PHONOLOGICAL SKILLS AMONG CHILDREN WITH READING DISABILITIES

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to examine the phonological skills among children with reading disabilities of the Bosnian/Croatian/ Serbian language, where each phoneme is represented by a grapheme following a certain phonemic principle. The sample consists  of 15 children with reading disabilities and 15 children without reading disabilities, where "The diagnostic set for examination of the speech, language, reading and writing abilities among children" was used for examination of their phonological capacity. Phonological skills in children are very important for reading and writing acquisition. The results of the study showed that children with reading disabilities achieved poorer results in all tasks examining the phonological skills, compared to children without reading difficulties. The results of our study comply with results of studies conducted for other languages. The study highlights the importance of the mentioned skills for acquiring reading skills in the  Bosnian/ Croatian/Serbian language and the significance of deficient phonological abilities for the etiology of reading disabilities. Based on the conducted study, it can be concluded that phonological skills are very important for acquiring reading and writing abilities.