In our daily life, travel, shopping, eating, and entertainment all use reading ability, and word recognition, reading and comprehension are indispensable skills in our lives. However, reading ability is not innate, it needs to be gradually developed through the establishment of their own daily dialogue learning Chinese sense of Xi, and the teacher's teaching guidance and analysis.
Reading comprehension is not easy for ordinary students. It is conceivable that for students with autism, this is one of the difficulties and bottlenecks in learning Xi and life. According to a pilot study [1], in order to promote the Xi and cognitive development of children with autism after entering school, improve their participation in classroom activities and enable them to participate meaningfully in extracurricular lifeThere is a great need for early literacy interventions for children with autism.
Early literacy
Emergent literacy means:Children's knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward literacy before they formally Xi to read and write.
Early literacy skills include:
1) Decoding ability, which refers to the ability to recognize words by using the rules of glyph-phonetic correspondence, such as the recognition of letters and words, reading rules - reading order from left to right, page turning from front to back, name writing and phonological awareness, etc.
2) Listening comprehension, which refers to the ability to interpret sentences and speak English. At present, there have been a large number of studies on the development of literacy in ordinary children, and the results show that:Early literacy skills can lead to children's reading scores in school. [3]
Children with autism are limited in language expression and comprehension, and daily communication due to the core disorder of social deficits, and most children are unable to use social language in the correct social context, and have difficulties in pragmatics. At the same time, some children with autism have different degrees of intellectual disability and cognitive limitations, which shows that children with autism are likely to have difficulty in reading comprehension after entering school.
Many experts and scholars have made valuable research on the reading skills of children with autism.
Lonely. A study on the reading skills of students with autism
Many experts and researchers have made a lot of efforts on how to improve the reading skills of students with autism.
1.Repetitive stereotyped behaviors and limited interests are one of the core disorders of children with autism. Recently, a study [4] conducted an experiment on the topic of 'whether it can increase the weight of limited content of interest in people with autism to improve reading comprehension'**. Two high school students participated in the experiment.
However, the results showed that neither participant increased in the number of associated words used during the verbal retelling of the text, and only one participant saw an increase in the percentage of correctly answered reading comprehension questions. Therefore, it is concluded that the effect of frequently embedding restrictive interests in the text on improving reading comprehension is limited. However, in fact, due to the small sample size and the limited conditions such as the number of experimental rounds, the conclusion needs to be further verified.
2.For people with language impairment who have difficulty communicating orally, the use of Augmentation and Substitution Communication (AAC) can expand or replace their unclear language and limited spoken expressions to achieve the purpose of communication.
Foreign countries have long confirmed the effectiveness of research on the use of AAC intervention and AAC symbol development in order to improve reading comprehension [5], preparing students' familiar animations, songs, textbooks and other materials to produce AAC professor Xi manuals, on the one hand, it can attract children's attention because of the content that students are interested in, and it can also be used by emphasizing key vocabulary, AAC symbols for key vocabulary can be used to improve comprehension, and at the same time, it can help students Xi the content of the lesson in advance, increase class participation, and reduce problematic behaviors caused by not being able to follow the progress of the class.
3.Students with autism and intellectual disabilities have the following reading characteristics:
1) Short attention span;
2) Insufficient abstract concepts;
3) Poor short-term memory and learning ability Xi.
To this end, education experts have summarized the following teaching methods:
1) RecommendationsDynamic, static alternation of activitiesto stimulate students' Xi concentration;
2) Use as much as possibleTeaching aids or physical objectsto assist students in understanding the Xi;
3) Provide a lot of opportunities to practice Xi after learning XiKeep practicing Xi,And with theReal-life connections,to strengthen memory, otherwise students will soon forget. [6]
Ways to improve reading comprehension in school-age children
Here are some ways to help school-aged children with autism improve their reading comprehension skills.
This can be done when our children are young and want to prepare early literacy skills as a pre-school skill before going to school:
1) Create a good home reading and writing environment and divide a quiet reading area at home.
However, most children with autism also have difficulty concentrating, concentrating, or waiting [7], so it is possible to start with childrenInterestedThe content of the content,Combination of movement and staticcan effectively improve children's concentration.
2) Picture books are a good choice.
In this way, it should be noted that:
YesConsistent with the child's life experienceContentsAttractChildren's Reading,DifficultyMeets the child's level.
You can pick and choose to haveFunctionalityPicture books that learn Xi content, such as teaching children vocabulary or social expressions that are commonly used in daily life.
**High consistency of collocationFor children with autism, drawings that are too abstract may not be easy to understand. PickBe able to illustrate the storyThe illustrated picture books are helpful for children to figure out the plot threads.
3) The use of AAC symbol cards can help children understand faster.
Children's language comprehension and output are not synchronized. You need to understand before you can output. At the same time, because most children with autism are visual recipients, it is easier to understand **. Therefore, it can be used for children with weak or no spoken languageAAC symbol cards emphasize vocabulary or comprehension of sentences.
Reference: 1] Seong, S y., han, s. k., kim, y. t.(2015). a meta-analysis of phonological awareness intervention related to emergent literacy skills for aac users. journal of speech & hearing disorders, 24(2), 49-59.[2] Liu Yujuan. (2018).A review of research on early literacy in children with autism. Special Education in China, (7), 53-58[3] parette, h. p.，hourcade, j.，&dinelli, j. m. (2009). using clicker5 to enhance emergent literacy in young learners. early childhood education journal, 36 (4), 355-363.[4] marshall,b., myers, c.(2021). does embedding restricted interests of students with autism in text improve reading comprehension? developmental neurorehabilitation, 24(5). 347-354.[5] beukelman, d., mirenda, p. (2013). augmentative and alternative communication: supporting children and adults with complex communication needs (4th ed.).baltimore: paul h. brooks publishing co.[6] Liu Shuwen, Lan Jue. Picture book lesson for children with special needs[M].Beijing United Publishing Company, 2021[7] vivanti, g., trembath, d.,&dissanayake, c. (2014). a typical monitoring and responsiveness to goal—directed gaze in autism spectrum disorder．experimental brain research, 232( 2) ,695－701