Patterns of Word-Recognition Errors Among Adult Basic Education Native and Nonnative Speakers of English

Abstract

Numerous studies have documented the decoding difficulties of adult basic education (ABE) students in the United States. However, the native speakers of English (NSE) and nonnative speakers of English (NNSE) in ABE classes present different reading behaviors. To explore this, 90 low-intermediate readers (45 NSE and 45 NNSE) were matched on pseudoword reading (Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised; Woodcock, 1987). Their substitution errors in word recognition (Diagnostic Assessments of Reading; Roswell & Chall, 1992) were then classified as phonetically plausible, phonetically implausible, or real words. Both groups made similar numbers of phonetically implausible errors. However, although both possessed comparable pseudoword decoding skills, NSE made more real-word substitutions than NNSE, and NNSE made more phonetically plausible substitutions than NSE. This suggests that ABE teachers should not only be aware of how much decoding students know but also to what extent they actually use that knowledge when reading.