peers in comprehending poems?, (2) what are the differences between students ... The next 11 questions were referring to the contemporary poem and were similar to ... Students were also told that they could interrupt to make comments or ..... explaining similes and personifications is in line with findings from the studies ...
COMPARISON BETWEEN STUDENTS WITH AND WITHOUT LEARNING DISABILITIES IN ELABORATING AND COMPREHENDING POEMS M. Voulgaraki, I. Agaliotis University of Macedonia (GREECE)
Abstract th
th
Τhe present study compared 5 and 6 grade primary students with and without LD as to their ability to process and interpret poems. Measures included a traditional and a contemporary poem, as well as a 28-item questionnaire that was answered by 40 typical students and 40 students with LD. According to the main results, students with LD face considerable difficulties in determining a poem’s main idea, in specifying relationships justifying concrete inferences, and in naming emotions evoked by poem reading. Moreover, they present problems in identifying rhyme and metaphors. However, students with LD present achievement comparable to that of their typical peers in connecting poems’ content with their personal experiences and also in recognizing personalization. The results are discussed in terms of possible causes and instructional implications of the difficulties encountered by students with LD when dealing with poems. Keywords: Poetry comprehension, poetry elaboration, Learning Disabilities.
1
INTRODUCTION
Poetry is regarded as an effective medium for the promotion of literacy skills and the support of emotional well-being in individuals of various ages (e.g. Kane & Rule, 2004; Tegnér, Fox, Philipp, & Thorne, 2009). In reference to literacy it is believed that reading poetry can contribute to the enhancement of dimensions such as phonological awareness, vocabulary, decoding, comprehension, and writing, although it is recognized that the metaphorical language and the dense meanings often found in poems constitutes poetry a rather demanding genre (e.g. Halperin, 2005). Sekeres and rd Gregg (2007) found that the teaching of poetry helped 3 graders to improve their conceptual understanding and their attention during reading. Kucan (2007) established that learning to write th poems helped 4 graders in understanding the characters, the story, and the narrative point of view. In reference to the psychosocial dimension of learning there is evidence that poem reading and writing improves motivation and student confidence (Wilfong, 2008). However, there are students who may not be in the position to access poems and profit from dealing with them, because of inherent problems. A sizeable group in this population is the group of students with Learning Disabilities (LD). It is well known that students with LD often face considerable restrictions in decoding, comprehending and writing texts (e.g. Lerner & Beverley, 2014). Due to these restrictions students with LD may be unable to use poetry as a source of positive literacy experiences. Considering the high number the students with LD in the general school population and the role of poetry in literacy development, one would expect that the issue of the difficulties encountered by these students when dealing with poems would be extensively researched. However, literature review reveals that the opposite is the truth. In one of the very few studies on this subject Lee and Hughes (2012) compared students with and without LD in understanding a traditional and a contemporary poem. According to the results, the performance of students with LD was inferior to that of their non-disabled peers in drawing conclusions in the context of the contemporary poem, in connecting their personal experiences with the content of both poems, and in justifying the use of literacy devices by the poets. However, students with LD slightly outperformed their typical peers in identifying figurative devices (e.g. personification). Considering the potential impact of poetry on the development of language skills of all students, and especially the students with LD, it was decided to conduct the present study, in order to answer the following research questions: (1) what are the differences between students with LD and their typical peers in comprehending poems?, (2) what are the differences between students with LD and their typical peers in the knowledge of poetic devices?, (3) what are the differences between students with LD and their typical peers in the strategies for accessing poems’ content?.
Proceedings of ICERI2014 Conference 17th-19th November 2014, Seville, Spain
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ISBN: 978-84-617-2484-0
2
METHODOLOGY
2.1
Participants th
th
The participants of the study were 80 students of the 5 and 6 grades (11-12 years of age) of 13 primary schools situated in the wider area of Thessaloniki, Greece. Forty of those students (50%) were diagnosed by the Centers for Differential Diagnosis and Support (CDDS -the authorities designated by the Greek State to identify and categorize students with disabilities) as presenting Learning Disability. The rest 40 students (50%) were randomly selected from a pool of 117 classmates of the students with LD, who were identified by their teachers as not presenting any kind of marked academic difficulty and performing in the upper mid-range of these schools. The analogy between males and females was 52.5% to 45.5% (see Table 1). No statistically significant differences were found between the two groups on gender, age and grade. The predominant part of student population of the 13 schools is of middle socio-economic status. Students from non-Greek language and cultural background were excluded from the sample. Table 1 . Demographic characteristics of the participants Typical students th
Students with LD th
th
th
5 grade
6 grade
5 grade
6 grade
Total
Males
9 (22,5%)
12 (30%)
10 (25%)
11 (27,5%)
42 (52,5%)
Females
11 (27,5%)
8 (20%)
11 (27,5%)
8 (20%)
38 (47,5%)
Total
20 (50%)
20 (50%)
21 (52,5%)
19 (47,5%)
40 (100%)
General total 40 (100%)
2.2 2.2.1
40 (100%)
Measures and procedures Poems
Two poems were used in the present research, one traditional (titled “The beach”, by N. Kampas, 1880) and one contemporary (titled “Meeting with the sea”, by N. Vrettakos, 1991). Both poems are referring to marine landscapes, which are familiar to the inhabitants of the region in which the study was conducted. A second common element of the two poems is a discussion each poet has with the personified part of nature holding the central position in his poem (beach, sea), on the relationships between mankind and sea. However, the two poems have also differences, especially in terms of style and structure. The traditional poem has two stanzas, each of which includes four rhyming, parisyllabic verses. The contemporary poem includes a comparable number of non- metrical, non- rhyming, and non-parisyllabic verses, and has a prosaic c character.
2.2.2
Questionnaire
The questionnaire through which the data of the present study were gathered is based on the instrument used by Lee and Hughes (2012). The total number of the questions was 28. The first 5 questions were referring to the participants’ literature preferences and their relationship to poetry. The next 11 questions were referring to the traditional poem. Of these questions, the first two aimed at identifying the participants’ ability to predict the content of the poem prior to its reading and based just on its title, and also to evaluate the success of this prediction after listening and reading the poem. Questions 3-5 controlled participants’ knowledge and understanding of poetic devices. Questions 6-7 were referring to poem’s comprehension, namely the identifications of the main theme, the detection of relations not explicitly stated, and the interpretations of a conclusion regarding the similarities between the poet and the beach. Questions 8-9 focused on students’ ability to mentally represent poem’s content and relate it to their personal experiences. Finally, questions 10-11 examined the emotions evoked in the students after reading the poem, the degree to which they enjoyed it and the reason for that. The next 11 questions were referring to the contemporary poem and were similar to those posed in reference to the traditional one. At the end there was a question asking the participants to compare the two poems in terms of content and style. A difference between the original instrument and the version used in the present study was that in our questionnaire all items were accompanied by (at least 3) hints, which were offered to the students
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when they failed to give a spontaneous answer. The hints helped in diminishing the number of missing answers. The use of the hints in providing an answer was recorded and analyzed.
2.2.3
Procedures
The questionnaire was translated form English to Greek and back-translated to English by two specialists in instructional methodology and a native speaker of English language, in order to secure the conceptual equivalence of the items. Information obtained through a pilot study, in which participated 5 typical students and 5 students with LD, was used to improve the questionnaire’s functionality. The questionnaire was also modified in terms of clarity on the basis of the feedback given by 3 language arts teachers majored in literacy instruction. In order to establish the reliability of data-coding, the researchers randomly chose 10% of the participants’ answers and coded them as “acceptable”, “partially acceptable”, and “unacceptable”. Then, they asked 4 language arts teachers to evaluate the same answers, after they familiarized them with the purpose and the instruments of the study. In order to calculate the degree of the inter-rater agreement the number of agreements was divided by the number of agreements plus disagreements, and multiplied by 100. It was found that the inter-rater agreement reached the level of 91%. In the phase of data gathering, students were at first read the title of the poem and asked to make a prediction regarding its content. After, they were told to listen carefully to the poem as it was read by the researchers, without interrupting. Students were then asked whether they had prior knowledge of the poem (no such cases were found). Following the first reading, the researchers provided the students with a copy of the poem and asked them to listen to a second reading of the poem, following along on their individual copies. Students were also told that they could interrupt to make comments or to ask questions. This was followed by the questioning session. The presentation of poems was counterbalanced between students in order to control order effect. Two 20-minutes sessions per student (on successive days) were allocated for the completion of the questionnaire, and all proceedings were videotaped.
3
RESULTS
3.1 3.1.1
Descriptive statistics Literature preferences and relationship to poetry
The majority of typical students (62.5%) and a large group of students with LD (30%) said that they prefer to read adventure books and books with mystery and detective stories. Books with children stories, fairytales and comic books came at the second position of these students’ preferences. Thirty percent of typical students and 50% of students with LD said that they prefer poems over prosaic texts, whereas 60% of typical students and 40% of students with LD made the opposite choice. When asked whether they had read poetry outside school the majority of both typical students (52.5%) and students with LD (55%) answered negatively. The percentage of students with LD who admitted that they had never written poems of their own was considerably higher than the percentage of typical students (45% vs 27.5%).
3.1.2
Poem comprehension
When asked to predict the content of the traditional poem based on its title and prior to its reading, 72.5% of typical students and 42.5% of students with LD offered such predictions. The rest of the typical students (27.5%) and a sizeable group of students with LD (42.5%) used the hints in order to make predictions for the content of the same poem. In other words, all typical students made predictions (with or without the use of the hints), whereas 15% of the students with LD did not make any prediction whatsoever, despite the support through the hints. In reference to the contemporary poem, 85% of the typical students and 45% of the students with LD made predictions on their own, whereas 15% and 40% respectively offered prediction with the support of hints. Again, 15% of students with LD could not make any prediction even with the help of the hints (see Table 2). Regarding the verification of the prediction for the traditional poems’ content, 77.5% of typical students and 62.5% of students with LD were correct in their prediction (without use of hints), and could rightly identify the poem’s elements proving their success. Successful use of hints was made by 5% of the typical group and 10% of the group with LD. The rest 12.5% of the typical students and 27.5% of students with LD were unsuccessful or were not in the position to pinpoint the poem’s elements that
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proved the correctness of their prediction, even with the help of hints. For the contemporary poem the respective percentages were: Prediction verification without hints 78% of typical students and 60% of students with LD, Prediction verification with the use of hints 7% of the typical group and 2.5% of the group with LD, Wrong prediction or absence of answer even with the use of hints 15% of the typical group and 37.5% of the group with LD. Table 2. Poem comprehension abilities Traditional Poem
Contemporary Poem
Typical %
LD %
Typical %
LD %
Makes prediction
100
85
100
85
Confirms prediction
82.5
72.5
85
62.5
Identifies theme
70
47.5
72.5
60
Justifies inference
70
20
80
32.5
Connects to personal experiences
65
67.5
82.5
77.5
Represents mentally / visualizes
92.5
70
87.5
72.5
Names evoked emotions relevant to poem
40
12.5
70
37.5
Compares poems’ themes
95 85
Compares poets’ relation to nature
80 22.5
Compares poems’ style
55 12.5
In reference to participants’ ability to identify the traditional poem’s main theme, fully acceptable answers were provided by 37.5% of typical students (7% of them used hints) and 10% of students with LD (2.5% of them used hints). Partially acceptable answers were given by 32.5% of typical students (7.5% of them used hints) and 37.5% of students with LD (15% of them used hints). Unacceptable answers were given by 25% of typical students and 50% of students with disabilities. Finally, 5% of typical students and 2.5% of students with LD did not provide any answers whatsoever. Example of an acceptable answer is: “The beach is like a living organism; sometimes it has water and sometimes it th remains thirsty. It is like the poet who one day is loved and the other day is forgotten” (Boy, 6 grade, LD). Examples of partially acceptable answers include: “The poet describes the beach, which th sometimes remains dry and is not watered by the sea” (Girl, 6 grade, typical), “The poet is sometimes th loved and sometimes ignored” (Boy, 5 grade, typical). Example of an unacceptable answer is: “The th beach is useful for the fish and the other sea animals” (Boy, 5 grade, LD). It is noteworthy that 10% of typical students were able to approach the poem’s theme in a more generic fashion, which exceeded the similarities between the poet and the beach and offered a more global view of life (e.g. “Oftentimes th things around us resemble us, but we do not sense it” – Girl, 5 grade, typical); in contrast, no students with LD gave such answers. Finally, among the participants who gave unacceptable answers, there were 20% in the typical group and 75% in the group with LD who said something completely irrelevant to the poem. The respective percentages regarding the contemporary poem were: Acceptable answers 30% of typical students (2.5% used hints), 12.5% of students with LD (2.5% used hints). Partially acceptable answers 42.5% of typical students (2.5% used hints), 47.5% of students with LD (27.5% used hints). Unacceptable answers: 27.5% of typical students and 37.5% of students with LD. Two and a half percent of both groups gave no answer. At the end of each poem there is an inference, according to which the beach (in the traditional poem) and the sea (in the contemporary one) have many similarities with the respective poet. Participants’ efforts to justify the inference of the traditional poem were successful or partially successful (with or without hints) for 70% of those belonging to the typical group, compared to 20% of those from the group with LD. Twenty percent of the typical group and 60% of the group with LD provided unacceptable answers, and 10% of the typical group, as well as 20% of the group with LD gave no answer. The respective results for the contemporary poem were: Acceptable or partially acceptable (with or without hints) 80% of typical students and 32.5% of the group with LD. Unacceptable answers 20% of typical students and 55% of students with LD. No answer 12.5% of students with LD. Examples of acceptable answers for the contemporary poem include: “The sea and the poet have
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similar emotions….he tells her that, although she is not his mother, they resemble each other, and her th words are kind of a wind, just like his words” (Girl, 5 grade, typical). “The poet likes the sea very much. It is as if she has entered his soul, as if he sees her everywhere. They have become one and th the same thing” (Girl, 5 grade, LD). Example of a partially acceptable answer for the contemporary th poem: “The man’s soul has emotions for the sea” (Girl, 6 grade, typical). Examples of unacceptable answers: “Both humans and the sea have problems. Humans have emotional or financial problems, th and the sea is polluted” (Boy, 6 grade, typical), “Both sea and poet’s heart are liquid; sea has water th and the heart has blood (Boy, 6 grade, LD). In reference to students’ ability to connect the content of the poems to their own experiences, it was found that the majority of both groups were in the position to respond successfully. For the traditional poem, 65% of typical students and 67.5% of students with LD made such connections, and mentioned relevant experiences. Thirty five per cent of typical students said that they could not find connection between the poem and their personal experiences, and the same happened with 32.5% of students with LD. Regarding the contemporary poem, 82.5% of typical students and 77.5% of students with LD were successful in connecting it to personal experiences. However, 17.5% of typical students and 22.5% of students with LD said that they could not connect the poem to their personal experiences. With regard to the ability to mentally represent, visualize, and describe the nature elements depicted in the poems the participants proved to be rather successful, as 92.5% of typical students and 70% of students with LD offered such representations and descriptions in reference to the traditional poem. It should be noted, however, that 7.5% of the typical group and 22.5% of the group with LD visualized pictures which were irrelevant to the actual poem (probably utilized pictures from their own experiences), and 7.5% of the students with LD could not offer any descriptions. The respective percentages regarding the contemporary poem were: Picture visualization and description typical students: 87.5% - students with LD: 72.5%. Visualization and description of irrelevant pictures typical students: 12.5% - students with LD: 15%. Inability to visualize and describe pictures typical students 0% - students with LD: 12.5%. Example of an acceptable mental representation of the contemporary poem: “I see the sea, a man has sit on the sand, put his face in his hands and cried, and the his tears flew toward the sea. The sea and his tears had something in common… they th became waves. I hear the sea, I see the sun, I smell the flowers (Girl, 6 grade, LD). Example of an th unacceptable answer: “I see a desk, I smell coffee, I hear you” (Girl, 5 grade, LD). In reference to the emotions evoked in the students after reading the poems, 40% of the typical students mentioned emotions relevant to the traditional poem and justified by its theme, 42.5% of them referred to emotions not connected to the poem’s content, and the rest 17.5% said that they felt nothing or did not gave an answer at all. The respective percentages for the LD students for the same poem were: 12.5% mentioned relevant emotions, 42.5% referred to emotions not justified by the poem, and 45% of this group gave no answer. An example of a relevant emotion is: “I felt sorrow, th because the poet is not loved, and the beach is forgotten” (Boy, 5 grade, typical). An example of an th irrelevant emotion is: “I felt joy, because the beach and the sea are very nice”, (Girl, 5 grade, LD). Regarding the contemporary poem, 70% of the typical group mentioned relevant emotions compared to 37.5% of the LD group, 5% of the typical group referred to irrelevant emotions compared to 12.5% of the LD group, and 25% of the typical group said that they did not feel any emotions of gave no answer compared to 50% of the LD group. Example of appropriate emotion: “I felt joy because it says “it has gone to our head” and “we were enchanted”, but also sorrow because of the verses 7-9”, (Boy, th 5 grade, LD). Example of irrelevant emotion: “I felt fear about what I am going to answer to your th questions”, (Girl, 5 grade, LD). Another difference between the two groups in reference to the evoked emotions was the fact that typical students reported being primarily moved by poets’ feelings (empathized with them), whereas LD students said that it was the topic of the poems that affected them. In reference to the participants’ ability to pinpoint similarities between the two poems, the typical group outperformed the LD group (95% vs 85%). The same happened regarding the pinpointing of similarities in the poets’ relationship to the nature elements, but the performance of the typical group was almost four times higher than that of the LD group (80% vs 22.5%). A comparable difference was also recorded in reference to the ability of the participants to report on the stylistic differences of the two poems (typical group 55% correct answers – LD group 12.5% correct answers) (see Table 2). It worth noting that more than 50% of the LD group, instead of similarities, reported differences between the two poems.
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3.1.3
Knowledge of poetic devices
Knowledge of students with LD on poetic devices was found to be inferior to that of their typical classmates (TD). The differences between the two groups with regard to the identification of figures of speech, the understanding of their meaning, and the justification of their use were considerable. For example, all typical students (100%) could identify rhyming verses, either on their own or through the use of hints, whereas the percentage of the participants with LD who could correctly respond to this task was almost half as high (52.5%). Other large differences between the two groups include the differentiation and naming of rhyming types, the identification of personifications and metaphors among other figures of speech, the vindication of the use of specific figures of speech by the poets, and the explanation of personifications, similes, and metaphors of the contemporary poem. The only parameter in which the difference between the two groups reached relatively a moderate level was the one referring to the pinpointing of personifications in the traditions poem following descriptions by the researchers (Table 3). Table 3. Knowledge of poetic devices Traditional poem
Contemporary poem
TD %
LD%
TD %
LD %
Identifies rhyme
100
52,5
-
-
Names the rhyming type
80
47,5
-
-
Indicates poem personifications using descriptions
82,5
72,5
-
-
Discerns personification from other figures of speech
67,5
30
-
-
Discerns metaphor from other figures of speech
65
35
-
-
Offers reasons for the use of figures of speech
90
30
62,5
30
Explains personifications included in the poem
-
-
62,5
17,5
Explains similes included in the poem
-
-
60
15
Explains metaphors included in the poem
-
-
82,5
25
3.2
Inferential Statistics
In order to determine the significance of the differences between the two groups MANOVA was carried out. With regard to poem comprehension abilities, it was found that the typical group significantly 2 outperformed the LD group in predicting the content of the traditional (F (1, 72) = 10.44, p = .002, η = 2 .13) and the contemporary poem (F (1, 72) = 18.11, p = .00, η = .20), in identifying the theme of the 2 2 traditional (F (1, 72) = 9.85, p = .002, η = .12) and the contemporary poem (F (1, 72) = 9.44, p = .003, η = 2 .11), in reporting evoked emotions relevant to the traditional poem (F (1, 72) = 10.56, p = .002, η = .13), 2 in comparing poets’ relation to nature (F (1, 72) = 29.62, p = .00, η = .29), and in finding the poems’ 2 stylistic differences (F (1, 72) = 16.92, p = .00, η = .19). In reference to the knowledge of the poetic devices, it was found that the typical group outperformed the LD group in identifying rhyme (F (1, 72) = 2 2 37.05, p = .00, η = .34), in naming the rhyming type (F (1, 72) = 21.12, p = .00, η = .15), in discerning 2 2 personification (F (1, 72) = 19.07, p = .00, η = .16), in discerning metaphor (F (1, 72) = 28.19, p = .00, η = 2 .30), in justifying the use of figures of speech in the traditional (F (1, 72) = 38.12, p = .00, η = .38) and 2 the contemporary poem (F (1, 72) = 33.03, p = .00, η = .32), in explaining personifications (F (1, 72) = 2 2 27.17, p = .00, η = .26), in explaining similes (F (1, 72) = 40.01, p = .00, η = .37), and in explaining 2 metaphors (F (1, 72) = 8.76, p = .004, η = .11).
4
CONCLUSIONS- DISCUSSION th
th
The present research compared 5 and 6 grade typical and LD students regarding the elaboration and comprehension of poems. The two participant groups, each comprising 40 students, were asked to answer a 28-item questionnaire examining (a) various dimensions of understanding a traditional and a contemporary poem, and (b) the recognition of the expressive means used by the poets. It was
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found that students with LD have considerably more difficulties than their typical peers both in poem comprehension and in knowledge of poetic devices. In specific: Students with LD faced considerably more difficulties than their typical peers in predicting the poem’s content based just on its title, even with the use of hints. This result is in tune with the view of Carliste and Rice (2002) that students with LD face difficulties in formulating hypotheses on a text’s content based on its title. In contrast, the difference between the two groups in confirming their predictions was rather small. It is worth mentioning that both groups’ success level regarding the making and the confirmation of predictions was comparable to that of the groups in the Lee και Hughes (2012) study. Significant difficulties in comparison to their typical peers presented students LD also in reference to the identification of the poems’ main idea and the justification of the inferences drawn by the poets. Comprehending a text, and especially identifying its main idea and recognizing implicit relationships in it presuppose, among other things, that readers differentiate between the central and the peripheral information of the text, possess the appropriate vocabulary, have adequate knowledge of syntax and morphology, exhibit functional conceptual development, are familiar with text structures, can focus their attention, and present adequate memory skills (Porpodas, 2002). However, research has established that students with LD present difficulties and deficiencies in all of the aforementioned prerequisites of text comprehension (Panteliadou, 2011; Swanson, Kehler, & Jerman, 2010). Thus, the view can be taken that long-established and well-known information processing weaknesses of the LD population may be the sources of the differences that appeared in the present study between LD and typical students in identifying the main idea and justifying poets’ inferences. It should be added though that in the present context the aforementioned processing weaknesses may have been cumulatively and seriously challenged by the conceptual density, the ellipticity and the abstraction characterizing poems in comparison to conventional texts. In reference to the relationship between reader and poem, which includes students’ ability to (a) relate the poems to their personal experiences, (b) mentally represent and describe images from the poems, and (c) mention emotions evoked after reading / listening the poem, the obtained results are in accord with existing research. In specific, the high percentage of participants from both groups who could connect the poems to their personal experiences corroborates findings from the Sipe (2000) study, according to which students tend to connect literature texts to their personal experiences to a high degree, which exceeds the degree of connections they make with other kinds of texts. On the other hand, the difficulty of students with LD to refer to mental pictures of the landscapes described in the poems could be due to the restrictions often found in this population in short- and long- term memory, vocabulary, transformation of information coming from one sensory source to a form corresponding to another, and oral language (Cain & Oakhill, 1999). Finally, the quantitative and qualitative differences between typical and learning disabled students in mentioning emotions evoked by the reading / listening the poems could be attributed to weaknesses in self –awareness, vocabulary, and especially empathy, reported to have been found in the population of students with LD (e.g. Bauminger, Edelsztein, & Morash, 2005). Other domains in which differences between students with LD and their typical peers were revealed were those referring to the ability to understand poets’ relation to nature, and poems’ style. The wellestablished deficiencies of the LD population in identifying, organizing and retaining important information, also in vocabulary, syntax, and sentence structure, and finally in combining information in order to draw conclusions (e.g. Lerner & Beverley, 2014) may serve as context for explaining these difficulties. Noteworthy is the finding that students with LD required on average 25.5% more hints than their typical peers in order to provide correct answers. This testifies their inferiority in recalling information in comparison to their typical peers, but it also proves that oftentimes students with LD possess knowledge that can be retrieved and used to improve their performance, provided that the appropriate questioning technique is utilized. In reference to the knowledge and identification of poetic devices it was found that students with LD have significantly more difficulties than their typical peers in identifying rhyme in the traditional poem and naming its type. This deficiency could be connected to the poor phonological skills often characterizing students with LD (Vellutino, 1991; Stanovich, 1992). Being unable to effectively differentiate the phonemes and specify their position in the word may adversely affect the ability of students with LD to identify similar or identical phonological compounds. The finding of the present study that students with LD are inferior to their typical counterparts in discerning personifications and metaphors, whereas they do not differ significantly in indicating personifications following descriptions
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may be taken as another proof of the difficulty of these students to use terminology (vocabulary in the wider sense), whereas they possess knowledge that they can activate when given the appropriate support. The finding that students with LD have considerable difficulties in interpreting metaphors and explaining similes and personifications is in line with findings from the studies conducted by Nippold & Fey (1983), Seidenberg & Bernstein (1986), and Lee & Kamhi (1990). As underlined by Cain & Towse (2008), poor readers, like students with LD, tend not to make use of the texts’ context in order to understand individual parts and elements; hence, when they happen to be unable to retrieve something form memory or cannot understand it completely, they usually do not give correct answers or choose to not reply at all.
4.1
Limitations and proposals
This study has certain limitations that should be taken into account when interpreting the results. One such limitation is a function of the fact that in most cases the Centers for Differential Diagnosis and Support refer to the generic category “Learning Disabilities” without differentiation of any specific subtype. It is possible then that the homogeneity of the sample is less than optimal, although teachers have assured the researchers that the primary difficulty of all the participants appears in the language domain. Another limitation results from the fact that there were no data on the participants’ opportunities to be exposed to literature experiences in their family context. Differences in this perspective may have influenced the participants’ performance, especially with regard to the contemporary poem, since this kind of poems is not as common as the traditional one in school’s official program of studies. Despite the limitations we believe that the present study has shed some more light on the way students with LD deal with poems, and its results allow the sketching out of some useful instructional proposals. It is obvious that students with LD need skills that will help them specify poems’ thematic focus, understand the causal connection of the information included in the poem and relate it to conclusions, and also deal effectively with figures of speech in order to understand poem’s meaning. Hence, instruction oriented toward the improvement of vocabulary, the enhancement of syntactic schemes’ understanding, the boosting of information organization and categorization, and the strengthening of inductive reasoning should contribute substantially to providing students with LD with much better chances to access poems and be able to enjoy them. Such instruction however should be based on strategies which would take into consideration poems’ specific characteristics, like syntactic irregularities, meaning dissociations, and metaphoric language. Metaphors deserve special attention and instructional management due to the role they often play in poems. They should at least become an independent objective in the context of instruction. Special emphasis should be also laid on empathy issues and emotional expressions. Of course, it goes without saying that vital prerequisite of a successful independent dealing of poems by students with LD is the improvement of their decoding ability. To this end, phonological awareness and grapheme – phoneme correspondence should be supported appropriately.
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