The Effect of Total Image Words on Linguistic Recognition in Children with Borderline Intelligence; A Psycholinguistic Case Study

A borderline intelligence student is the one with basic capability for literacy but of a lower rate and depth in learning compared to their peers. Such students have many difficulties in learning the language, reading and writing. The main purpose of this study is to provide a new solution based on linguistic and psycholinguistic theories to increase the development of language recognition in these children. The technique of total image words was used in an innovative method to manipulate all the senses of the child in his learning. The data of this research have been collected in a field and case study. The case is a 13-year-old borderline intelligence girl living in Mashhad. The suggested training program in this research consists of four stages. The first step is to work on reading by using flashcards of total image words and using the child’s visual and auditory senses. The second step is to emphasize the meaning and semantic chain of the words. In the third stage, we try to strengthen the child’s comprehension with short stories, and in the fourth stage, which is the practical stage, the child acquires the ability to make meaningful sentences and short stories. The test of language development (TOLD 3) was used for pre- and post-tests. The results show that the total image word technique has a positive effect on the language cognitive development of the borderline intelligence student and except in sentence imitation, all other subtests show an improvement of 18 to 66 per cent.