Effect of Intervention in Teaching Listening and Speaking Skills on Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Intervention in teaching listening and speaking skills using communicative language teaching approach and teaching strategies adopted from Applied Behaviour Analysis was designed and tested in the current research. Non-randomized pre-test post-test control group design was used in quasi-experimental research where fifty-two children with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities fulfilling inclusive and exclusive criteria were placed into experimental and control groups from five special schools of Jammu district in J&K. BASIC-MR, a validated tool was used on both the groups as a pretest and post-test. Children in experimental groups were taught listening and speaking skills using communicative language teaching approach. ANCOVA analysis indicated F (1, 28) = 118.401, p =.000 in the children with mild intellectual disabilities, and F (1, 32) = 77.789, p =.000 in children with moderate intellectual disabilities. It was inferred that intervention was effective in developing listening and speaking skills of the children with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities.