The Relationship School Maturity and Writing Skills of Students with Learning Disability

Abstract

Learning disability is a type of disability that is usually noticed when the child starts school. Early special education interventions can have very positive effects on the academic life of children with learning disability. For this reason, whether or not these students have reached the maturity required to start school during the transition from kindergarten to primary school will increase the effect of the intervention to be presented to them. It is also important how much the level of school maturity of students with learning disability can explain the problems they face during their literacy process. Accordingly, the aim of the study is to determine the relationship between school maturity and writing skills in first grade students with learning disability. This research is exploratory correlational research. The sample of this research is 57 primary school students who are diagnosed with learning disability and continue to being rehabilitee. "Metropolitan School Readiness Test (MSRT)" and "Writing Skill Evaluation Form" scales are used. Besides, was included school success and demographic information of students obtained from interviews with teachers in the current study. Correlation analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between the scores obtained from the variables. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that there was no significant relationship between school maturity and writing skills of students with learning disability. However, it was found that there is a negative relationship between the scores gathered from the Metropolitan School Readiness Test's "Word Comprehension, Matching and Copying" subscales and Writing Skill Evaluation Form "Writing Order" subscale. Also, it was found that there is a positive relationship between the scores obtained from the Metropolitan School Readiness Test "Word Understanding, Matching and Copying" subscales and "Dictation". This research once again draws attention to the unique learning features of students with learning disability. The results of this study have shown that students with learning disability are dependent on other factors rather than school maturity underlying literacy problems.

Keywords: Metropolitan School Readiness Test, Scholl readiness, Learning difficulties, Literacy

DOI: 10.7176/JSTR/6-11-01