Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion small errors when reading aloud

Last night DD5 was reading aloud to me (doesn't happen that often) and I noticed again that he makes occasional word substitutions or additions or may transpose or skip a word. They're always small, unimportant words and it still makes perfect sense, but technically speaking, they are errors. For example, he might say, "The children were going to go into this house to find OUT what was inside," when the text reads, "The children were going to go into THE house to FIND what was inside." (That's not a great example. I feel like his changes are even smaller. But something like that.)

He is incredibly fluent and reads aloud at adult speed, with beautiful expression and very, very few word recognition errors until we get into books at a pretty high level. However, he does make these small mistakes and they are not infrequent. I think it may be a result of reading fast and skimming ahead as he reads, but I don't know.

#1--No cause for concern, right?
#2--Is he going to get marked way down on those reading level tests they do because of this?

I have been encouraging him to read a little more slowly and carefully, but that's kind of like telling the wind not to blow.

I think it's actually a sign of reading fluency and not a problem. You would not be able to make small substitutions while preserving meaning in a language you did not know well.

Yes, he absolutely preserves meaning. If you were listening without looking at the page, you would not know he had misread.

Technically speaking, though, these are "calling errors" or whatever. Any teacher with any sense would see that he is an incredibly good reader...but...(sigh).

I should perhaps mention that he has been reading in his head for months and months. (I might be able to look back and see when that transition occurred.) He doesn't get a lot of practice reading aloud.

#1-- absolutely not-- as you observe, it's a matter of fluency, really.


#2-- until about 4th-6th grade, unfortunately, it's a distinct possibility.


Hopefully if they DIBELS him or anything, they'll level with him about what is being evaluated and caution him to be reading exactly what is on the page. With my DD (who also did this and still does, and starting at about this age, too) that was enough. She can read verbatim. It's just easier and more natural to read aloud with meaning and listener engagement as the top priorities instead.

I think as he gets older and into more advanced reading, this can become a problem. Errors which are no worry now may become pronounced later, and lead to significant misunderstandings. You can pack a lot of nuance into small amounts of syntax. For instance, this Supreme Court case over a comma: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-comma-in-the-second-amendment-2013-8

Big-picture thinkers can use some help developing attention to detail, and I think the sooner, the better.

Not a big deal. I see this with my middle and youngest kids. Eldest speaks in a very fluid manner and always did well in the elementary school read aloud testing. Middle kid didn't score as well (still above grade level) in elementary due to the substitutions, skipping words, etc.

Fast forward to middle school. Testing is read to yourself, not read aloud. Eldest had good, well above grade level test scores, but middle kid was tested as reading at a graduate level (I take that with a grain of salt). I see youngest taking the same path as middle kid (youngest is still in elementary).

we had to explicitly explain to DD5 how to read to her teachers last year - she had this exact problem (but STELLAR comprehension.) once she knew what they were looking for, she gamed the system very quickly.

we said it was just the same as "show your work" for math... and if i remember correctly, i think they moved her up 9 levels of books in one day.

Exactly. It's about flexing to give "the system" what it needs in order to run you through "the machine" properly.


We always used the analogy of DD pretending that she was a letter being "sorted" by automated equipment. Best to not get fancy and to just provide the information on an as-needed and on-demand fashion.

A sort of game all of its own-- little to do with learning/knowledge per se. Just like Simon Says. It's not the commands that are hard. It's the timing.

I need to follow this thread. My son has the exact same issue. Although, in his case, I have noticed that maybe 50% of the time it does change the meaning ever so slightly. I notice it is more problematic in word problems (math) because accuracy is more important there - it has more of an impact. I'd love to hear suggestions of how to help this. One of his OTS suggested his using the Tubaloo http://www.amazon.com/WhisperPhone-Solo-Grades-K-4-HB-WPS1/dp/B002UJCYI0 while he reads out loud to me. He's been using it for two months and his reading improved nicely (not sure if it were just developmental or due to tubaloo) but he still skips words and substitutes. I also pretty much make him read out loud to me for 15 mintutes a day. He wants/likes to read silently but with all his word skipping and such he'll only reinforce bad habits... I am hoping the repition of him reading out loud with me making him go back each time he skips a word will help. Anyway, really interested to hear suggestions!

DS7 definitely has vision tracking problems and sees the word order garbled and will read it as such. This is fairly frequent and regular (more than one word a sentence.) It also shows up in garbled interpretation when exact words are important like instructions on a test or sometimes a math problem. Props like his finger or a playing card can greatly reduce it.

In researching this due to potential levelling concerns, references I saw made a distinction that "word perfect" reading became a higher scoring component in 3rd grade for setting reading levels than in lower grades.

p.s. editing as Irena posted before I submitted. We are trying out some tutoring with the word skipping and writing problems to see where that goes.