1. READING PROBLEMS

1.1INTRODUCTION

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.