SCET Journal 2020/2021

Language Matters »

Qiao understood the English text. Her graphic simi- larity and sound similarity were both high in Table 1. She used words that sound or look like the unknown words to make substitutions. For example: seems …Above Momma, he sees two very large lights . She read “he seems” instead of he sees . These two words looked and sounded similar. But it was not a meaningful substitution because of the meaning change. Another example is: $passdrive …He happily leaps into the passageway, loses his balance, and slides across the deck on his belly. *note: the $ sign indicates a nonword. Qiao read “$passdrive” instead of passageway . From her linguistic repertoire, this self-created word could make sense for her.

While reading in Chinese with pinyin, her sound similarity was very high, which indicates that Qiao re- lied on the phonic system when she read with pinyin. For example, she read the pinyin “lěng” instead of lèng with the intonation shift from the third tone to the fourth tone (there are four different tones in pinyin): lěng lèng 老虎一愣 [the tiger was shocked] *note: the brackets indicate English translation However, when she read the Chinese text without pinyin, her substitutions did not look or sound like the texts (see Table 1). She struggled to use all the cueing systems when reading without pinyin. However, she predicted some substitutions that did not change the meaning. For example, 去最后，大象还是把他的耳朵放了下来。 [Finally, the elephant put his ears down]. Qiao read “ 去 ” instead of 来 . These two characters did not look or sound alike. When they were in the words “ 下去 ” and 下来 , both mean “down.” She was using the context clue rather than graphophonic information. Qiao repeated herself frequently when she read in both languages and made attempts to correct her miscues when she read in English. However, her attempts to correct were mostly unsuccessful correc- tions. Sometimes she changed her correct expected responses to miscues. These indicate that she was not monitoring her reading and perhaps was unable to pre- dict from what she read.

English Text

Chinese Text with Pinyin

Chinese Text without Pinyin

PATTERNS

Meaning Construction No Loss

48% 8% 41% 0% 11% 92% 48% 8% 10% 92% 7% 0% 35% 0% 73% 92% 18% 4% 9% 4% 64% 92% 18% 4% 18% 4% 35% 20% 40% 10% 75% 30%

15%

Partial Loss

4%

Loss

81%

Grammatical Relations Strength

15% 62%

Partial Strength Overcorrections

0%

Weakness

23%

Word Substitution in Context Graphic Similarity High

6%

Some None

59% 35%

Meaning Construction When Qiao read in English, she made meaningful substitutions which means she was trying to construct meaning while she was reading. For example: never Momma wishes she had not started this conversation.

Sound Similarity High

12% 76% 12% 20% 10% 30%

Some None

Retelling

Characteristics

Events

Total

Miscue Per Hundred Words

4.64

24 38 Table 1 In-depth Procedure Data

She used “never” to substitute not . It was a high-quality miscue because the

2020/2021

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