If an ELL reads the word startled as estart, how should the teacher correct the error?

• A. Have the student repeat the word after instruction once.
• B. The teacher reviews the base word as an s-blend and reviews the suffix of each word, then has the student reread to note the difference.
• C. Tell the student it's close enough and move on.
• D. Provide a synonym and have the student use it in a sentence.

Answer: (B)

Focusing on chunking the word into its parts is the key idea here. Startled is built with a strong initial s- blend, so guiding the student to notice that the word begins with the sound st, not a single s or an e-plus something else, helps map the letters to sounds accurately. Then highlight the ending portion as a suffix chunk, which in this word signals a past-action form and combines with the root to create the full pronunciation. By having the student break the word into the base part with the s-blend and the suffix part, and then reread, you give a clear connection between how the letters spell the sounds and how the word should be pronounced. This direct attention to the initial cluster and the suffix supports decoding and morphology, which is especially helpful for an ELL learner building word structure. The other options don’t provide practice with breaking the word into meaningful parts or with comparing spoken and written forms, so they don’t give the student the same targeted way to fix the misreading.