What can miscue analysis reveal to teachers?

• A. To understand how decoding and meaning are coordinated and to inform instruction.
• B. Only how fast a student reads.
• C. Which words the student has memorized.
• D. Which punctuation marks confuse the student.

Answer: (A)

Misuse analysis looks at the reader’s oral reading errors to understand how decoding and meaning work together while reading. By listening to substitutions, omissions, insertions, and self-corrections, a teacher sees whether the student relies on sound-letter patterns, on context and semantics, or on sentence structure to figure out unfamiliar words. This pattern tells you not just what the student reads, but how they assemble word recognition with understanding of the text. With that insight, instruction can be precisely targeted—focus on phonics and decoding if the issue is sound-letter awareness; bolster vocabulary and word-learning strategies if meaning cues are being over-relied upon; or strengthen text-level strategies to support comprehension.

That broader view is why this option is the best. It isn’t only about reading speed, which misses the process behind the reading; it isn’t solely about memorized words or about punctuation confusion, which are narrower aspects of reading.