Abstract
Students with reading difficulties (including but not limited to dyslexia) in Indonesia and their teachers have been in a dire need for reading-intervention programs that are scientific, precise, adaptable to the needs and strength of individual students, easily administered in (public) schools, and affordable financially and time-wise. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the TAL-ID (Harwintha’s Adaptive Linguistically-Based Indonesian Reading; [1]) program was a good candidate for such programs. Two students with severe reading difficulties in their fifth and sixth grades participated and received weekly tutoring following the principles outlined in TAL-ID program. The treatment started in the second semester of the fifth grade and continued to the first semester of the sixth grade due to the availability of the students and the researcher outside of formal class hours. The students were taught one-on-one for 35 sessions of 35 minutes each. Before the first session, the students’ reading-aloud (decoding) performance was assessed using the Tes Membaca Satu Menit [2] and was assessed again in the 35th session. The reading performance of the two students at the end of the program was compared to their initial performance, and to the performance of 11 fifth-grade students recorded before the intervention program began. The comparisons showed: 1. the two participants showed impressive progress for the syllable structures that were treated, in terms of both accuracy and speed; 2. although they still lagged behind their peers, the incorporation of TAL-ID had shown progress that the previous methods used, both whole-group and one-on-one, failed to create. This strongly suggests that the TAL-ID program is a promising reading-intervention program targeted specifically at students in Indonesia who have reading difficulties reading Indonesian. The clinical and educational implications are discussed.