The purpose of this study is to see the effects of phonological awareness training for children with reading disabilities. Previous studies indicate that children with reading disabilities have deficits in their phonological awareness. Based on the pr...
The purpose of this study is to see the effects of phonological awareness training for children with reading disabilities. Previous studies indicate that children with reading disabilities have deficits in their phonological awareness. Based on the previous study outcomes, special educators began to apply direct teaching strategies with phonological awareness for the children instead of visual and perceptual training.
Three boys with reading disabilities participated in the study. Child A is in the third grade with IQ 84. Child B is in the first grade with IQ 88. Child C is in the first grade with IQ 95.
The Study used a multiple probe design across subjects. Each phonological awareness test is performed every three interventions and data were analyzed by visual analysis. Phonological awareness training consists of 3 components, constructed according to the intrinsic property of Korean structure.
The first phonological awareness training was setting same initial or last letter sound on the letters of Form 1-2. The second phonological awareness training was phoneme additions, deletions, and substitutions on letters of Form 4-5. The third phonological awareness training was phoneme blending and distinction on total letters forms with specially two vowels.
The results showed as follows:
First, each child showed different phenomenon in baseline. Child A was better in setting initial letters, and child C was better in setting last letters. Child B didn't have any kind of phonological awareness. When the intervention was introduced, all the children showed more improvement in setting initial letters than last letters.
Second, all the children showed less improvement on phoneme substitution than addition and deletion.
Third, all the children showed improvement on phoneme blending and distinction.
Specially they confused the letters with two vowels or similar shape.
Fourth, performance level of reading letters was improved much more than performance level of reading words and nonwords. In particular, comparing reading on words with nonwords, reading on nonwords improved more. It seemed due to the improvement of phonological awareness.