Rose-Marie Weber

A Linguistic Analysis of First-Grade Reading Errors

ANALYZES ORAL READING errors observed in a first-grade classroom as approximations to the correct response in terms of letters, word structure, grammatical acceptability, and semantic appropriateness. A measure of graphic similarity showed that better readers excelled weaker readers in more closely approaching the correct response; both groups improved throughout the year. On the syntactic level, judgments of grammatical acceptability reinforced by part-of-speech analysis showed that the class made responses that in general conformed to the constraints of preceding grammatical context, indicating that both strong and weak readers brought their knowledge of linguistic structure to bear on the identification of words. Some evidence arose for an inverse relationship in the use of graphic information and grammatical context. Judgments of semantic appropriateness in the sentence indicated that a response that was syntactically acceptable was almost always semantically appropriate as well.

The Study of Oral Reading Errors: A Survey of the Literature

REVIEWS HOW oral reading errors have been analyzed in more than thirty studies to establish norms for the diagnosis of reading difficulties and to provide insight into the nature of the reading process. The assumption that oral reading reflects the silent reading process is discussed and various systems for describing errors, studies indicating the strategies that readers use to exploit graphic and contextual information, related variables such as maturity, differential training, difficulty of materials, and response style are considered. Notable in much of the research in this area is the failure of investigators to take into account the various levels of linguistic structure or to indicate how closely an erroneous response approximates an expected response on any of those levels.

Beginning in English: The growth of linguistic and literate abilities in Spanish‐speaking first graders

Abstract This article traces the experience of two Spanish‐speaking children of Puerto Rican origin learning to read and write English as they learned to speak it in mainstream first‐grade classrooms in an urban school where instruction followed a basal series. One child read and wrote words with ease, though his ability to pronounce English and speak in grammatical sentences remained highly marked by Spanish. The other did not consolidate her reading and writing skills outside the structured activities, despite native‐like pronunciation and advancing English speech. Both showed through their engagement that they understood the spoken English of classroom but hardly the written English of texts. Their accomplishments in language and literacy are discussed in terms of issues in second language acquisition among school‐age children, differences between Spanish and English, metalinguistic features of instruction, and the content of early literacy learning.

The Shape of Direct Quotation.

Direct quotation can be a source of meaning in storybook texts for beginning readers. The author of this article sketches the linguistic complexity of direct quotation and offers instructional strategies. Three aspects of direct quotation are examined: the cluster of print features and syntactic characteristics that direct quotation involves, the prosodic qualities that direct quotation calls for in oral reading, and the semantic links, especially pronouns, between the speakers in the text and what they say.

Literacy on the Margins of the American Past

Book reviewed in this article: Literacy, Education, and Society in New Mexico, 1693–1821. By Bernardo P. Gallegos. 1992. “When I Can Read My Title Clear”: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South. By Janet Duitsman Cornelius. 1991. Intimate Practices: Literacy and Cultural Work in U.S. Womens Clubs, 1880–1920. By Anne Ruggles Gere. 1997.