The Literacy Status of Special Needs Children in Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

We evaluated the literacy skill acquisition level of children with special needs, particularly the hearing impaired and learning disabled children in Cross River State, Nigeria. Seventy (70) such children from the two special education centres in the State formed the sample for the study. Literacy Assessment Test (LAT) was administered on the sampled students and descriptive statistics and chi-square analysis were used to analyze the data collected. Results showed that the two categories of special needs learners had minimal difficulty with word identification. The hearing impaired had problems with spelling (44.4%), handwriting (31.1%), spacing (22.2%) and punctuations (26.7%) while the learning disabled had problems in writing (56%), spelling (52%), spacing (36%) and punctuation, (80%). The implications of these findings to learning/teaching were highlighted.

Keywords: Literacy, hearing impaired and learning disabled.