Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit is a type of learning disability. Learning disability does not connote physical disability. A learning disability is a reduced intellectual ability that affects a broad range of academic and functional skills in children like reading, writing, speaking, and understanding.
It is a common issue we have in the education system. Despite adequate word-level reading(Decoding) and intellectual abilities a substantial amount of pupils and students struggle with understanding difficulties.
Children with specific reading Comprehension deficits can read through different sentences or passages easily but are unable to recall details of what they read.
Sometimes they have some amount of information retained but they are mostly incorrect.
Parents and Teachers often make mistakes with writing off these children to practice more on reading skills as a result of their decoding ability being strong but comprehension is weak.
We need to give more attention to the understanding abilities of our children than just their reading abilities.
As children grow we focus more on their understanding abilities and not just their reading abilities. This deficit in a child is known as Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit (S-RCD)
Even after providing help and extra tutoring session for the child reading continues to be laborious.
As children go higher in learning they no longer learn to read but they read to learn and this is where understanding what they read is very crucial.
Specific reading Comprehension Deficit is generally diagnosed later than dyslexia.
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that affects reading and related language-based processing skills.
It manifests as difficulty in reading, reading Comprehension, spelling, and writing unlike Oral / Written Language Disorder and Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit which has to do with Learning disabilities that affect an individual’s understanding of what they read or of spoken language.
The ability to express one’s self with oral language may also be impacted.
Specific reading Comprehension Deficit is generally diagnosed later than dyslexia, around the child’s primary school age from basic 4.
Specific reading Comprehension Deficit is a specific impairment in reading comprehension and is linked to executive function.
Unlike people with dyslexia, people with Specific Reading Comprehension deficits don’t have decoding difficulties.
The Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit (SRCD) can be affected by anyone and not necessarily children with disabilities. Most times we see children who read fluently but can’t understand what they read. This deficit can be caused by several factors;
Table of Contents
1. Weak Oral /Language skills in preschool
The preschool serves as the foundation for every child’s education. The foundation of our education starts from preschool and if the stage of our early years isn’t as efficient as it should be, learning through primary, secondary, and university levels would be difficult.
2. Inability to understand words that they read
Understanding words for some children while reading is really difficult. What they do is read through without understanding the sentence or terms they have read.
3. Grammatical processing
Learners with grammatical processing have issues with the study of classes of words, their functions, and their relation to a sentence.
4. Inference‐Making
This has to do with having issues reaching a conclusion from fact or evidence at hand. For example, comprehension reading exercises for children should be easy exercise for anyone who reads and understand the passage as a result of the answers being in the book. For students with comprehension deficits, this would be hard to understand.
5. Semantic processing
This is the process that has to do with understanding specific words and placing them with sentences to have a deeper meaning of the word. For students with these difficulties, it would be hard to achieve this.
All this can cause specific reading comprehension deficits. One great way to help children with this deficit is to profer measures that can help curb it to a minimum level. It’s a gradual process.
These issues can be seen in our students in higher institutions, they find it very hard to meet up with their educational needs. Yes, there are several factors that can cause this for an undergraduate student but this is definitely one of the reasons behind it(specific reading Comprehension Deficit).
So the best measure to use is to help the child build the habit of reading at an early age so that as they grow older we focus on their ability to understand.
1. Building the act of reading :
In building the habit of reading they are also building their understanding ability due to the fact that while they read, they tend to visualize what they are reading which keeps a memory with them.
That is why when the children are asked what they have read they can easily state it out. If this activity is done consistently they would be able to apply the same technique to their academic work.
2. Target overall comprehension of language:
We can target the overall comprehension of language through their comprehension reading exercise. This is part of their curriculum in English classes here in Nigeria.
If we can give the children with specific reading Comprehension Deficits more comprehension passages to read it would build their understanding abilities, especially with their academic work.
3. Have students practice reciprocal teaching
Reciprocal teaching can help a child retain more of what they have learned. Students who have issues with mathematics subjects should be encouraged to do this.
While for other subjects we should teach them with care and love to practice these techniques which would build their understanding abilities.
4. Teacher Training
Teacher training is some of the root causes of these problems. In some rural schools, you would see a teacher teaching all subjects. Though it is the early years of education for a child but that is why it is a significant period of learning experience for a child. If teachers can be trained regularly these problems would be at a minimum. Training can be annually or bi-annually.
Authors: Gina Kemp, M.A., Melinda Smith, M.A., and Jeanne Segal, Ph.D. HelpGuide.org Logo.
HelpGuide.org Logo
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