Development of Word Recognition Test and Vocabulary Size Test for the Visually Impaired : Are they slow readers or poor readers?

Abstract

Automatic word recognition is one of the key skills of good readers. Due to difficulties of perception or visual efficiencies, visual/v impaired students oflen have troubles to develop their skill of automatic word recognition. Moreover, lack of training causes low level of word recognition speed as well as limited vocabulary size. We developed a computer-based word recognition test for the visually impaired Analyzing the results, we found that there are two types of slow readen Although the word recognition speed of some students is nearly half of that of good readers with normal vision, the patterns of their recognition rates of words with different lengths (3-letter words to 7-letter words) is quite similar to those of good reader This means that their levels of automatic word recognition are rather high and in fact they are slow readers but not poor readers The other group of students is considered to be typical poor readers. The data show their word recognition levels are quite low and they read words in letter-by-letter manner We also developed a computer-based vocabulary size test for the visually impaired The result showed that many of severe visually impaired students have very small vocabulary size between 1000 and 2000. These two types of tests enable researchers to investigate their levels of English proficiency more deeply and accurately.