Comparitive study of the role of morphological awareness in accuracy, speed and comprehension of reading in dyslexic and normal children in second grade of primary school

ABSTRACT

Dyslexia is a language learning disorder which leads to some impairment in written language including reading and spelling. Children with dyslexia are mostly suffering in areas like Morphology, Phonology, semantic and pragmatic. Thus the main purpose of this study is to investigate the morphological awareness, as a significant aspect in reading components [Speed, accuracy and understanding] in which the children are impaired. In the current study, 27 dyslexic students and 57 normal students in second grade of primary school participated. Existence of dyslexia was determined through administrating a reading test of [Nama], and in order to be sure that none of the students of normal group has language deficit, the language development test [TOLD] was administrated on normal students. In order to assess morphological knowledge of participants, a morphological awareness test was administrated too. In addition to determine the reading speed, accuracy and comprehension, the [NAMA] subtests were employed. Data obtained, were analyzed with the help of inferential statistical methods such as linear Pearson correlation coefficient test, Spearman test, Normal Kolmogrov - Smirnov test, T-test and linear regression test [ANOVA]. Correlation coefficient between morphological awareness and reading speed in whole sample was calculated to be -0.9158, that of morphological awareness and reading accuracy was 0.9514, and that of morphological awareness and reading comprehension was 0.926. This shows significant correlation among morphological awareness and components of reading skill. While the same correlation coefficients, in dyslexic children were respectively -0.689, 0.1403 and 0.1062. It shows that there was not significant relationship in dyslexic children. The T-test also indicated that morphological awareness, reading comprehension skills, reading speed and reading accuracy skills had significant meaningful differences between two groups. morphological awareness, reading speed, accuracy and comprehension, were in a lower level among dyslexic children in comparison with normal children, and this can be regarded as one linguistic aspect that can be effectual in reading speed, accuracy and comprehension. However among the dyslexic children whose difficulties were limited to the word level [e.g. dyslexic group sample], morphological awareness did not have any influence on their reading skills