I conducted running records on two different students who speak English as a second language. Both students are in 4th grade and are below grade level. Isam speaks Bengali at home and reads at a DRA 24. Mariana also reads at a DRA 24, but speaks Spanish as her first language. Both students read a passage called The Big Snow, and their running records are below.
When looking at Isam's running record, the first mistake he made was on the word "piling." Instead of snow piling up, he said that snow was "pill-ing" up. This was a visual error, since in his head, he doubled the letter L, creating a new word, "pill," instead of "pile." When teaching him this word, he would need to know that the original word was pile, but that the "e" was dropped when "ing" was added onto the end. "Pilling" would not make sense in the context of the story, so it was not a syntactical error, and the sentence no longer made sense, so this error was not one for meaning either. Because Isam replaced "piling" in this instance, the meaning of the sentence was compromised.
Isam's next mistake was replacing "fluffy" for "puffy." This sentence now said "The snowflakes were big and puffy." This mistake still made sense, so it was meaning, he replaced an adjective with a different adjective, so this was also a syntax error. This error was, in addition to syntax and meaning, a visual error, too, because fluffy and puffy both end in "uffy," making the words look similar. This replacement did not affect meaning, but his reading was not accurate.
In another instance, snowflakes were tumbling from the sky. Isam read the sentence and said that the character watched them "terrible from the sky" instead of tumble. Again, this is another miscue that was only visual. Isam looked at the "t" that began "tumble" and also the ending letters of "ble" and assumed that the word was terrible, instead of sounding the word out in front of him. This error impacted his understanding of the story, and did not fit grammatically in the sentence.
When analyzing another miscue that Isam made when reading The Big Snow, he read the word "uneasy" as "neasy." He did not speak the "u" sound as he read, changing the word to a nonsense word. This definitely impacted his understanding, since "neasy" is not a word, and the structure of the sentence is also compromised because of this. He did, however, use his visual strategies to read this word, because he got the last sounds of "neasy." Again, this shows that Isam falls back to his visual cues as a reader when he encounters words he is unfamiliar with.
When analyzing all of Isam's mistakes, he made three errors that were based off of meaning, two errors that were syntactical, and seven errors that were visual. It is very clear that he reads using visual strategies to pick up pieces of a word and then guess what the rest of a word could be. To help him become a more accurate reader, I would teach him to break apart words and identify all of the sounds that they are made up of. This would help him realize that words may look alike but have different sounds.
I would also encourage Isam to read with meaning and to understand what he reads as he is actually reading. He should understand that snowflakes can't "terrible from the sky," yet he is reading so quickly that he is not taking the time to comprehend what he read. I would emphasize the fact that he will not understand what he reads if he is rushing through and making errors that make no sense in the context of the story.
I am unfamiliar with most aspects of Bengali, but do know that the alphabet and characters are different than the ones in the English alphabet. Due to this, Isam should not have as hard of a time with the English alphabet as another learner who knows those characters as having different sounds.
Mariana read the same passage as Isam, and very similar to Isam's running record, the majority of Mariana's errors were visual. Her visual miscues impacted meaning many times. She also said that snow was "pilling" up, instead of "piling" up, exactly like Isam did. Mariana did not stop when she made this error, even though this replaced word did not make sense in context.
In that same sentence, the snow was described as a thick blanket. Instead of reading the word thick, Mariana read it as "thin." This was a visual error because thick and thin both start with "thi." This was also a syntactical miscue because thick and thin are both adjectives used to describe the snow. This, again, did impact Mariana's comprehension and meaning, because the author used the word thick to illustrate there was a lot of snow and that it was falling heavily. Mariana did not read this word correctly, so she missed out on this context clue.
As the story progressed, the character felt dizzy as he watched the snow fall. Instead of reading the word "felt," Mariana read "left." This was a visual error because she looked at all of the letters in felt, but mixed them up in her head while reading to get "left." She did not stop and change her mistake, which, again, impacted her comprehension. "Left" did not make sense in the context of that sentence, but Mariana did not notice or stop. Instead, she continued reading. If Mariana is not continually noticing her mistakes and correcting them as a reader, she will fail to comprehend much of what she reads.
Mariana, when she read the word snowplow, pronounced it as "snow-ploe." She said the word "low" at the end, highlighting the long o sound, but she should have changed the word into the ow sound. This is a very hard concept, because other words that end ow, such as snow, are still said with the long o sound. More practice with words that are exceptions to a rule or a pattern would be beneficial to Mariana.
At the end of the story, Mariana read that the character shook off his "soogy" coat instead of his soggy coat. This error, again, is visual. She read the "so" sound and also the "gy" sound at the end of the word, but changed the vowel sound from "o" to "oo," which changes the dynamic and meaning of a word. Soogy is not a word, which means it would not make sense in the context of this sentence. Mariana would have a hard time understanding that there was so much snow outside that the character's clothes were even wet if she did not read the word correctly or go back to sound out the sounds.
After analyzing Mariana's mistakes, she had one miscue due to meaning, one mistake due to syntax, and six mistakes that stemmed from visual errors. Mariana also picks up on pieces of words that she already knows and then attempts to figure out the rest of the word, without breaking it into manageable pieces. Similar to strategies that would work for Isam, Mariana would benefit from slowing down and sounding out each word as she encounters it to ensure that she has the proper pronunciation. This will also help her make sure that she is gaining as much meaning from a text as possible so that she is understanding what she reads.
Mariana did not use any traditional pieces of Spanish that caused her to make the mistakes that she did. In Spanish, the "ll" sound is pronounced like a "y," yet she did not say it this way. She said many words, such as "thin," "left," and "apartments" correctly in English, they were just not the right words in the text at the time.
Mariana did have a hard time with grammar rules, such as "oo" and the "ow" sound at the end of plow instead of the long o sound, but these tricks come with learning and using a new language more often. I would work with her more on vowel sounds and vowel patterns to ensure her mastery.
Running records help a teacher to see where a student might be breaking down in terms of reading, and in both Mariana and Isam's cases, they are both relying heavily on visual cues and missing out on meaning.
