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Abstract Reading is using printed information to function in society, to achieve one’s goal and to develop one’s knowledge and potential. No other skill taught in school and learned by school children is more important than reading. It is the gate to gather knowledge. In the reading performance there are three types of procedures. The first one is a procedure for pronouncing words and non-words using the most common mapping between letters and sounds. The second is a procedure for mapping familiar written words directly into their corresponding phonological (sounds) forms. The last one is a procedure for mapping word directly onto its meaning. The three procedures are needed for making sounds in appropriate matching between outer stimulus (words) and inner storage (visual and phonological lexicon) in minds. Difficulty of reading is the most common complaint in learning disability children. Learning disability is a neurobehavioral developmental disorder manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of efficient reading (’dyslexia’), writing (’dysgraphia’) and/ or mathematical (’dyscalculia’) abilities despite conventional [Type the document title] Page 126 instruction, intact senses, normal intelligence, proper motivation and adequate sociocultural opportunity. Assessment of reading has been an issue to discuss through the past years. Among the tests assessing Arabic reading abilities, the ARST will be considered the only whole test that screen and assess the child’s reading abilities.The Arabic reading test (Abou El-Ella et al.,2004) and Awaad test (Awaad, 1995) were constructed to assess the reading abilities in children ranged from 9-10 years and 10-12 years respectively. Even the EGRA test assesses the children in grade 1, 2 and 3. So, the idea to design an ARST to be objective screening tool that can be used to give information about the reading abilities of the Egyptian children between 5 to 9 year old. Arabic Reading Screening Test (ARST) consists of 2 subscales. 1.Scale “1”: which is concerned with reading only without comprehension which includes; isolated, connected grapheme with/without short vowels recognition, logographic reading, decoding words, [Type the document title] Page 127 sentences, pseudowords (nonsense words). The first scale is composed of 10 items (variables) which are distributed at different age groups. 2. Scale “2”: which is concerned with reading comprehension which includes; word, verb, sentence comprehension, semantics at word level and semantics at sentence level. As for semantics at word level includes; visual closure, synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms. As for semantics at sentence level, it includes; sentence formulation, sequencing, completion, repair task and story reading and comprehension. 240 children participated in the Arabic reading screening test (ARST) and the related reliability and validity studies. Children who enrolled in primary schools in Masr el gedida and Nasr City districts. Within each school, students are allocated by systematic random method. The children are classified according to their age into 4 age groups, 60 subjects in each. The pilot study was performed on 40 normal children. The sample of pilot study included children of average mentality, with normal language development [Type the document title] Page 128 (subjectively). This sample was taken to check the materials used in the test whether they were clear or not & suitable or not, in order to check the pattern of presentation of the test items themselves, and their order of presentation. The time of administration of the ARST is 15-45 minutes. In this study, the Results indicate that there is high positive correlation between child performance in the ARST and chronological age of children (p=0.000). This means that, child performance increases when the child’s age increases. There is a negative correlation between the time taken to achieve the tasks and the chronological age of the children (p= 0.000) which indicates that, the time taken to achieve the task decreases when the child’s age increases. Reliability of ARST was proved to be high by test-re test using Alpha Cronbach’s method (r=0.9578). All methods prove that the ARST is highly reliable. Validity of the ARST was proved by developmental changes validity, internal consistency validity (r=0.948- 0.768) and constructed group validity. These methods proved that ARST is valid scale to evaluate child’s reading ability |