In the final stage, for the first time, the possible ways to spell the 40+ pho-nemes of SAE are introduced, matching phopho-nemes and graphemes audito-rily and visually, using the same lists of words and nonwords spoken in the block-coding stage. All consonants, vowels, diphonemes, and glides and a few frequently occurring phoneme combinations are presented in the lists.
Each grade-level set has lists of words that represent the ways each targeted phoneme is spelled for a vocabulary at that grade level. NAR provides a comprehensive representation of the SAE phoneme repertoire, with SAE pronunciations used to categorize lists. Obviously, regional and cultural dialects involve different pronunciations of certain words, which will need to be calibrated to SAE in the same manner that spelling pronunciation in different dialects and cultures has always been calibrated to SAE pronun-ciation. When explanation of an implicated phonologic rule would be too involved, the rule is bypassed. These rules usually involve the physics of coarticulation that result in inconsistently spelled phonemes; for instance, the [t] is spelled in pants but not in dance. The confusion can be noted and the young child complimented for good listening in hearing the [t] in dance, What do colored
items represent in NAR?
How are words pronounced for spelling?
but it is not necessary to explain the physics of why it occurred. The goal of the program is not to make children phoneticians; rather, it is to give them reasonable auditory references for spelling and reading. They have access to many distinctions that they may not need to apply, but a broad spectrum of patterns is available for use as needed.
Adults
Well-meaning teachers, supervisors, parents, television programmers, and promoters of commercial reading products generally do not take into con-sideration typical and atypical oral and written language development.
Many adults know and can talk about advanced-level orthographic rules for spelling, but they have forgotten or never needed to think about the underlying oral language rules they acquired as children upon which many of their conclusions about print rules are based. They cannot remember what it was like to be a child learning the rules of language, for instance, those rules learned during the critical infant stages of matching mouth movements to speech sounds; they have no recall of those ages. They cannot even remember what it was like for them to sort the rules that were presented in their early elementary language arts classes, except perhaps some vague recollection of success or failure.
Although mature adult speakers and writers have the capacity to look back on the language-learning process and discover some of the rules that their language acquisition device (LADs) automatically employed in early years of life to sort the enormous amount of data they received about pho-nemes and letters in later years, retrospective rule citing for spelling is still somewhat of a conjecture process. A convoluted and inconsistent rule-cit-ing process only adds another layer to the spellrule-cit-ing/readrule-cit-ing task. An older, successful reader/writer may want to refine some spelling patterns such as the doubling of /r/ depending on changed syllable stress with addition of a suffix, but even then, the rule may be too complex to be readily recalled for application, and the person might be better off to just practice spelling the word many times or conceptually pairing it with a known word that is spelled with the same pattern.
Still, adults tend to teach reading to children through letter patterns because adults have succeeded, to varying degrees, to decipher letters. They think in reverse to arrive at pronunciation of words. Adults no longer need the foundation of listening to and saying sounds in words to anchor each step of the spelling and reading process as children just learning to read and write do. This is unfortunate because, unlike oral language, written language must be taught. Just being exposed to written documents will not yield reading, writing, and spelling capability, except for a very small number of children, and a significant number of these children who display exceptionally fluid preschool reading still show reading comprehension difficulty. Written language is unlike oral language in which simple expo-sure to the language is sufficient.
Do adults recall the skills they gained that allowed them to learn to read?
What is the risk of spelling based on complicated and inconsistent letter rules that need to be recalled?
Can written
language be learned automatically through exposure to print?
Overview of NAR 45
Research remains our guide to understanding language learning, and research has clarified that children who know the sounds in words have a much greater reading success rate than do children who do not perceive phoneme patterns in words. As a result, kindergarten and first-grade cur-riculums now include phonemic awareness exercises. In reviewing text-books for teacher preparation and observing classrooms, however, it is clear that the scope and intensity of the exercises are not sufficient. The activities are often phonics exercises, not phonologic perception exercises, sometimes presuming that children with dyslexia can look at letters and readily match phonemes to them. Some exercises require the child to completely bypass consideration of auditory patterns in words, instead saying what words the letter strings represent, which encourages sight reading. As one very bright first-grade child with hyperlexia explained after being praised by her teacher for her reading, “I can say the words, but I’m not really reading.”
Although her teacher reassured her that she read well, saying that she was silly, the child was actually right. She had memorized letter patterns for pronunciation, but they did not yield meaning.
Educators at conferences, lectures, and various discussion forums who describe phonics instructional programs typically present a crystallized set of orthographic reading and writing rules that they have come to accept as what the child learning to read should be taught. They readily recite these rules, which listeners often verify as what they also know and have used. Some educators have written reading instruction manuals based on this set of rules, developed workbooks, conducted workshops, and built national organizations with local chapters. Similar product lines have been developed by other educators who espouse the same approach to reading instruction as this new thought continues to be introduced to school dis-tricts across the nation. The instructional force is formidable. Yet research shows that the memory and reasoning skills needed to grasp the ortho-graphic rules for reading and spelling cited in these programs typically do not emerge until late- or postreading instruction ages (McGuinness &
McGuinness, 1998), and the child with dyslexia is even more disadvan-taged than classmates because of the tendency to have weaker memory skills compared with age peers.
Students preparing to be teachers may be increasingly aware of phone-mic awareness and use textbooks that describe activities to stimulate con-sideration of phonologic features of words. However, even these textbooks make it clear that speech-language pathology has not played an effective role in helping educators understand the oral and written language skills necessary for the process of spelling/reading and the effects that various language, memory, and processing deficits have on that process.
Obviously, letters eventually will have an important role in spelling, reading, and writing, but reading needs to begin with clear understanding of the phoneme patterns in words. A child must hear — that is, perceive what is being coded — or the process becomes one of rote memorizing and guessing, both subject to breakdown. Letter matching to sounds will come What is problematic
about phonemic awareness exercises as implemented?
At what age do children develop memory and reasoning skills necessary to apply orthographic rules to reading?
What does speech-language pathology need to do to
facilitate spelling/
reading?
What obstacle do children with dyslexia face with
“dumbed-down”
spelling patterns?
later, but first the sounds that comprise words must be accurately per-ceived, and when letters are introduced, care must be given to the reality and absurdity of SAE spelling patterns. The dyslexia problem is not solved by “dumbing down” spelling patterns presented to children, for instance, by using a text that repeats several /-et/ family words (e.g., pet, set, met, wet).
They have trouble jumping from contrived texts such as these to real texts that spell [E] other ways such as said, read, and any, still not knowing how to match sounds to letters and becoming further discouraged.
All this discussion of the gap between adult and child understand-ing translates to a principle of paramount importance: An adult workunderstand-ing with children who are struggling to read, even if the adult has had similar struggles as a child, should calibrate instruction to the child’s level of understanding and the child’s zone of proximal development (ZPD), not the adult’s. The gap between adult and child understanding accounts for much of the discouragement profile associated with dyslexia. Downplay-ing how absolute the presumed rules are and showDownplay-ing some humility at the wondrous job the LAD does for children without dyslexia, and even children with dyslexia, can ease the learning pressure.
Taking these factors into consideration, an additional observation might be added to Vygotsky’s ZPD: The zone of learning must take into consideration what the child does know and what the child needs to know to advance knowledge, and it must also take into consideration the adult perception of the concept being addressed. Much of the fluctuation in different models of reading instruction over the years has been based on presumed knowledge that actually needed more exploration before it was formulated into the reading curriculum. For instance, a recurring and recent trend to teach infants and toddlers to sight read words in a visual memorization approach to reading has been rejected because reading for meaning is not a memorization process. Reading acquisition is a distinc-tively human phenomenon with fundamental skills presented to the child during a very narrow window of time in his life. We have much to learn about differences in children’s profiles during that window of time with consideration of neurobiologic systems, maturational schedules, instruc-tional options, and best outcomes.
Reference
McGuinness, C., & McGuinness, G. (1998). Reading reflex: The foolproof Phono-Graphix method for teaching your child to read. New York, NY: Free Press.
What happens when adults cite rules the child does not understand?
Why do educational models for teaching reading flip-flop over time?
47