Phonological Processing

1. ELL students need to be familiar with the sounds of English before they can develop phonological awareness. 2. Instruction needs to be explicit, modifications made, and practice needs to be given when needed. 3. Once phonological awareness has developed in any language, then it can be transferred to other languages that are learned.  4. Teachers should frequently model the production of sounds. 5. Beginning readers should get help to learn to identify sounds in short words.

Phonological Dyslexia is the type of dyslexia that hinders one's ability to identify basic sounds and causes them to lose phonemic awareness, or the ability to identify and manipulate individual phonemes in words (Desroches et. al, 2005). Research has also revealed a range of impairments and problems in other domains. This includes impairments in visual processing, auditory processing, working memory, oral language and motor functioning (Lum et. al, 2013).

A phonological process is a typical pattern that all young children use when developing their speech. The child’s brain creates rules to simplify speech sounds and make words easier to say. As children grow older, they outgrow these patterns on their own and eventually, their speech becomes intelligible. A phonological process disorder is when a child continues to exhibit these patterns past the age expected for them to disappear. Phonological processes consist of syllable structure processes, substitution process, and assimilation processes.

We chose to assess phonological awareness because it is a crucial component in children’s development of writing, spelling, and reading skills (Paul & Norbury, 2012). Phonological awareness refers to an individual’s awareness of the sound structure or words; it can be characterized by words, syllables, onset/rime, phoneme manipulations, and the ability to rearrange these different levels into various patterns.

The literacy rates among fourth grade students in America are sobering. Sixty six percent of all U.S. fourth graders scored "below proficient" on the 2013 NAEP reading test, meaning that they are not reading at grade level. Even more alarming is the fact that among students from low-income backgrounds, 80 percent score below grade level in reading (Students First, 2014).

Researchers have shown that lack of preparation in the teaching of phonological awareness hinders the way teachers present phonological awareness when teaching their studnets reading. Researchers suggest interference due to the teacher's perspective, lack of training, values, and background may exist an be detrimental in properly teaching phonological awareness. Flesh’s 1955 publication of Why Johnny can’t Read and What You Can Do About it was influential in exposing the ineffective way how teachers teach their students literacy and reevaluation of reading programs in education and their deficiencies (Smith, 2002). Flesh’s book ignited educators and non-educators to look seriously at this literacy deficiency. A renewed interest

On January 30, 2018, at 2:00p.m., my newsletter presentation was given to four teachers in the exceptional children’s department at Douglas Byrd High School. It was important for me to review the newsletter with my coworkers because our work team is currently in the process of gathering new information for the start of the new semester which began on January 26, 2018. The age range of the students in our department range from 15-19 years of age; however, because of their varied learning disabilities and function levels, we use a lot of beginning reader teaching methods in an effort to work more effectively with all of our students.

How did you learn to read? Most of us do not put much thought into this question, but learning to read is a difficult task. According to Cervetti and Hiebert, the National Reading Panel identified five essential components that a teacher should use during reading instruction, which gives the student the highest chance of being an effective reader (2015, p. 548). These five essential components are also called five pillars of reading instruction. They are Phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. This paper will describe each of the five pillars, how they are related, the benefits, as well as give some effective methods of teaching phonics and phonemic awareness. It will continue by addressing the relationship between reading assessment and instruction and end by identifying ways to address the needs and different learning styles of a student. This paper will start by looking at a definition of phonics and phonemic awareness, then move onto the role that each play in learning to read, how they are related, the benefits and effective methods of teaching both.

This paper is a review of two articles published by Paul Miller in the Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities. The first is entitled, “The role of phonology in the word decoding skills of poor readers: evidence from individuals with prelingual deafness or diagnosed dyslexia,” and was written in 2007. The second, written in 2010, is named, “Phonological, orthographic, and syntactic awareness and their relation to reading comprehension in prelingually deaf individuals: what can we learn from skilled readers?” At their heart, the articles attempt to address what explains good and poor readers in the deaf community, rejecting previous assumptions in the literature in this area. The studies are carefully designed, and attempt to address

Within current research, it is acknowledged that phonological impairment may result in dyslexia. A study by Lobier, Zoubrinetzky, and Valdois (2012) suggests that while phonological impairment may be the root cause in some dyslexic patients, visual processing deficits may play a significant role in dyslexia, especially in patients without phonological difficulties. More specifically, the research aimed to support the hypothesis that the “underlying impairment responsible for the VA span deficit is visual, not verbal” (2012, p. 768). To support the hypothesis, the study was designed to compare the performance of typically-developing children and dyslexic children on visual attention span tasks with verbal and non-verbal stimuli. Non-verbal stimuli were included to demonstrate the absence of

auditory processing skills via a ‘child-friendly’ means of assessment. There are very few studies which focus mainly on pre-school aged children and their auditory processing abilities, and there are even less studies conducted using child-friendly measures of assessment. Perhaps developing a more child friendly means of assessment could bring about an opportunity to identify a reliable auditory discrimination threshold, in both preschool and young school aged children. It would make sense to determine whether children have adultlike auditory discrimination skills or auditory skills in general, and whether these skills do improve with age, as previous research has suggested. Our study will focus on the auditory discrimination abilities of a young age group of preschool children, which in turn will help us in achieving our goal; to establish an auditory discrimination

Reading is associated with new vibrancy in the left-hemisphere of the brain (Turkeltaub, Gareau, Flowers, Zeffiro, & Eden, 2003). When this part of the brain records a rise in activity and the right inferotemporal records a reduction in doings, then a person increases his phonological skills (Turkeltaub, et al., 2003; Raschlea, Zuk, & Gaab, 2012). This enhances the learning capability of a person and this can be taken to mean that with a reduction in the development of the phonological skills, then a person is likely to develop learning difficulties (Ivry & Justus, 2001). As such, the authors are in support of the phonological theory with regard to dyslexia. In addition, the study has shown that reduced ability to differentiate between phonetics can lead to learning difficulties.

The second category of dyslexia, auditory dyslexia, is not a disability caused by any loss of hearing but the difficulty in processing and interpreting the oral information which is heard. Auditory dyslexia cause problems in the phonological realm of speech such as: distinguishing certain consonant and vowel sounds, the difference in syllables, and the ability to rhyme (Houston 1987).

Bulgarian language consists only of six vowels, which are all short vowels. In comparison, Standard American English has fifteen vowels, including the diphthongs. Often, when a Bulgarian person learns English as a second language, this fact becomes underestimated and the importance of the vowel pronunciation is undervalued. Yet, when living in the United States, often a Bulgarian speaker tries to adapt to the American English phonological system as much as he/she can, and tries to melt this difference between the mispronunciations of the vowels. However, is it possible to blend so much to the American culture and be able to pronounce all the vowels, regardless of the phonological differences? This research emphasizes on the difference between

Roger Bacon points out “Grammar is substantially one and the same in all the languages despite its accidental variations.” So there is not much difference in the structure of a language. If a person has good command over the mother tongue, there are more possibilities to adapt, assimilate and accommodate second language without putting up much pressure on the learners. There are some similarities in syntax, phonology, morpheme, word inflection and various other aspects of the language. In this context of learning the second language, introspective learning should be emphasized, language learning should be action oriented and engaging so that learners can practice more and more. They can easily perceive what one wants to convey in a particular sentence. It is obvious that acquisition