This article investigated the development of composition skill factors of mentally retarded children and nondisabled children. The purpose of the study was to address the standards to measure the level of current writing competence of the mentally ret...
This article investigated the development of composition skill factors of mentally retarded children and nondisabled children. The purpose of the study was to address the standards to measure the level of current writing competence of the mentally retarded, and to attain the concrete resources for the teaching module of literacy through addressing the particular limitations and the strategies in writing.
The subject were 90 nondisabled children and 90 mentally retarded children from 6 to 8 years old. They were selected from 8 schools having self-contained classroom and from 4 special school in Seoul and in kyongki-do.
The findings were as follow ; (1) The two groups (the mentally retarded and the nondisabled) showed the significant differences in fluency, syntactic maturity, vocabulary, and contents factors of the composition, but not convention factor ; (2) In both two groups, fluency, syntactic maturity, contents, and convention were developed with age. But, in vocabulary, there was no significant difference ; (3) Nondisabled children showed high correaltions between the composition skill factors (fluency, syntactic maturity, vocabulary, contents, and convention) whereas mentally retarded children exhibited low correlations - on relation between contents and convention, no correlation.
The findings may give the basis on which standards for each age group are established for writing instruction, and may provide concrete information for making a teaching module. Limitations and recommendations were discussed.