• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.55-66
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• 2021

Proper prosody in reading allows the reader to naturally convey the meaning, which manifests as changes in pitch, loudness, and speech rate. Children with reading disability face difficulty in delivering information due to poor prosody. This study identified the difference in prosodic features between children with reading disabilities and nondisabled children through means of reading tasks. Reading tasks, according to sentence types (short sentences, assumptions/conditions, intentions, relative-clause), were recorded by 15 children studying in the 3rd to 6th grade in elementary school. Children with reading disability had a statistically significant wider range of pitch, slower speech rate, more frequent usage of pauses, longer total pause duration, and steeper pitch slope than nondisabled one in sentence-final and -medial words. Children with reading disability, therefore, exhibited a less natural and expressive reading than nondisabled children. Through this study, the characteristics of prosody observed in children with reading disability were identified and the need for an approach for effective intervention was also suggested.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.314-326
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usability of a hybrid mobile reading game among 14 parents of children with reading disabilities. The reading game consisted of six steps according to the process of reading (familiarizing with consonants and vowels, acquiring whole words, combining consonants and vowels, reading words, phonological rules, reading fluency). In this study, parents experienced steps one through three of the reading-game app and evaluated the general design features and Universal Design for Learning on a five-point scale. Regarding the general design features, parents rated usability (18 items in total) as high in the following order: interactive design, instructional design, and interface design. Regarding the Universal Design for Learning (9 items in total), parents evaluated usability as high in the following order: providing multiple means of representation, providing multiple means of action and expression, and providing multiple means of engagement. Lastly, suggestions for the improvement of the app, practical implications, and suggestions for future research are discussed.