Learners with learning disabilities (LD) in English may experience difficulties from the early stages of learning. However, it is difficult to clarify the actual situation in Japan because there is no test to recognize children's difficulties in learning English. In addition, there are no studies that have investigated learning difficulties in English speech at the elementary school level.
One of the most frequently observed difficulties in the early stages of English learning is vocabulary learning. In English vocabulary learning, the correspondence between phonemes and semantics is particularly important at the elementary school level. Vocabulary is formed by the correspondence between phonetics, spelling, and meaning (Kadota & Ikemura, 2006). Concerning spelling, Japanese elementary school foreign language education does not require instruction in establishing letter spelling, so spelling is treated in the category of focusing on phonetically recognizable letters. Therefore, the vocabulary recognition skills required at the elementary school level in Japan can be described as listening comprehension and semantic comprehension, as abilities necessary for the two correspondences of speech and meaning and phonological awareness. Lack of these abilities may cause difficulties in learning English.
Therefore, the authors first identified learning difficulties and factors that may be associated with them in 2020, developed a test to identify children with difficulties in listening to and recognizing English vocabulary, and administered it to 957 children. The results identified specific words that might identify children with vocabulary listening difficulties.
Based on the results, a modified version of the test was then completed and administered to 957 children in five schools across the country. The objectives were to verify (1) that the modified test could identify the upper and lower tiers and (2) that the results of the modified test showed similar trends across the country. The results showed that the modified version of the test is likely to have the ability to detect children with learning difficulties concerning English sounds and that it is practical because it can be administered in about 10 minutes by teachers with no expertise in English and no reports of false positives.
Based on the results of the revised test, a new vocabulary recognition test was developed in 2022 to measure the relationship between letter recognition, phonological awareness, and vocabulary for fifth- and sixth-grade elementary school students. The results of the revised test in 2020 will be presented in this presentation. This presentation will provide an overview of the revised test and the results of the vocabulary awareness test, as well as a discussion of the results.
Bibliography
Kadota, S. and Ikemura, D. (Eds.) (2006). Handbook of English Vocabulary Instruction, Tokyo: Taishukan Shoten.
Takeda, K. (2017, August 18-19). Keynote Address at the 43rd Annual Conference of the National Association for English Language Education, Shimane University, "Challenges of English Education for LD and Dyslexia".
Murakami, Kayoko (2018). 'Teaching Alphabet, Phonological Awareness, and Word Reading to Elementary School Students with Reading and Writing Difficulties,' Bulletin of Kobe Yamate Junior College, 61, 39-53.
