The primarily goal of this study was to examine the patterns of cognitive and
language processing of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and how
they related to their text comprehension, interpreted within constructivism. The study
aimed to characterize the difference in language, character decoding, metacognitive
processing and text comprehension between children with SLI and those under typical
development; to identify the inter-relationships among their language processing,
character decoding, metacognitive processing and text comprehension; and to
investigate how the implementation of cognitive reading strategies instruction change
their language processing, character decoding, metacognitive processing, belief
towards reading and text comprehension. Two studies were carried out.
In Study One, 73 participants were recruited from two Hong Kong primary
schools; they were at second and third grade, 42 were diagnosed of SLI and the other
were under typical development. Standardized instruments were used to tap children’s
language processing and character decoding respectively. Researcher developed
Metacognitive Processing Scale were adopted to rate their metacognitive and deep
processing of text. A set of comprehension test, comprised of forced-choice inferential
questions and two recall tasks, were used to assess their depth in understanding
different types of text. Analyses indicated that SLI students did not only score poorer
in language processing, but also in character decoding, metacognitive processing and
text comprehension. Further analyses of both the entire sample and the SLI sample,
indicated that there were significant correlations between character decoding,
language processing, metacognitive processing with children’s text comprehension
scores.
In Study Two, there were 40 participants recruited from the SLI sample of the
Study One. Cognitive reading strategy instruction program were developed. 21
participants was randomly selected to receive the experimental instruction and the
another 19 were under conventional instruction as control. Besides the measures used
in the Study One, interviews and teacher-reporting questionnaires were used to tap
children’s belief towards reading and their classroom engagement. Analysis of
pre-instruction and post-instruction tests indicated the experimental children showed
significantly better progress on their oral language, text comprehension and belief
about reading. Both the experimental and the control group showed similar progress
on character decoding.
The study offers both theoretical and educational contribution on the literacy
development among the population of SLI. It identifies the role of metacognitive
processing on literacy achievement. It provides the evidence of implementing
cognitively-based reading strategies for literacy instruction for children with SLI
within Chinese context. Upon the introduction of inclusive education, teachers now
face students with much wider diversity, including a significant number of children
with SLI. Possible collaboration between frontline teachers and speech therapists in
designing potential classroom activities is discussed. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Education
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:HKU/oai:hub.hku.hk:10722/173863 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Lau, Ka-ming., 劉家明. |
| Publisher | The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) |
| Source Sets | Hong Kong University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PG_Thesis |
| Source | http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B48273624 |
| Rights | The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works., Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License |
| Relation | HKU Theses Online (HKUTO) |
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