Retrospective Miscue Analysis in a Second Language for a Bilingual Student

Retrospective miscue analysis (RMA) is an instructional strategy used jointly by readers and their mentors to help a eader understand his/her reading strategies. Participation in this strategy by the reader increases one’s confidence as he/she learns to understand one’s miscues and the reasons for them. The participant in this study, a graduate student who was reading in his/her second language, made understandable miscues in his oral reading. Identified problems included miscues that were based on a) traditional miscues, b) the participants’ uncertainty of how to pronounce a subsequent word because of absence of such word-form changes in his/her first language, and c) grammatical/syntactic differences between one native language and the second language in which he/she was reading. Use of the RMA provided the participant with useful strategies to use in understanding and overcoming his reading challenges, as well as increased confidence in his reading abilities.