Learning Difficulties - Part A

Understanding Comprehension

Understanding content and reading materials essentially mean retaining some information from the text. Proper development of cognizance means that students should be able to understand the text or books after reading them. This can be hard for students considering their low recurrence of understanding propensity. Iftanti (2012), in her examination expresses that most students do not have great understanding propensity even after they officially learnt English at school. It may due to limited inspiration given by the educator in school or guardians at home.

Normal developing and growing knowledge essentially requires the students to have basic understanding of the topic at hand or the theme. Generally, individuals are keen on perusing a particular subject when they feel that the perusing will be valuable for them.

In understanding and retaining knowledge, there are 5 abilities which are considered as basics. These abilities are: Lee (2017)

  1. Disentangling- Disentangling is identified with an early language ability called phonemic mindfulness which is essential for an extensive aptitude called phonological mindfulness. Phonemic mindfulness empowers children to hear singular sounds in words (phonemes). It additionally permits them to “play” with sounds at the word and syllable level and improve on their ability to pronounce words and later build sentences. The apt test to evaluate the performance of the child is the Phoneme Identification Test. It tests and helps to assess the Spectral and Temporal discrimination skills of children.
  2. Familiarity- To gain knowledge in an easier way, students need to immediately perceive words and remember the meanings of them. Familiarity speeds up when they can remember the words and that leads to better understanding of the text at hand. It is likewise significant when the students discover the use of sporadic words like a, an, the as this improves grammar and goes hand in hand with the use of words and enhances the language. Frequent revisions of the texts and alphabets taught in class-rooms along with testing the retention of the same knowledge by the child can help is familiarizing the child with the letters.
  3. Jargon- To comprehend what is expressed in text, individuals need to see the greater part of the words in the content. Having a solid jargon is a key part of understanding perception. Students can learn jargon through guidance however they commonly get familiar with the significance of words through ordinary experience and furthermore by just experience. This can be tested and improved with an increased amount of reading of books and texts that contain good and correct English along with impeccable grammar.
  4. Sentence Construction and Cohesion- Looking at the construction of sentences, it may appear to be a composing ability. Associating thoughts from ideas formed inside the brain and between written sentences, is called attachment. However, these aptitudes are significant for perusing understanding too. Knowing how thoughts connect up at the sentence level assists the students with getting the whole meaning from entries and whole messages. It likewise prompts something called rationality, or the capacity to interface thoughts into totally different thoughts to build new sentences which have totally different meanings. The expression of thoughts in verbal nature has to be correct before it can be put down on pen and paper. Children should be encouraged to speak about different things and their feelings about it, this improves the flow of language and creates a connectivity between consecutive sentences.
  5. Thinking and Background Knowledge- Most students tend to relate to what they read to what they know. So, it is significant for students to have a strong foundation or earlier information about the world when they read. They additionally should have the option to “read between the lines” and concentrate on any significant event.
  6. Working Memory and Attention- These two aptitudes together combine to make an aspect of a gathering of capacities known as chief capacity. They are unique yet firmly inter-related. At the point when children read, consideration permits them to learn from the text. Working memory permits them to clutch that data and use it to increase importance and assemble information from what they read. Working memory and consideration are essential for learning and future work. The capacity to self-screen while imbibing knowledge into oneself is likewise attached to both the components mentioned above. Children need to have the option to perceive and when they are unable to grasp a concept, at that point they have to stop, return and re-read to clear up any disarray that they may have.

Jargon

Francie (2017) in his article proposed the significance of jargon on perusing achievement that can be summed up into;

  1. Cognizance improves when you comprehend what the words mean. Since cognizance is a definitive objective of gaining knowledge, students should not overestimate the significance of jargon improvement.
  2. Words are the cash of correspondence- A sophisticated jargon improves all territories of correspondence — tuning in, talking, perusing and composing. It is similar to all-round development of a particular object.
  3. At the point when youngsters and teenagers improve their jargon, their scholastic knowledge along with social certainty and ability improve together.

This shows that Vocabulary acts as one of the most significant abilities which is important for instructing and learning an unknown dialect. It is the reason for the improvement of the various abilities like those of- understanding cognizance, listening, appreciation, talking, composing, spelling and articulation. Jargon is the fundamental instrument for students to learn and utilize English or any other language in the best possible manner.

Once a student is assessed for all the above criteria, a student like Abby, who is in Grade 3, has time for individual attention to be given to her which could result in improved performance from the child, if any issues exist. The negative side of all these tests are that it cannot pin-point if the particular child has any medical issue or if the issues are a result of just late cognitive or speech and language development. The tests prove the presence of an issue and that the development of the child is not at par with the average development of other children of her age. Additional tests have to be undertaken to see if any medical attention is required for the child.

The test of specific language impairment (SLI) may also be conducted to see if the child is facing the issue of speech and recognition with the letters of only one particular language or all the languages known to the child. This might provide the teachers and the guardians with more insight about the cause of the issue. It has been noticed that speech impairment is not rare among young kids as they are just learning to speak, but most of the students with speech impairment have not been consulted or examined by a therapist majorly due to low socio-economic status. In a study by Tomblin (1997), it has been seen that only 29% of the children who fulfil the eligibility to that the SLI test have been diagnosed with previous speech impairment issues. Thus, it is extremely important that the child is given proper treatment or attention within time so that the deficiencies can be remedied.

Learning Difficulties - Part B

From the outcome of the tests that were conducted, the fundamental issue that has been identified with regard to the students is related to jargon information. This can be brought about by the low frequency of understanding and revision exercises. Revision can assist the students with increasing the knowledge of new words and their attempt to ace jargon should lead them to discovering a few different ways to arrive at it. This assignment ought to be started from the class-room itself by the instructor. A few exercises can be initiated to persuade students to peruse and to assist them with remembering the jargon.

One of the easiest methods that is viewed as fun by students as well as the instructors is by way of playing a few particular games as opposed to perusing and talking about a topic. This thought is drawn from the results of a survey undertaken by the students. The outcome of the survey is demonstrated below:

Q: What exercises do you expect to assist you with appreciating perusing exercises in the homeroom?

The reactions that were recorded, students give suggestions so that they are able to appreciate and understand the provisions taught in class a little better. A few games can be utilized as a learning medium, particularly for improving their information on jargon, for example, Taboo Words, Chaining Words, and many more. It takes innovativeness and creativity from instructors to come up with such ideas and get students engaged with this intuitive type of learning. This way, there is no added pressure on the child to play undivided attention to the monotonous teachings in the class and they can enjoy the learning process in their own individual pace.

Deliberate jargon securing is related to remembering specific terms with their particular interpretations. On the other hand, purposeful learning is brisk and generally favored by students, however there are other issues attached to it- like there is no way of assessing whether the child is learning new things or is just copying from others. Students discover jargon in a segregated, regularly infinitive frame and stay unequipped for utilizing it accurately in the perfect setting. Additionally, deliberately learned jargon sinks quicker. Recommendable jargon procurement pushes students to each term, implanting it profoundly and firmly in the psychological dictionary (Aitchison in Alizadeh, 2016).

As per an examination done by Rohmatillah (2014), there are a few elements causing troubles in learning jargon:

  • The contrast between composed structure and the verbally expressed structure in English,
  • The enormous number of words that students need to learn or ace at a very young age,
  • The restricted information about words as to understand each word, students have to co-relate it with an actual item, for e.g., the word ‘apple’ has to be taught along with the image of the fruit to make a match in their brain,
  • The unpredictability of word information- Realizing that a word includes considerably more than its word reference definition- students had initially connected the word ‘apple’ with the fruit. But then they get confused when an iPhone is introduced to them and this new object is referred to as an ‘apple device’.
  • reasons for absence of comprehension of syntactic of the words,

Learning Difficulties - Part C

Some past examinations proposed games as medium for instructions and learning. An examination held by Silsüpür (2017) found that when this technique was implemented, there was not a huge contrast between the after-effects of the test. Additionally, the discoveries of the survey demonstrated that the members favored learning games rather than conventional way. The studies additionally uncovered that games used to teach the students resulted in a decrease in negative emotions during the learning cycle. It is recommended that educators rethink the part of games in lives of children and value their instructive worth. At the end of the day, negative sentiments can impact the way that a child takes towards learning in the classroom, for example, games can diminish the sentiments that cause students to feel the pressure to do well in comparison to their peers and ace or comprehend the exercise better.

Mauli, et al (2014) in her exploration about Students’ Difficulties in Finding Principle Ideas, discovered that there were 6 issues that were faced by students on a common basis. These issues were: low enthusiasm for perusing and gaining knowledge, helpless information on jargon, long sentences, helpless understanding of the methodology, linguistic disarray, and helpless information on many other topics. The outcome of these issues appeared later on in life. It was seen that an 8th grade student felt troublesome in discovering primary thoughts since they did not know the importance of fundamental thought and numerous troublesome words were just acting as a further challenge in discovering fundamental thoughts. From this exploration, it may be understood that jargon is looked at as a huge issue by students in the way of understanding cognizance.

Abby is a 9-year-old female student currently in grade 3, who joined the particular school in the middle of the school term and has no available records of her previous educational background and performances. In a situation like this, it becomes very difficult to pin-point the issues that the child might be facing as the teacher has observed the child only for a few weeks and does not have any previous records to confirm her thoughts. The child has to be put through a set of assessments to get a glimpse of what issues the student might be facing and what acts as a barrier to learning and reproducing the same for Abby. The acts of reading, writing and spelling are basic things that a child in grade 3 should be able to do without any hinderance.

Three particular tests have been performed on Abby. All the three tests will be discussed in detail.

  • Phonemic awareness- This test helps to discriminate between different sounds and then refer it to specific words. The recognition of sounds of each alphabet is particularly important as it makes the foundation for all three basic elements of education- reading, writing and spelling. Once a student learns how to identify the syllable attached to each letter, they can recall it and form new words. This paves the way for correct pronunciation of longer and new words.

Abby was given 2 sets of sound tests to pronounce. Abby performed well in Set 2 which included the recognition and use of the letters (c, k, e, h, r, m, d) in level 1 as well as level 2. Set 4 was comparatively tougher than Set 2 and involved recognition of sounds which included the letters (ai, j, aa, ie, ee, or). These are double syllable words and Abby faltered in recognition of basic words like road0rod and float-fleet. A child in the 3rd grade should be able to recognize and differentiate between the sounds of these letters, and thus, it may be said that the recognition of sounds by Abby is not at par with the level attained by her peers. This may be due to lack of basic early education or faulty/careless teaching. Abby must be given extra care and attention by her teachers to improve her basic knowledge and recognition of different sounds of each alphabet as without this she won’t be able to move forward and perform well in the higher grades. 

  • Letter-Sound Test (LeST)- This particular test evaluates the student’s ability to pronounce each letter or alphabet, or a combination of letters. This test contains a total of 51 graphemes (single alphabets and combination of alphabets. The student being tested has to read out the letters and combinations aloud. Abby was given a total of 4 papers to read out from. One of the papers contained single syllable letters while the other three papers contained a mixture of single and combination letters. It is expected that a student of grade 3 should be able to identify and pronounce 95% of the letters and combination of letters shown to him/her. The total score attained by Abby is that she got 18 words incorrect out of a total of 51 words. Although her performance is good, it is not up to the expected level as the average 3rd grader can achieve up to 95% of correct answers. This, Abby lacks behind in this test too, which may be a basic inter-related issue with that of the previous test that had been conducted. The recognition of alphabets and letters will help Abby to understand the different pronunciation of each letter and will directly help her with the perfect pronunciation of words.
  • Castles & Coltheart Test 2 (CC2)- This particular test contains a set of 40 words of each set of regular words, irregular words and non-words each, of a different colour. The rule is to let the child read the words written on the cards of a particular colour till the child makes 5 subsequent mistakes of the words in a particular coloured card. The test has to go on till the child makes mistakes in all the coloured cards or finishes reading all the 120 cards provided.

The first colour in which Abby makes the most mistakes are the non-words column. Although it is acceptable that these are just words that have been made up, a clear knowledge of pronunciation of each letter would have helped Abby as she got only 6 correctly pronounced words out of a total of 14 words. The second colour to go off the list was the blue colour while she answered all the words in the red category without 5 consecutive mistakes. This shows that Abby has recognition of words that are used regularly but fails to pronounce them properly.

Conclusion on Vocabulary Teaching Techniques

There are no previous records with regard to the performance of the child, all conclusions have to be drawn from the given assessments. From the observations of the teacher of Abby, it can now be said that Abby is mindful of competition and is under mental pressure to deliver performance that is at par with those of her peers or to do better than them. This causes anxiousness while performing group tasks and Abby becomes more involved in what her peers are doing rather than concentrating on her task at hand. This in turn causes low performance and also has an effect on her speech and recognition of letters. While taking the assessments, Abby has been mindful of the performance of her peers and there might also be a hint of late cognitive development. It is advised that Abby should consult a speech therapist for advanced tests, as there may be medical issues which cannot be specified by the assessments taken. The alternative of learning through games should have an impact on Abby and she may respond differently to the changed method of learning and that might help to get rid of the pressure to do well.

Reference List for Vocabulary Teaching Techniques

AD, R. M., Sutarsyah, C., & Suparman, U. (2014). AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’PROBLEMS IN FINDING MAIN IDEA OF READING TEXT. U-JET3(7).

Alizadeh, I. (2016). Vocabulary teaching techniques: A review of common practices.

Cochrane, G., Morgan Jones, M., Marjanovic, S., MacLure, C., Varnai, P., Jongh, T. D., ... & Nooijen, A. (2017). Evaluation of the Impact of the European Union's Research Funding for Poverty-Related and Neglected Diseases: Lessons from EU Research Funding (1998-2013).

Durkin, M. S., Maenner, M. J., Baio, J., Christensen, D., Daniels, J., Fitzgerald, R., ... & Wingate, M. S. (2017). Autism spectrum disorder among US children (2002–2010): socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic disparities. American Journal of Public Health107(11), 1818-1826.

Iftanti, E. (2012). A survey of the English reading habits of EFL students in Indonesia. Teflin Journal23(2), 149-164.

McMurray, B., Klein-Packard, J., & Tomblin, J. B. (2019). A real-time mechanism underlying lexical deficits in developmental language disorder: Between-word inhibition. Cognition191, 104000.

McMurray, B., Klein-Packard, J., & Tomblin, J. B. (2019). A real-time mechanism underlying lexical deficits in developmental language disorder: Between-word inhibition. Cognition191, 104000.

Nurjanah, R. L. (2018). The Analysis on Students’ Difficulties in Doing Reading Comprehension Final Test. Metathesis: Journal of English Language, Literature, and Teaching2(2), 253-264.

Nurjanah, R. L. (2018). The Analysis on Students’ Difficulties in Doing Reading Comprehension Final Test. Metathesis: Journal of English Language, Literature, and Teaching2(2), 253-264.

Rohmatillah, R. (2014). A STUDY ON STUDENTS’DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING VOCABULARY. English Education: Jurnal Tadris Bahasa Inggris6(1), 75-93.

Silsüpür, B. (2017). Does Using Language Games Affect Vocabulary Learning in EFL Classes?. Journal of Foreign Language Education and Technology2(1), 83-104.

Zhao, L., Yuan, S., Guo, Y., Wang, S., Chen, C., & Zhang, S. (2020). Inhibitory control is associated with the activation of output-driven competitors in a spoken word recognition task. The Journal of General Psychology, 1-28.

Remember, at the center of any academic work, lies clarity and evidence. Should you need further assistance, do look up to our Education Assignment Help

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