THE VERBAL BEHAVIOR OF STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES DURING READING INSTRUCTION WITH THE LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE APPROACH AND TWO MASTERY LEARNING PROGRAMS

The study investigated the responses of students with learning disabilities during reading instruction using the language experience approach and two Mastery Learning programs. Students responses were analyzed using verbal operants from Skinner's (1957) Verbal Behavior. Three students in an elementary level resource room for learning disabilities participated in the study. Reading lessons using the language experience approach and the Mastery Learning programs were audiotaped and transcripts of the tapes were made. Verbal episodes were outlined in the transcripts and verbal operants were identified within the verbal episodes. The dependent variables were rate per minute of verbal operants and the percentage of the story read non-echoically for each language story. Results indicated possible sources of control over student responses during language experience lessons. Initially, student responses were echoic in nature with teacher verbal behavior providing the discriminative stimuli. Gradually, control moved to the students' own intraverbal behavior; and across repeated readings of stories, textual control became evident. Three major differences between the language experience approach and the Mastery Learning programs were noted in students' responses: (1) students emitted more echoic operants in the language experience approach than in the Mastery Learning programs; (2) students emitted more textual-intraverbal operants in the language experience approach; and (3) more textuals were emitted using the Mastery Learning programs than in the language experience method. It was implied from the data that students with poor visual discrimination might use the language experience approach before moving to a Mastery Learning program as the language experience approach requires fewer purely textual responses. The cloze procedure (deleting every fifth word) was substituted for sentence-strip matching for one student during the language experience lessons. Using the cloze procedure did not alter the data for that student. High levels of independent reading (non-echoic) were noted for the student who had been instructed using the language experience approach for a longer period of time than the other two students.