Language development and language skills have become increasingly recognized as critical concerns in the education of children with disabilities including mental retarded. Most linguists agree on the sequence of language development during the first f...
Language development and language skills have become increasingly recognized as critical concerns in the education of children with disabilities including mental retarded. Most linguists agree on the sequence of language development during the first five years of life. Also, most mental retarded children who are attending the elementary levels indicated developmental direction and speed, even though the children delay in developmental speed with the ordinary children. The purpose of this study was to compare with the development on concept and meaning vocabulary in schema between mental retarded and ordinary children. Sixty mental retarded children and sixty ordinary children were participate to compare the development of the concept and meaning vocabulary. Fourteen vocabularies selected from Korean Standard Receptive Vocabulary Test. The results were that (a) the mental retarded children indicated the significant differences with age development in concept and meaning vocabularies; (b) in ordinary children there were no significant differences in concept and meaning vocabularies in age development; and (c) the two groups showed that significant differences in the vocabulary development of concept and meaning. Therefore this study concluded that the importance of teaching meaning vocabularies is emphasized in language instruction for mental retarded children.