'Young readers should be corrected whenever they make a mistake' essay
It could be argued that young readers shouldn't be corrected by their caregiver every time that they make a mistake as it is not allowing the young reader to see if they have made a mistake and then correct themselves. There are also better alternatives available to eventually help the reader correct their mistake and say the standard version of the word, such as by scaffolding, a concept developed by Jerome Bruner and then Wood and Middleton in 1975, developing on Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development.
In the text, where George struggles, his mother helps him by giving him a strategy to overcome the problem he has with the reading, an example of scaffolding and Vygotsky as she knows the task is in his zone of proximal development, he just needs a strategy to complete the task (saying the word), as she says "sound it out". The school taught strategy of learning to read by phonics is used here by the mum, and once he completes half of the word, she helps him out midway through the compound word due to it being difficult to say for young learners due to the letter confusion of 'd' and 'b' so close together. By helping him in this way without making him struggle and then correct his mistake, she is helping him learn in a way - phonetic reading by sounding it out' that he can remember to use when trying to say other words. This help is critical as Lenneberg said that children need to learn early in their critical period, otherwise they will struggle to learn in later years. This is shown in the DeVilliers and DeVilliers investigation where a young boy called Jim found it very difficult to learn in later years as he had no lexical role models as both of his parents were deaf.
When George gets a word wrong due to the virtuous error of a word guessing error, mistaking 'never' for 'need', the mother doesn't correct him but instead uses negative reinforcement by saying "nooo". The negative reinforcement is mitigated by extending the negative particle 'no' and extending the vowel sound, making it seem less abrupt and acts as a face-saving act, protecting his face needs using Brown and Levinson's politeness strategies. After she says this, he self corrects himself by saying 'no we need', this shows he realised he made a mistake and knew what the correct word was, and self correcting is ideal as it makes the young reader think about the virtuous error they made and correct it themselves. This is similar to when George makes another word guessing error later on, mistaking 'upstairs' for 'upset'. This could have been because of the first few letters being the same - the word guessing error - but also because of the image showing the mum walking upstairs. The mother responds to the mistake by interrupting with "no" and then shows positive reinforcement by stating that it "looks like upstairs" and then gives a strategy to "but look at the word" showing scaffolding as she knows saying that type of word is in his zone of proximal development. The coordinating conjunction 'but' also shows that she wnats him to realise it is wrong. He does then say the correct verb; after both corrections, the mother uses positive reinforcement by saying "that's it" to make sure that he knows when he gets something correct his is doing well and will get praise for it. This is vital as young readers make a lot of mistakes and may be put off reading without support and acknowledgement of successes. If they were to be put off and stop reading, this would impact them greatly due to needing to learn early in their critical period.
Correcting a young reader when they make a mistake is necessary however as they sometimes would need to know directly if they have made a mistake and what the correct way to say it is, but caregivers can correct young readers with mitigation or adding strategies in as well for future reference. When George says the word 'house' without adding the plural inflectional suffix 's', the mother does correct him but also gives a strategy for him to get it right, showing scaffolding again, by saying "ez" and "watch the endings" giving him the strategy of what he can do. Due to the two second pause, it is clear that she wanted him to imitate but he may have actually thought that he said it correctly, showing that he potentially didn't understand the correction. This here shows that a straight forward correction may not always be the best idea as the child may not understand what is being corrected and they haven't been clearly given a strategy to complete the word properly, therefore in the future they may keep on making the same mistakes and struggle to eventually learn when they are older, shown in Lenneberg's critical period theory.
When George makes another word guessing error, mistaking 'made' for 'may' this shows a real pattern of his weaknesses which is the endings of words. The mother seems also aware of this therefore she jumps in straight away with the correction by saying the correct word of 'may', which George does imitate after and carry on with the sentence, recognising which word was the mistake. Correcting George in this situation may have been the correct decision because he wad previously made a lot of virtuous errors, most of which were word guessing errors, and may have been tired and not wanted to have been given a strategy to correct himself again, therefore she made the correction for him. This is again critical as you don';t want young readers to get disheartened about the mistakes they make and get put off reading in their critical period to learn.
Despite correcting young readers some of the time, it may not be the best idea to correct them every time they make a mistake as this doesn't give them the opportunity to self-correct or correct the mistake by being given a strategy by the caregiver, which they can then use for other words they get wrong and use that strategy to self correct.
