An Analysis of the Development of Early Reading Skills in Students with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

This study was conducted to obtain a descriptive account of the development of early reading skills in students with intellectual disabilities and to generate insights into their predicted progress in acquiring foundational reading abilities. The study involved eighteen students with intellectual disabilities enrolled in Grades 4 to 6 of elementary school. All participants were administered an early reading development assessment. The findings indicate that, at the stage of linguistic awareness, all students demonstrated adequate ability in understanding basic vocabulary and simple sentences. At the phonological awareness stage, eight students had not yet fully achieved the expected level of phonological development. At the decoding stage, four students encountered difficulties in reading vowel letters, while seven students experienced problems reading consonant letters. All students showed challenges in reading syllables and whole words. These results suggest that over the span of three years, students with intellectual disabilities generally develop linguistic awareness, begin to acquire phonological awareness in the fourth year of schooling, and some students start to develop decoding skills by the fifth year