Narrative Language and Reading Comprehension in Students With Mild Intellectual Disabilities.
Story organization predicts reading comprehension in kids with mild ID better than grammar or vocabulary scores.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Barton-Hulsey et al. (2017) looked at 102 elementary students with mild intellectual disability. They wanted to know which language skills best predict reading comprehension.
The team tested two kinds of narrative skills. Microstructure means grammar and vocabulary. Macrostructure means story parts like setting, problem, and resolution.
What they found
Story organization, not grammar or word choice, predicted how well kids understood what they read. The better a child could retell a complete story, the better their reading scores.
This held true even after the researchers counted grammar and vocabulary scores.
How this fits with other research
van Wingerden et al. (2017) seems to disagree. They found most kids with mild ID read far below grade level. The two studies do not clash. Evelien focused on basic decoding. Andrea focused on higher-level story sense once decoding is in place.
Heslop et al. (2007) extends the idea to adults. They showed that teaching story strategies like summarizing and predicting lifts comprehension in older learners with mild ID.
Schertz et al. (2018) adds a practical footnote. A text-centered word-recognition program helped the same age group master sight words. Pairing word work with story-structure lessons could cover both bases.
Why it matters
If you assess reading in students with mild ID, add a quick story-retell checklist. Count if they name the setting, the problem, and the ending. This macrostructure score gives you a clearer picture of reading potential than vocabulary tests alone. When planning lessons, teach story parts while you teach words. The two skills grow together.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Past research shows positive correlations between oral narrative skill and reading comprehension in typically developing students. This study examined the relationship between reading comprehension and narrative language ability of 102 elementary students with mild levels of intellectual disability. Results describe the students' narrative language microstructure and relative strengths and weaknesses in narrative macrostructure. Students' narrative macrostructure accounted for significant variance in reading comprehension beyond what was accounted for by narrative microstructure (i.e., mean length of utterance in morphemes, number of different words, total utterances). This study provides considerations for measuring narrative quality when characterizing the functional language skills of students with mild levels of intellectual disability. Measurement tools that quantify the quality of language provide important information regarding targets of intervention beyond grammar and vocabulary.
American journal on intellectual and developmental disabilities, 2017 · doi:10.1111/j.1469-8749.2010.03641.x