Delayed English Literacy Report

Reading is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information which is essential in being a productive member of society. If and when a student missed an opportunity to learn the skills necessary for reading, it’s has a profound impact on their lives. As educators we realize that teaching all children to read requires that every child receive excellent reading instruction. We are also aware that children, who are struggling with reading must receive

According to statistics, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (2016) show that more than 90% of DHH children are born to hearing families, but sadly many of these children lack full language acquisition

One reason the language gap exist can be contributed to the amount of words children hear. In a study done by Hart and Risley (1995), it was shown that children from high SES homes heard approximately 215,000 words,

The purpose of this article was to examine the impact of book reading interventions on scoio-economically disadvantaged children with language difficulties (expressive, receptive and overall language measures). The study hypothesized that a group of children with language delays (experimental language difficulties) would perform better on measures of expressive, receptive and overall language than the control (language difficulties) group and control (language normal) group after implementation of intervention strategies (pausing and open questioning, using picture books) used during book reading. The results of this study supported the hypothesis that ELD children did perform better on overall language measures.

There have been various research studies and debates about how children learn. It started with Webster Spellers and their popular method of reading instruction, which was replaced with alphabetic and phonics methods. The debate soon became about phonics and whole-word method. They found that not one method worked for all children. Soon peoples thinking shifted to learning to read, should be as natural as learning to talk. Current research has found that whole-language and code-focused instruction are important for developing readers. Language helps us navigate through like. Oral language is vital groundwork of literacy instruction. Children with stronger oral communication read more fluently, than those who struggle with oral communication. Language skills identified with reading include vocabulary, metalinguistic awareness, and listening comprehension. Children’s vocabulary is correlational to their literacy skills. Explicit instruction is crucial for proficient literacy to develop in children.

Vocabulary plays a crucial part in a child learning to read. A student that has limited vocabulary often prevents them from comprehending the text that he or she reads. Students that do not read well often times read less because they find that reading is tough and frustrating. Since these low level readers do not read enough their vocabulary does not improve. Unfortunately, as the student continues through school the gap between good readers and poor readers widens tremendously.

This study looks at the effects of SES on children’s reading success along with their ASL proficiency. In this experiment 135 deaf individuals ages 6-26 were given a questionnaire to determine their SES, and then were given tests to assess their ASL and literacy proficiency. Three variables were also taken into account those being SES, ASL proficiency, and English reading proficiency. The results found that SES and ASL didn’t have a significant correlation (Twitchell et al., 2015). This is very different from hearing children who are learning to read. In the hearing population SES and English development are correlated. This study shows the importance of the different learning experiences that deaf children have. While a deaf child may have all the resources to succeed they may not have the language input that they need and vice versa (Twitchell et al., 2015). It is concluded that SES does have a direct influence on deaf bilinguals literacy development but it is independent of the children’s ASL proficiency (Twitchell et al.,

We learn children to read books in oirder for them to learn through retaining information. With children paying too much attention and concetnrration to the level of print and decoding it, they can actually lose sight of what they are actually reading.

The ability to recognize words is imperative children’s reading fluency. As children progress through school, if there word recognition does not increase they are at risk. Sight words are important for words that are not easily decodable, because they provide contexts and allow for the child’s comprehension (Sullivan, Konrad, Joseph, & Luu, 2013). How children go about learning sight words is a common question amongst researchers. Children acquire early knowledge of sight words in the home whether it be conversation or practice, as well as at school. The following research provides evidence assessing these relationships.

The child generally lacks knowledge of the alphabet, lacks left-to-right directionality in writing, and lacks concept of word (one-to-one matching of spoken and written words). Consistent spacing between words and consistent use of letter-sound correspondences are absent.

This means that you can hear the sounds of the words and convert them into letters on a page and see letters on a page and convert them into something you can hear (Jensen, 2016). Phonological processing deficits are second most common among impoverished students, next to working class memory, as this population of students tend to have poor auditory memory processing skills which leads to poor listening skills and classroom behavior (Noble, Wolmetz, Ochs, Farah, & McCandliss, 2006) as students have trouble processing sounds and words in real time. Most frequently, this leads to frustration, vocabulary difficulties, and low self-esteem. A lack of books and parent reading at home can also prohibit reading fluency and motivation (Jensen, 2016).

A lack of incidental learning does not only affect a person’s knowledge of vocabulary, but their knowledge of the world that surrounds them. It is already believed that hearing and Deaf individual’s organization of knowledge in the long-term memory is different (“How Deaf Children Learn”). The belief that Deaf and hearing students are the same, minus the ability to hear, is simply not true. How a Deaf person obtains, and retains information is quite different from how a hearing person approaches doing so. This, plus a lack of incidental learning can have lasting effects on how a student retrieves information from text. When reading, ideally, we will apply our own knowledge to make sense and obtain meaning from the text. This skill is called top-down

One of the greatest skills that we have developed as a people is our capacity and ability for language. Creating a way for us to communicate spread ideas and further enriches our lives, language both verbally and written, has been a great benefit to our lives. Unfortunately not everyone is as quick to understand language in its forms, for example when a person may have difficulties in reading. Obviously this would create a great hindrance to a person’s life, and there have been a few identified factors that have correlated with difficulties in learning to read. One of the main connections that has been found is that a person who has difficulty in processing sounds of words, that they may also have lessened reading abilities. In discussing

When data from students who had average accuracy and fluency scores, but lower comprehension scores were compared to data from those with similar accuracy and fluency but average comprehension, the consistent differences were found to be lower oral language and vocabulary skills in the poor comprehenders upon entry into formal schooling. (Nation, Cocksey, Taylor & Bishop) Thousands of dollars each year are spent on intervention, trying to improve the reading of children that show delays. When one reads, the clear goal is comprehension of what is read. Without communication of ideas between the author and reader, decoding texts is pointless. Most intervention programs are focused on phonics and word decoding. Oral language interventions concurrent with vocabulary and comprehension tasks at age eight have been shown to lead to significant improvements in reading comprehension. (Nation, et al., 2010). Reading comprehension is not merely a product of being able to decode words and sentences. How we teach children to process and integrate the ideas found in text can have a large impact on their ability to function in a world of ever expanding knowledge and information.

Reading is one of the basic components of literacy. “Reading is a process of translating visual codes into meaningful language” (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998, p. 849). Children with emerging literacy are at the early stages of reading which mostly involves decoding letters into their corresponding sounds and then linking those sounds to single words. A study was conducted that found that 5% of a child’s daily speech was entirely produced during joint book reading (as cited in Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998 p. 855). Reading is made up of the following components: contextual, semantic, language, sound, and print units.