Using of tactile method in helping remedial students in a Tamil school to differentiate small letters “b” and “d”: A case study

Abstract

In Malaysia, the term remedial students in schools referred to a group of students who are doing poorly in their academic, but not eligible for special education. Remedial Education is a program introduced by Malaysian Ministry of Education to help students who are having learning difficulties, especially the problem in Reading Skills, Writing Skills, and Counting Skills. The purpose of this study is to improve the skills of recognizing small letters “b” and “d” using tactile methods. This study was conducted in a Tamil School involving two Year Two students as respondents. Both respondents were selected through purposive sampling technique referring to the result of their diagnostic test. The researchers used tactile methods as a technique to help the respondents to recognize and differentiate small letters “b” and “d”. In this study, researchers used pre-test and post-test to identify the achievement of both respondents. The results of this study showed that the achievement of both respondents in post-test had shown a positive improvement, with their ability in recognizing the small letters “b” and “d”. It can therefore be concluded that the use of tactile method successfully provides a clear understanding to the remedial students in recognising and differentiating the small letters “b” and “d”.