LEARNING TO USE INNER SPEECH FOR IMPROVING READING AND WRITING OF POOR READERS

Two experiments were conducted to see if teaching poor readers to use inner speech could improve their reading and writing. In the first experiment, there were 8 third grade children, 4 in the experimental group and 4 in the control one, matched from a pre-test of reading. In the experiment group, the children were trained to use inner speech in 27 tasks, from explicit self-speech of the adult and of the child to implicit self-speech by the child alone. The results show significant differences between the two groups in the post-test of reading. In the second experiment, there were 6 students in second grade, 3 in the experimental group and 3 in the control one. In the experimental group, the children were trained to use inner speech in 18 tasks: 6 cognitive tasks that do not require short term memory as in the first experiment, 6 reading tasks, 6 writing tasks. In the experimental group, the children were trained to use self-speech to process the tasks whereas, in the control group, the adult's hell was mostly visual. The results were that the experimental group succeeded significantly better in the post-tests of reading and writing.