The Effect of Text Difficulty on Types of Miscues among Proficient, Average and Below Average Readers

The aim of this study was to understand the differences in the type of miscues among proficient, average and below average readers as text difficulty increases. It was hypothesised that the percentage of semantic and syntactic cues made by proficient in comparison to average and below average readers will increase as the text difficulty increases. The lack of available literature with regard to reading errors facilitated the designing of this study which could serve as a base to design remedial instruction and intervention tools. A quasi-experimental design was used to investigate this relationship. A sample of hundred and three students (N=103) were recorded while reading four levels of passages with increasing difficulty and miscues were analysed according to the three cueing system. The first level passage was a tested grade appropriate passage which was used to determine if the reader was proficient, average or below average based on their accuracy scores. Results revealed that there was no significant difference across the three cueing system and reading ability. However, it was observed that readers rely on the grapho phonics cueing system when encountered with a difficult word. The findings of this study can be used to design reading instruction and remedial systems. Keywords: Miscue; Grapho-phonics; Semantics; Syntactic