Reading Ability of Students with Intellectual Disabilities at SLB AC Dharma Wanita Sidoarjo

Abstract

This qualitative case study described the English reading ability of tenth-grade students with moderate and severe intellectual disability at SLB AC Dharma Wanita Sidoarjo and the strategies their English teacher uses to teach them. Seven students, four classified with moderate and three with severe intellectual disability, took part together with the English teacher responsible for their instruction. Data came from a teacher questionnaire, a structured interview, and documentation combined with a field verification visit, analysed through the interactive model of data condensation, display, and conclusion drawing. Findings showed a gap between the two categories that Frith's stage model of reading acquisition describes as a difference in strategy rather than speed: students with moderate intellectual disability were transitioning from the alphabetic stage toward the orthographic stage, producing whole words such as gud moni for good morning but consistently dropping final consonants, while students with severe intellectual disability remained at the logographic stage, with only a narrow, copy-based foothold in the alphabetic stage. To teach reading, the English teacher combined four strategies, adapted English instruction, multisensory instruction, the Visual Auditory Kinesthetic Tactile (VAKT) method, drilling and repetition, and scaffolding with visual support, adjusting the intensity of support to each category rather than applying one procedure to the whole class. The study concludes that reading instruction in special education English classes needs a level-by-level account of reading ability to calibrate support to each student's severity category.

Keywords: Intellectual disability, Reading ability, Teaching strategies.