# 7: Running Record Miscue Analysis on 2 ELLs

Context: This activity increases awareness of the struggles connected to language development as compared to literacy development for all readers.
Task Description: Conduct a running record/miscue analysis on 2 second language learners, one that speaks Spanish, and one that speaks another language.
Analyze the miscues for M-meaning, S-Syntax, and V-visual cues. Are there some features of the errors that reflect the first language? Are there miscues that are universal to all readers?
What are some next teaching points based on this data? Answer these questions and discuss possible strategies or assignments to address the reading challenges you saw on your blog.


The only ELL students at the school where I teach are Spanish-speaking.  I did the miscue analysis with 2 8th grade ELLS.  One has been in the ELL program in our district since kindergarten.  She is still in the program becuase she scores slightly below proficient on the standardized ELL test (ACCESS).  The second student has been back and forth between our district and Mexico three times since kindergarten.  He has spent 4 of the past 9 years in school in Mexico.  Both have high listening scores, are verbally articulate, and are independent readers.

The first student read a passage for age 10-11 year olds.  She is a fluent and confident reader.  The main thing that I noticed in her reading is that she automatically made connections between the text and her personal experiences (Text-to-Life).  For example, in the text, a mom was afraid that a rat would bite the narrator.  The student instantly commented "A rat bit my brother!".  This tells me that the decoding processor in her brain can decode, or recode according to Freeman, automatically.  This automaticity strengthens  her comprehension and fluency and allows her to comprehend higher-level texts.  Of 30 lines, she only had one miscue, inverting "Said mom" to "Mom said".  She did not self correct, but did not need to , since this was a syntactical error that did not affect the meaning of the passage.

The second student, who has spent 4 of his 9 years of schooling in Mexico, read a passage for 9-10 year-olds, and had significantly more errors.  His errors were all grapho-phonical and syntactical.  He has a strong enough sense of meaning and vocabulary that his errors do not significantly affect meaning.  He said "hectors" instead of hecatares; "brush" instead of bush; and "fieriest" for fiercest.  Each of these errors show that he has a solid base in phonics knowledge, since he retains the correct beginning and end sounds in all of the errors.  This also shows that he has strong comprehension, since the words that he used in place of the actual word were very similar to and retained the meaning of the original word.   This student did not have as strong of automaticity in decoding and comprehension as the 9-year ELL student.  He lacks some instant word recognition, possibly because of his sporadic English instruction.  His strong base in phonics knowledge (taught at his elementary school) is evident in his ability to recode to gain meaning from an unfamiliar text.