ABSTRACT
Purpose:
it was investigated deficits in syntactic awareness in students with learning disabilities and were analyzed correlations between these reading and listening comprehension skills.
Methods:
29 children were assessed, nominated by their teachers for not having any academic learning problems - Group I (GI) and with oral and/or writing communication disabilities, who formed the Group II (GII). The children's ages fluctuated from 9 years to 11 years and seven months and they were in fourth and fifth grade of elementary school. The assessment was composed by listening comprehension tests, syntactic and morphosyntactic awareness, reading average and accuracy and reading comprehension. Were used for the statistical analysis: non-parametric Mann-Whitney test for sample characterization and comparison of patients with and without problems and Spearman's correlation coefficient, used to measure the degree of association between the variables in each group.
Results:
were observed significant differences between the groups. Listening and reading comprehension, syntactic and morphosyntactic awareness in general, average and accuracy of reading tests were better in GI.
Conclusion:
these results show the importance of stimulating metasyntactic skills to reading development and the inclusion of metasyntactic tests in the reading assessment, as well as the use of related activities as a therapeutic resource.
Keywords:
Reading; Learning; Language; Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences
