Teaching literacy to Hong Kong preschool children at risk for Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD)

Teaching literacy to Hong Kong preschool children at risk for Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD)

• Chung, Kevin Kien Hoa The Hong Kong Institute of Education

2009

• E Special Education
  • EH Education for Students with Learning Disabilities

Intervention Program Literacy Instruction Specific Learning Difficulties Preschoolers

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Pre-Primary Education

This study was to evaluate the impact of an early literacy intervention program for preschoolers at risk for SpLD. One hundred ten children were identified as at risk for SpLD. They were divided into 2 groups, the at-risk group (AR) and the control-risk group (CR). The at-risk group received a centre-based intervention program which contained 15 training sessions on the four domains: oral language, orthographic knowledge, morphological awareness and word recognition tailored for children poor in literacy skills. The control-risk group received some self-learning materials related to their school curriculum and finished the materials at home. A further group of 50 children (NAR) who were not at risk were selected to act as controls and were assigned equally to the two groups. Nine language and reading related-cognitive tests were administered. Results from the 9 tests before the intervention showed that both AR and CR had similar literacy achievement. Both groups performed worse than NAR particularly in the oral language, word recognition, orthographic awareness and phonological awareness. After the intervention, though AR and CR did not catch up with NAR, AR showed greater improvement in most tests than CR. The differences in improvement were found significantly in orthographic awareness and morphological awareness. This showed that children at risk for SpLD in the preschool years could achieve higher in literacy ability by receiving special intervention program. The results highlighted the important role that early literacy intervention played in the development of language and reading skills in preschoolers at risk for SpLD.

Paper presented at the International Conference on Educational Research (ICER) 2009: Learning Community for Sustainable Development

• English

Conference Papers

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/760f6aca

2016-01-07