Increasing oral reading proficiency. A comparative analysis of drill and positive practice overcorrection procedures.
Positive-practice overcorrection beats simple drill during the lesson, but a dash of drill may lock the skill in for tomorrow.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Singh et al. (1986) compared two ways to fix oral reading errors in students with intellectual disability. They used an alternating-treatments design. Each child got both drill and positive-practice overcorrection across short sessions.
Drill meant repeating the word correctly three times. Positive-practice added saying the whole sentence aloud five times after the correct word. A no-teach baseline showed how many errors happened without help.
What they found
Both teaching methods cut errors below baseline. Positive-practice knocked out more errors during the lesson. Simple drill held a slight edge when kids were checked one day later.
The take-home: use positive practice for fast gains, but keep some drill trials if you want the skill to stick overnight.
How this fits with other research
McGee et al. (1983) already showed that 30 seconds of positive practice works as well as three minutes. Singh et al. (1986) now adds reading to that list and still finds the shorter loop effective.
Osnes et al. (1986) looked at adults with ID who rocked in their seats. They added praise for unprompted correct practice and saw faster skill gain plus stereotypy drop. N et al. did not add praise, yet both studies saw positive practice win during intervention.
Hemayattalab et al. (2010) moved the same question to the gym. Teens with ID learned basketball free throws best when they first pictured the shot, then practiced physically. Like N et al., extra mental steps boosted learning beyond plain physical reps.
Why it matters
If you run reading fluency programs, start with positive-practice overcorrection for quick error reduction. Mix in a few drill-only trials before the session ends to check next-day retention. Keep each positive-practice loop brief—30 seconds is enough. Track daily and next-day scores to see which student needs more drill versus more overcorrection.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A number of techniques have been used to correct oral reading errors and enhance word recognition accuracy. For example, drill has been shown to be effective with learning-disabled children, and positive practice procedures have been found to be effective with mentally retarded children. In the present study an alternating-treatments design was used to measure the differential effects of these two error correction procedures and a no-training control condition on the number of oral reading errors made by four moderately mentally retarded children. The extent to which the children retained their learning of the error words following intervention with drill and positive practice was also assessed one day after the initial reading of the passages. Results showed that when compared with the no-training control condition both error correction procedures were effective in reducing the number of oral reading errors, but that positive practice was superior to drill for all subjects. The retention data showed that fewer errors were made on those passages that had been remediated through positive practice. However, a comparison of the mean number of errors made during intervention and retention indicated that retention was marginally better under the drill condition than under positive practice.
Behavior modification, 1986 · doi:10.1177/01454455860101007