An Analysis of Oral Reading Errors of EFL Primary School Students

An Analysis of Oral Reading Errors of EFL Primary School Students

  The aim of the present study was to identify primary school students" stages of EFL reading development through an analysis of their oral reading errors. Students" oral reading was chosen as the basis of this study in order to gain insight into the reading process at the early stage of learning to read in English. Another purpose of the current study was to examine the oral reading errors of students that most commonly appear. Over the course of the study, the participants exhibited a rudimentary awareness of letter-sound correspondence. However, due to the lack of word decoding strategies and working knowledge of the English alphabetic system, many participants displayed a consistent inability to sound out unfamiliar words and words with irregular sound-letter patterns. Consequently, an examination of participants" oral reading errors suggested that the participants" EFL reading development stage corresponds with the partial-alphabetic phase. The findings in this study attest to the need for explicit and systematic reading instruction for primary school EFL learners that is based on an understanding of the stages of children"s EFL reading development and their early reading behaviors. Some pedagogical implications for the teaching of reading in the primary school English classroom are suggested.