Relative Effects of Whole‐word and Phonetic‐prompt Error Correction on the Acquisition and Maintenance of Sight Words by Students With Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

We used an alternating treatments design to compare the effects of two procedures for correcting student errors during sight word drills. Each of the 5 participating students with developmental disabilities was provided daily one-to-one instruction on individualized sets of 14 unknown words. Each week's new set of unknown words was divided randomly into two groups of equal size. Student errors during instruction were immediately followed by whole-word error correction (the teacher stated the complete word and the student repeated it) for one group of words and by phonetic-prompt error correction (the teacher provided phonetic prompts) for the other group of words. During instruction, all 5 students read correctly a higher percentage of whole-word corrected words than phonetic-prompt corrected words. Data from same-day tests (immediately following instruction) and next-day tests showed the students learned more words taught with whole-word error correction than they learned with phonetic-prompt error correction.DESCRIPTORS: error correction, remedial trials, developmentally disabled childrenThe importance of providing feedback to students when they make errors is well documented (e.g

Effects of Active Student Response During Error Correction on the Acquisition, Maintenance, and Generalization of Sight Words by Students With Developmental Disabilities

“…Each 12-to 1 5-mmn session consisted of a next-day test, instruction with ASR and NR error correction, and a same-day test. As described in Barbetta et al (1993), next-day and same-day tests were conducted by the experimenter shuffling the 20 word cards and presenting each individually. No feedback was provided for correct or incorrect responses during next-or same-day tests.…”

“…In a previous study comparing remedial strategies on sight word reading by 5 students with developmental disabilities, we found that wholeword error correction (the teacher stated the complete word and the student repeated it) was more effective than phonetic prompts provided by the teacher (Barbetta, Heward, & Bradley, 1993 (Brigance, 1983) administered prior to the study indicated that Students 1, 2, and 3 read at the preprimer level, Students 4 and 5 read at the first-grade level, and Student 6 read at the second-grade level. One-to-one instruction and testing sessions were conducted 5 days per week in a corner of the special education dassroom.…”

“…During each of the 8 weeks of the study for each student, the two-step pretesting method described in Barbetta et al (1993) was used to create a new set of 20 unknown words from a pool of words identified by the dassroom teacher. The 20 target words (from those a student missed twice) were printed by hand on index cards (3 in.…”

Effects of error correction during assessment probes on the acquisition of sight words for students with moderate intellectual disabilities

“…Error correction for individuals with intellectual disabilities should be direct, immediate, and ensure active student responding. Barbetta, Heward, and Bradley (1993) compared the effects of a direct wordsupply approach to a word-analysis approach in providing error correction during sightword instruction for students with MID. Direct error correction procedures, such as word supply, were more effective than procedures which gradually prompted student responses, such as word-analysis.…”

“…. Error correction for individuals with intellectual disabilities should be direct (Barbetta, Heward, & Bradley, 1993), immediate (Barbetta, Heward, Bradley, & Miller, 1994;Worsdell, Iwata, Dozier, Johnson, Neidert, & Thomason, 2005), and ensure active student responding (Barbetta, Heron, & Heward, 1993;Worsdell et al, 2005). compared the effects of a direct word-supply approach to a word-analysis approach in providing error correction during sight-word instruction for students with mild intellectual disabilities (MID).…”