A Study Of The Miscue-Reflected Oral Reading Processes Of Chinese EFL Learners

Miscue analysis provides a window on the reading process by focusing on oral reading behaviors. Since its inception in the 1960s, extensive miscue research has been conducted to explore different aspects of the reading process. Studies on miscues, however, are rare in the Chinese context, particularly those on foreign language reading processes. Based on the transactional socio-psycholinguistic theory of reading, the present study investigated the miscue-reflected oral reading processes of three groups of Chinese tertiary EFL learners at different levels of English proficiency. It was aimed at exploring Chinese EFL learners’oral reading processes from four perspectives, namely, their perceptions of reading, the features and correction of oral reading miscues, the relationships between miscues, comprehension performance and text type, and the factors that contributed to the production of miscues in EFL oral reading.The multi-sourced data of this study came from oral reading of selected materials, questionnaires, stimulated recalls, and written summaries. While miscues produced in oral reading served as the main data for the analysis of the accuracy, fluency and smoothness of EFL oral reading processes, questionnaires, stimulated recalls and written summaries provided supplementary and complementary information for other aspects of oral reading processes. Questionnaires were administered to explore the Chinese EFL learners’perceptions of reading. Stimulated recalls were collected to explore the contributory factors to miscue production. Written summaries were to check students’ reading comprehension performance of the selected texts. After the oral reading miscues were identified, marked and verified on the typescripts, they were coded based on the coding scheme adapted from Goodman Taxonomy of Oral Reading Miscues (Goodman, Watson,& Burke,2005), and then categorized and analyzed in accordance with the suggested procedures in the reading miscue inventory.The present study produced a number of key findings. With regard to reading perceptions, all the three groups of students had the view that extensive reading and thorough comprehension are characteristic of good readers of Chinese, and a large vocabulary and extensive reading are essential qualities of good readers of English. They maintained that poor readers of Chinese should start with reading materials of interest to develop a good reading habit and to conduct extensive reading across topics, whereas poor readers of English should accumulate a large vocabulary and develop grammatical competence before they could read widely. All the three groups of students confirmed their frequent production of miscues in oral reading, and attributed such phenomenon to a variety of factors. In addition, cross-group discrepancies were found existing in their self-perceptions as reader and sophomore students showed less confidence in English reading ability than the other two groups.When it comes to students’oral reading processes, this study has found that all the students could read the two selected texts with great accuracy, but with less fluency and smoothness in reading the expository essay than the narrative story. Cross-group comparison indicates that whereas the oral reading performance of the sophomore students was worse than that of the other two groups, not much difference in oral reading was found between the junior group and the senior group. The junior students had a more fluent oral reading process than the other two groups since they read the materials at faster reading speed but with fewer miscues and mispronunciations produced.As to the features of the miscues produced by the students, this study has found that substitutions are the most frequently produced type successively followed by omissions, insertions, and reversals, and that miscues at the word level are more prominent than miscues at the sub-word and supra-word levels. In the meantime, while a large majority of miscues are found syntactically acceptable, a slightly higher percentage of miscues are semantically acceptable, and a larger number of miscues share high graphic or phonemic similarity. Cross-group comparison suggests discrepancies in the distribution of miscues with syntactic or semantic unacceptability. While the sophomore students produced more miscues that were unacceptable both syntactically and semantically, no noticeable variations were found between the junior students and the senior students.Results related to miscue correction show that both patterns and discrepancies exist in students’corrections. In general, students were found to have corrected a higher percentage of miscues involving content words than those involving function words, a higher percentage of miscues at the supra-word level than those at the sub-word level and the word level, and a higher percentage of linguistically unacceptable miscues than linguistically acceptable miscues. In the meantime, cross-group comparison indicates discrepancies in different aspects. For example, the sophomore students corrected a lower percentage of miscues than the other two groups but no salient differences were found between the junior group and the senior group. While the sophomore students corrected a higher percentage of miscues involving inflectional morphemes, the other two groups of students corrected a higher percentage of miscues involving derivational morphemes. In addition, the sophomore students were found to have corrected a higher percentage of miscues involving function words and a lower percentage of linguistically unacceptable miscues than the other two groups, but no noticeable differences were found between the junior students and the senior students.This study has also found that no consistent relationship exists between miscues and comprehension performance and that text type does not play a decisive role in miscue production. Among all the possible factors contributing to miscue production, linguistic factors, cognitive factors, contextual factors, prior knowledge-related factors and affective factors were found to be the most significant.Based on the results regarding students’oral reading processes, this study made attempts to interpret, explain and discuss the main findings by comparing them with the results of previous miscue studies and by referring to existing theories of reading and language acquisition. The aspects involved include the gaps between reading perceptions and reading performance, the unstable relation between comprehension and fluency, substitutions as the most prominent miscues, the larger proportion of miscues involving inflections, the unbalanced use of language cueing systems, correction of miscues as a self-monitored process, the weak relation between miscues and comprehension performance, the indecisive role of text type in miscue production, the significant role of English language proficiency level in EFL reading, and linguistic and cognitive factors as two major contributors to miscue production.This dissertation finally presented a summary of the main findings of this study. Pedagogical implications were provided for the teaching of EFL reading. Teachers were suggested selecting appropriate reading materials, encouraging students’reading beyond textbooks, changing their role in reading instruction, emphasizing meaning in teaching extensive reading, and introducing process-oriented reading assessment. Limitations of this study and recommendations for future studies were finally provided.