All issues > Volume 17(11); 1974

Original Article

J Korean Pediatr Soc. 1974;17(11):733-747. Published online November 30, 1974.

A Study on Reading Difficulty of School Children in Korea (I)

Duk Jin Yun¹, Ki Young Lee¹

¹Institute for Children with Special Problems, Yonsei University，Seoul, Korea

Abstract

Reading difficulty is well known problem in school children and widely distributed over the whole countries. Since the children with such problem could not perform their school work satisfactorily and their personality would be easily distorted by the difficulty, their problem should be corrected as soon as possible. The purpose of this study was to find the causes of reading difficulty and the method of correction of children with such problem. 48 cases of children (3rd and 4th year classes of Kaewha primary school children in Seoul city) were divided to 2 groups, study and control groups. Measurements, detailed physical examinations, laboratory tests including hemoglobin, hematocrit, total serum protein and stool, tuberculin skin tests and home visitings were dene to all study cases and chest X-ray were performed to the cases with positive or questionablly positive tuberculin skin tests. Special education was provided to only study group for 2 months (lecture of 2hrs after their school works) and the results were evaluated with both groups and following results were obtained. 1. Children were relatively in good health and diseases which might influenced their learning difficulty were not dectected exeept 3 cases of defective vision and 1 case of speech disorder associated with mild degree of cerebral palsy. 2. Ecnomic state of the children were generally poor (economically low class family was 83.3%) and large-sige family was frequently noted (27.0% of the cases had 8 or more of family members). 3. Educational level of parents were very low (45.7% and 50.0% of fathers -and mothers re- spectively were graduated only primary school) and many family members with reading difficulty were also found (10.9% and 35.4% of fathers and mothers respectively had reading difficulty and 14.6% of study cases had brothers or sisters with reading difficulty). 4. Many parents (77.0%) and brothers or sisters (43.9%) of the study cases had unwilling tendency to read the books and more than half of the children didn’t read the books in the home. Only 18.8% of families of the children read the daily newspaper. 5. 60.4% of chidren didn’t have his home-works (reading or writtings) and many of their parents or brothers didn’t teach them in the home. 6. Except 3 cases of mild mental retardation (IQ 50〜75)， the remainders had relatively good intellegences and 33. 3% of children had I.Q. over 100. 7. The main causes of reading difficulty revealed indifference of parents and poverty(31. 2%), indifference of parents (27. 0%), poverty and physical handicaps (8.2% each). Reading difficulty caused by mental retardation ranged only 6. 4% of the childern. 8. 33. 4 point (mean record) was raised on study group after education but there was only 8. 1 point raise in control group. The degree of improvement of mean records in both groups showed that 63.3% of study group raised 30 point or more but 66.7% of control group raised less than 10 point, same or low. Improvement of mean record on the individual intelligence level showed that children with I.Q. 50〜75 raised less than 10 point only after education but 41.7% of children with I.Q. 86〜 100 was raised 3〜50 points. All the children with I.Q. more than 100 raised more than 31 point. Above results showed that special education in the school for correction of the children with, reading difficulty seems to be useful and advisable method.

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