A Comparative Study of English Oral Reading Skills in Differently Schooled Groups of Hispanic Students

Abstract

Bilingual Hispanic students whose English or Spanish dominance cannot be clearly determined, and who are not achieving at grade level, are particularly at risk for academic failure. This study examined the patterns of oral reading miscues, retelling, and fluency of such mixed dominant students in order to develop a better understanding of their reading strategy use. The scores and text of fourth- to sixth-grade Hispanic mixed dominant (MD) students were compared to those of two other distinct fourth- to sixth-grade Hispanic student groups: good English readers (GE) and good Spanish readers reading in English, their second language (GS-ESL). The data indicated MD students did not differ significantly from good English readers on several important categories including story retelling, where they got the highest mean scores. The ability to retain in-text grammatical function was low for both the GE and MD groups. The GE group was more fluent that either of the two groups, making significantly less miscues per words read. A factor analysis indicated that the MD group was distinctly different in strategy use from the GS-ESL group. Overall, these data suggested that MD students were not easily categorized into a homogeneous group, and that some of their strategies and skills may have been underutilized.

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