Acquiring Reading Skills in the Digital Interactive Environment: A Case Study of Children with Reading Disorder

Reading disorders are found in 10% of children and most of these children do not have an opportunity to receive effective remedial treatment. The difficulties are due not only to their cognitive limitations, but also to some teaching methods features and reading training approaches. Using digital technologies and distance methods of multimedia online learning in special pedagogy should help to significantly expand the availability of assistance to the children. In addition, now it becomes possible to develop alternative methods of teaching to read that are adapted for children with a risk of dyslexia. The unique remedial treatment approach for dyslexics was developed by Prof. Dr. Alexandr N. Kornev on a background of his long-lasting study. Later on, this approach was employed for developing a digital methodology of online learning to read for children with dyslexia. The detailed analysis of a longitudinally observed (7 months in total) reading acquisition process in a pair of twins is presented in the paper. The corpus of syllables, monosyllabic words, and two-syllable words presented for reading was developed on the material of 225 lessons and it was analyzed in detail. The development of recoding and decoding skills in a typically developed child and his reading-impaired twin with so called "mechanical reading" were compared. The processes of automation of syllable reading and word reading is discussed as being relevant to a failure of in acquiring decoding skills and, consequently, in developing reading comprehension skills. The results of the study evidenced in favor effectiveness of CMIOM not only as an intervention, but also as a diagnostic tool that gives unique capabilities for the detailed online analysis of the process of mastering reading over almost unlimited time span.

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