Phonological Deficits: The Nonlinguistic Reading Problem

A doctor once said ‘the more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go’. That doctor was, of course, Dr Suess in his book 1978 book, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!. Reading is the orchestration of many skills. It is much more than simply decoding words. The National Reading Panel Report (A Closer Look, 2004, p. 1) summarised a child’s reading process and teachers’ effective reading instruction into five essential components. These five critical elements are phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Each element is individually important; however, each cannot occur independently of one an other. The most effective way to teach these elements is through a balanced

The failure of students being able to read and comprehend what they are reading is a great concern for most schools. When students enter the fifth grade and are not on grade level, they are already behind their classmates. Teachers are then responsible for remediating the students to

In order for students to be able to read fluently, they must have a strong grasp of phonological awareness and be able to apply the alphabetical principal. Phonemic awareness has been found to be a strong predictor of reading success (IRA board issues position statement on phonemic awareness, 1998). When students develop these prerequisite skills, reading unknown words becomes effortless (Torgeson, 2002). Consequently, students can then spend their efforts on comprehending the text. Early readers are much more likely to become life-long learners that are willing to tackle a variety of

Introduction Many students around the United States have reading difficulties, which can be due to a variety of reason such as: low socioeconomic status, family history of learning disabilities, a neurological disorder, limited exposure, etc. Reading difficulties can lead to further problems with education and learning, therefore the struggles should be addressed and intervention techniques should be implemented promptly. The interventions need to be individualized for the student based on their needs in order to improve the student’s reading to the best of their abilities.

Reading is believed to be an easy task, something we all learning and develop through the years as we grow, however, is it really that simple? To reading and understanding are both essential when a student begins to read. It is a complex action that requires a multitude of different actions/components, all working at the same time, to become a successful reader. The components that are pertinent to reading are: comprehension, oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency and vocabulary. Without these components, reading may very well be irrelevant because it does not make sense to read and not understand what is being transmitted/relayed. According to the National Reading Panel (NRP), “a combination of techniques is effective for

The Yonkers Public School is located in Lower Hudson Valley and happens to be the fourth largest school district in New York State. The population of students consist of 19.9% Black, 18.4 % White and 54.5 % Hispanic. Lincoln High School is one of the seven public high

The Simple View of Reading (SVoR) model suggests that children must have language comprehension and word recognition skills to be proficient readers, Medwell et al (2014). Jim Rose’s report (2006, p. 40) outlined the Simple View of Reading as a useful framework, which would make explicit to teachers what they need to teach about word recognition and language comprehension (see appendix 1). Before the Rose report, reading was defined as decoding black marks, Graham and Kelly (2012). After this the searchlights model suggested that phonics, grammatical knowledge, reading comprehension and graphic knowledge are equally useful tools when learning to read, Ward (2008). The Rose report’s Independent Review of the Teaching of Early reading reconstructed this model and created the SVoR. Rose (2006, p. 38) determines word recognition as a process which allows you to use “phonics to recognise words” and language comprehension as the means by which “word information, sentences and discourse are interpreted.” The SVoR suggests that, to become a fluent reader, the skills of language comprehension and word recognition are equally important and dependent on each other. Gough and Tummer first mentioned this model, as stated that “comprehension is not sufficient, for decoding is also necessary” Wyse et al (2013, p.

This article described reading difficulties aligned to the Simple View of Reading (as cited in Gough & Tunmer, 1986). They went into depth about three types of poor readers: (a) dyslexia- those with poor decoding, (b) language comprehension- poor reading comprehension, and (c) listening comprehension- impairments in both decoding and language comprehension. Further, they broke down how each reading difficulty is believed to manifest, is measured, and what it specifically affects.

Although for awhile, phonics had lost some of its popularity, research has proven its usefulness when teaching children to read. Without explicit instructions in phonemic awareness and phonics a student is in danger of learning issues. The Headsprout Reading Basics program can prevent these issues from occurring through explicit instruction in phonemic awareness,

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

Researchers have found that 75 percent of students identified with reading problems in the third grade still struggle with reading in the ninth grade (Shaywitz, Escobar, Shaywitz, Fletcher, & Makuch, 1992). No wonder our diverse populations are not successful in school.

Discussion: This Thesis has explored whether children at Sunshine Coast Grammar who began reading before the age of four where likely to have a higher academic result then their peers. It can be concluded from the data gathered that students at Sunshine Coast Grammar who began reading after the age of

Section 1: Introduction to the Study Students are not college and career ready nationally and this is more than likely attributed to low reading abilities. This is an on-going problem that needs immediate attention. It is not a new problem but because of the advance changes and the

Abstract and Overview: The authors of this article studied the facets of metalingustics, specifically morphology (word recognition) and phonology (awareness of word sounds). In addition, the authors emphasized the influences of stress on words and decoding. The article dissected the results of a test done on third graders. The test

For a child who is just starting to learn to read, they need sufficient practice in reading a variety of different books to achieve fluency. Reading can be complex and has many different aspects (Burns,1999). It is suggested that children who have problems reading and writing at a young age will find it hard to catch up as they get older and will not reach their full potential as adults, many will withdraw from school or society and some becoming involved with crime (MacBlain,2014). 40 percent of children find learning to read a challenge but with early help, most reading problems can be prevented (Reading Rockets, n.d.).