally, words read per minute and number of total, corrected, and uncorrected miscues was calculated. The impact of miscues on retelling performance on the clause and story event level was evaluated using nonparametric, parametric, and multivariate analyses. On the clause level, findings indicate that a similar proportion of clauses were recalled irrespective of whether the clause had been read with no miscues, corrected miscues, or uncorrected miscues. There was a significant difference, however, in the proportion of recalled clauses depending on miscue type. Uncorrected semantically unaccep...

The debate over the extent to which individual letters are perceived by proficient readers continues to play a dominant role in the ongoing “reading wars.” One view holds that virtually all letters are processed, the other view that only some letters are perceived, supplemented by context and background knowledge. There is little research, however, that has examined the actual relationship between reading behaviors and comprehension. This research investigates the relationship between processing behaviors, as reflected in miscues, and comprehension, as reflected in text retellings. Twenty-four graduate students who were proficient readers individually read aloud a short story, followed by a typed, unaided retelling. Using the clause as the unit of analysis and miscue analysis as the method to investigate processing behaviors, each clause as finally read was evaluated for semantics or sense (acceptability/unacceptable) and if the author's meaning was maintained (yes/no). Each clause in the retellings was a...

This research project investigated the English literacy development of bilingual (English/Spanish) students beginning their formal transition into English literacy in a whole-language classroom. The curriculum consisted of four components: theme-based literacy activities, teacherreading, free reading, and free writing. Instruction was meaning-focused, and written language conventions were demonstrated through the use of contextualized mediations. Literacy growth was measured through pre/post-reading miscue and retelling analysis, holistic and analytic writing analysis, and spelling assessments. Analysis of the reading miscue data indicated statistically significant improvements in the students' ability to produce more meaningful sentences. Additionally, retelling analysis showed significant gains in the overall number of retelling units and matches produced by the students. Analytic writing analysis showed improvement in capitalization and spelling, as well as the number of words produced in a st...

This research investigates the different responses of two third grade bilingual (Spanish and English) students to an English whole language literacy curriculum. Specifically, the research examines: (1) how the students resisted, appropriated, and/or internalized a whole language curriculum and (2) the relationship between student curricular interactions and their literacy development. Teacher instructional mediations and student interactions with these mediations were observed and examined for one academic year. In addition, pre and post reading, writing, and spelling data were collected and analyzed. Findings indicate that the two students, although of similar linguistic, cultural, and instructional backgrounds, had very distinct responses to the curriculum. One student immediately began to engage in the curriculum as intended due to his apparent interest in the curricular topics as well as his desire to explore his own personal interests through the use of literacy. The second student resisted ...