1.

READING PROBLEMS

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Reading difficulties is learning disorder that involves significant impairment of

reading accuracy, speed, or comprehension to the extent that the impairment
interferes with academic achievement or activities of daily life. People with
reading disorder perform reading tasks well below the level one would expect on
the basis of their general intelligence, educational opportunities, and physical
health

1.2 THE READING PROBLEMS IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL

Reading and learning are the two things that determine the success of a child
during his school career. First he learns to read. Then he reads to learn. Because
the child with reading problems and reading difficulties battles to read, he is
therefore also hampered in the learning situation. I have identified five major
problems in reading that can cause a pupil may be left behind in their subjects.
That is insufficient sight vocabularies, visual analysis skills difficulties, inadequate
auditory analysis skills, inability to use context clues and inadequate
comprehension skills.

1.3 THE READING PROBLEMS, THE CAUSES AND HOW TO OVERCOME

1.3.1 INSUFFICIENT SIGHT VOCABULARY

The first reading problem is the child lacks the ability to group words into
thought units which are necessary for comprehension and fluency. He is
handicapped in attempting to identify news word by use of context clues,
because the vocabulary load of unknown words is too great. Here, there are
several causes of this problem. The children have limited reading experience
in their daily life. This problem also occurred because the child over use of
alphabet and phonic methods in beginning of instruction. These following
suggestions are suggested by reading specialist in order to overcome this
problem. Firstly, the teacher should use basal reader at easy level of difficulty
to make the child easy to understand the text. Secondly, the teacher should
use workbook pages that emphasize word recognition rather than making
analysis on the text.

1.3.2 VISUAL ANALYSIS SKILLS DIFFICULTY

Visual analysis skills are important for interpreting, analyzing and

manipulating visually, presented information accurately and quickly. But some
children tend to consistently make mistakes in specific part word such as at
the initial part, middle part or at the end of the word. Here the causes of visual
analysis skills difficulty. Firstly, the child has limited knowledge of vowel
sounds of word. It can make the child a little bit of confusing. Secondly, the
child has faulty approach to word recognition such as letter by letter spelling
or sounding. According to the reader expertise, he suggested several
techniques in order to overcome this problem. Firstly, the teacher should use
discovery technique with groups of words having the same affixes whether it
is prefixes or suffixes. He also suggests to rewriting sentences where the
child are given a number of sentences containing words with prefixes or
suffixes then the teacher asks them to identify the word with a prefix and
rewrite each sentences with a new word or phrase to give the same idea.
1.3.3 INADEDUATE AUDIROTY ANALYSIS SKILLS

The chills must be able to apply phonic analysis to both easy and difficult
words. The purpose of these phonic skills is the recognition of unknown
words in meaningful context. Students confused phonic sound and words that
students read cause it do not know the meaning of the word is contextually.
This problem arises when students are unable to associate sounds with
letters that read the words. The problems of decoding thus become more
severe. The possible causes of this problem are lacks auditory acuity, lack of
phonic training, child was not ready for phonics training and deficiencies in
instruction where child learned sounds of letters and memorized rules
without being shown how to apply them. Here there are some suggestion
activities to overcome this problem which are the teacher needs to guide
formulation of generalizations in child’s own words and note exceptions to
those phonetics generalization. For example, teacher teaches phonetic
families derived from sight word already in child’s vocabulary.

1.3.4 INABILITY TO USE CONTEXT CLUES

Guessing at words is defined as a reader saying a word without regard to

any decoding elements contained in the word or passage being read orally.
But In this problem, some child is unable to use meaning suggested by the
story or sentence to anticipate new or unfamiliar words. The ineffective
use of context clues forces the child to analyze carefully many words that
should be identified with a minimum inspection. This slows down his reading.
The possible causes of this problem are the child is not exposed or lack of
training in using clues, the teacher does not make use contextual instruction
and the last one is the material that provided by the teacher is too difficult to
understand. Recommendations for this problem are If the student guesses at
 phonetically regular one-syllable words, administer a Phonics Assessment
and provide help where needed according to the results of the test. If the
student guesses at words of more than one syllable, administer a Structural
Analysis Assessment and, again, give the student instruction on those aspects of
structural analysis in which she is weak. Because an inability to use context
clues can cause the student to guess at both one-syllable and multisyllable
words, testing for the student’s ability to use context clues is also recommended.
Secondly, while the student is reading orally, the teacher should call attention to
the words at which she guesses. At the same time, the student should be taught
how to systematically attack unknown words. The most effective way to do this is
by teaching the student to use the word-attack strategy and the last but not least
is The word-attack strategy teaches students to examine the words that both
precede and follow a difficult or unknown word and sound out at least the first
one or two sounds of the unknown word. This strategy teaches students to use
both the context of the sentence and the letter sounds (or structural parts) of the
unknown word. Thus students learn to use more than just the first letter or
syllable of the unknown word as the need arises.

1.3.5 INADIQUATE COMPREHENSION SKILLS

Reading comprehension is the heart and goal of reading, since the purpose of
all reading is to gather meaning from the printed page. The decoding of the
written word is a very important aspect of the reading act. Without being able to
decode the written word, reading comprehension is impossible. This explains
why some children can “read” without understanding what they are reading.
There are possible causes of this problem such as lack of general reading ability,
lack of training to gain meaning form print and the last is not interested in the
materials because lack of motivation and concentration. While the ways to
overcome this problem are the child should be trained to gain the meaning from
reading materials as soon as possible. They should be given practice in three
levels of materials such as literal, interpretation and assimilation.
1.4 THE CONCLUSION

In reading from various sources that are relevant, I can make a conclusion that
the process involves reading cognitive and experiences involving past. If
someone has a problem in reading it will affect particularly in the daily life and
always will be missed than students who do not have problems in reading.
Teachers should be sensitive and wise in addressing this problem. Although
various studies have been conducted aimed at addressing reading problems
among school students but this problem still interfere with students at the school.
Handle this problem immediately so that students do not feel ostracized and
humility of their friends.