Introduction : In the classroom environment of the school age, understanding of discourse is achieved through listening and reading, and through this, the subject is learned.(McCray, Vaughn, & Neal, 2001). To successfully understand discourse, it ...
Introduction : In the classroom environment of the school age, understanding of discourse is achieved through listening and reading, and through this, the subject is learned.(McCray, Vaughn, & Neal, 2001). To successfully understand discourse, it is necessary to identify the central contents of the processed text and connect them using one's semantic and syntactic knowledge(Kamhi & Catts, 2014). According to Chall's(1983) reading development model, elementary and upper grades are based on automated reading skills as the “reading stage to learn” to acquire new information, for learning, the process of reading and comprehending discourse comprehension becomes important. In the Simple View of Reading model, it explains that for successful reading comprehension, both decoding ability and listening comprehension ability should be examined.
Developmental dyslexic students are specific learning disorders that show difficulty in accurately and fluently decoding words due to phonological defects despite continuous education. Looking at the characteristics of developmental dyslexic students in the simple view of reading model, even if there is no difficulty in listening comprehension, it may appear as a difficulty in reading comprehension due to difficulty in decoding. As a result of a preceding study targeting developmental dyslexic students in elementary school, they showed significantly lower performance than general students in word reading tasks that did not correspond to letters and sounds (Pae et al., 2017). For developmental dyslexic students who have difficulty in decoding, providing texts with an adjusted discourse decoding difficulty is an important factor that can help with reading comprehension.
The length and structure of the presented text can also have an impact on successful text comprehension. It is suggested that the text needs to be adjusted from a long and complex structure to a short and simple structure (Fang, 2006; Lee, 2011). In particular, when listening to and understanding discourse, the longer the discourse becomes, the more it becomes an obstacle to listening and understanding (Chen, 2005; Demirkol, 2009). Recently, there is a study that prefers 346 characters as the amount of text information in the mobile era (Jung Research et al., 2016). This suggests that controlling the amount of discourse is a factor influencing discourse comprehension.
Various linguistic factors such as vocabulary, syntactic ability, and working memory are factors influencing discourse understanding, and it is especially an important skill to have for successful reading comprehension. In order to understand a text, it is necessary to know the meaning of the vocabulary in it (Nagy & Scott, 2000), and the amount and depth of vocabulary are factors that affect the semantic understanding of the text (Quellette, 2006). In addition, processing of structural representations in sentences and sentence structure affects discourse comprehension, and difficulties in recognizing sentence structures and grammatical morphemes of texts can appear as difficulties in reading comprehension. Working memory is the cognitive ability to temporarily remember and process given information (Danemen & Carpenter, 1980). While more vocabulary knowledge is required as the grade goes up, students with developmental dyslexia have difficulty learning new words (Alt et al, 2019). Difficulties in vocabulary can be caused by difficulty understanding sentences and paragraphs by grasping the structure of writing and using syntactic structure.
This study aims to investigate the text comprehension of developmentally dyslexic students in the upper grades of elementary school. We will examine whether there is a difference in text comprehension according to reading comprehension and listening comprehension, and whether there is a difference according to decoding difficulty of a text, length of text, and language factors.
Methods : The subjects of this study were developmental dyslexic students and general students in the 5th and 6th grades of elementary school, 15 people per group, total of 30 people. Both groups achieved an in the shape scale test of the Korean Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence - Second Edition (K-CTONI-2; Park, 2014), the independent sample t-test result with a publication index of 85 or higher, t=1.586 (p = 0.124), and children with no significant difference in disclosure ability were selected. In addition, KOrean Lang-based Reading Assessment(KOLRA; Pae et al., 2015) were selected as children with no language difficulties with a standard score of 85 or higher in listening comprehension. Also, the students were reported to have no physical problems such as vision, hearing, or movement by their parents or teachers. Developmental dyslexia students show difficulty in reading with a standard score of less than 80 on the KOrean Language-based Reading Assessment(KOLRA) Reading Index 2 (decoding, reading fluency, reading comprehension), General students were selected as children who had no difficulty in reading with a standard score of 85 or higher.
The research tools used in this study were produced by referring to Lee Joungmin et al. (2021). Eight themes were selected based on the textbook topics for the 3rd and 4th grade of elementary school. In terms of decoding difficulty of a text, the text of each topic is more than 40% of syllables with grapheme-phoneme mismatch, The difficulty level was less than 20%, and the amount of discourse consisted of 50 to 60 words for short texts and 100 to 110 words for long texts. Four types of texts were created by decoding difficulty of a text and length of text by topic, and the same questions were asked to all types of texts. Each question consisted of 8 questions and was scored on a 0, 1, 2 point system. The linguistic factor test for text comprehension evaluated the vocabulary semantic classes, syntactic knowledge, syntactic semantic comprehension, recalling sentences of the four items of the Korean-Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals(K-CELF 5).
Repeated measures two-way ANOVA was conducted for group (developmental dyslexic students, general students)*discourse mode (reading, listening), group*decoding difficulty of a text, and group*length of text. In addition, an independent sample t-test was used to examine group differences in the four domains of language factors (vocabulary semantic classes, syntactic knowledge, syntactic semantic comprehension, recalling sentences) on comprehension.
Results & Discuss : First, as a result of examining the difference in text comprehension according to the discourse mode (reading, listening) of the two groups, there was no significant interaction effect (F=0.718 p=.197), but the group (F=20.848, p=.000) and discourse mode (F=26.866, p=.000) showed significant main effects. The developmental dyslexic group showed significantly lower performance than general children in both reading and listening tasks, and both normal and developmentally dyslexic students showed significantly lower performance in listening comprehension than reading comprehension. It is considered that the difficulties in reading comprehension, which must be achieved academically through texts in the upper grades of elementary school, lead to a lack of language skills, which also affects listening comprehension. In addition, it suggests that support is needed not only for reading comprehension but also for listening comprehension during intervention for students with developmental dyslexia.
Second, as a result of examining whether there was a difference in text comprehension according to the decoding difficulty of a text between the two groups, a significant interaction effect was found (F=13.081, p=.001). The main effect was significant in both group (F=20.848, p=.000) and decoding difficulty of a text (F=10.207, p=.003). Normal students did not show a difference according to decoding difficulty of a text, but developmental dyslexia students showed lower performance in texts with decoding difficulty of a text difficulty than easy texts. In Hangeul, correspondence between letters and sounds is regular, and decoding ability is relatively high (Landerl et al., 1997), and word decoding is said to increase in the upper elementary grades. (Kim, Pae, 2011, Yoon, 2015, Yoon, 2016). Nevertheless, for students with developmental dyslexia, difficulty in decoding can lead to reading comprehension until the upper grades of elementary school. It is meaningful to confirm that adjusting the writing according to the student's decoding performance can be a positive factor in text comprehension.
Third, as a result of examining whether there was a difference in text comprehension according to the length of text between the two groups, no significant interaction effect was found (F=0.133 p=0.718). No main effect was found in the length of text (F=0.748, p=0.394), but a main effect was found in the group (F=20.848, p=.000). Although developmental dyslexia students showed significantly lower performance than general students, it was found that they were not affected by the length of text. It can be seen that the long text of this study is about 340 words, and it is not burdensome when 5th to 6th grade students in elementary school process it. It is consistent with the result that 346 characters are preferred as the amount of text information in the mobile age in a study on the article path in the mobile age (Jeong et al., 2016).
Fourth, as a result of examining whether there was a difference in language factors between the two groups, the developmental dyslexic students showed significantly lower performance levels than the general children in all four areas of vocabulary semantic classes, syntactic knowledge, syntactic semantic comprehension, recalling sentences. It was found that although developmental dyslexia students are cognitively no different from general students, they show more difficulties than general students in not only vocabulary and syntactic structure, which are the basis of text, but also in repeating sentences to remember and process what they have memorized. It seems that developmental dyslexia students have less reading experience and as a result, they have difficulties in linguistic ability to acquire through text. This can be seen as the effect of the Matthew effect, which occurs when vocabulary and background knowledge are lower than those of normal children due to reading difficulties proposed by Stanovich(2009). It is meaningful to confirm that various language abilities are also required by factors of vocabulary semantic, syntactic knowledge, syntactic semantic comprehension, and working memory.