Exploring the emergent literacy needs of preschoolers with language impairments

Current research indicates the need to identify and support children at-risk for reading difficulties as early as possible. Children with language impairments are one group of children who have been shown to be at-risk for literacy problems. Their difficulties likely stem from the challenges they tend to experience with acquiring emergent literacy skills as preschoolers. Very little empirical work has been done with preschoolers with language impairments to explore the nature of their emergent literacy development or their response to interventions which target emergent literacy skills. In the present study, 55 preschoolers with language impairments were recruited from a speech and language centre in Southern Ontario. The nature of the relationship between children's early language and literacy skills was explored using measures of their written language awareness, phonological awareness and oral language abilities, in an attempt to better understand how to conceptualize their emergent literacy abilities. Furthermore, a between-subjects design was used to compare two language interventions: an experimental emergent literacy intervention and a standard intervention based on traditional models of speech and language therapy. Results indicated that preschooler's emergent literacy abilities can be understood as a broad, multi-dimensional construct consisting of three separate but interrelated components: written language awareness, phonological awareness, and oral language. The emergent literacy-enhanced intervention was generally superior to the standard language intervention in improving children's skills in written language awareness, and children with the most severe impairments seemed to benefit the most from the experimental intervention. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as areas for future research are discussed. .

Exploratory study : exploring the effectiveness of a literacy-based intervention with children with language impairments

Research points clearly to the need for all concerned stakeholders to adopt a preventative approach while intervening with children who are at-risk for future reading disabilities. Research has indicated also that a particular sub-group of children at-risk for reading impairments include preschool children with language impairments (Catts, 1993). Preschool children with language impairments may have difficulties with emergent literacy skills - important prerequisite skills necessary for successful formal reading. Only in the past decade have researchers begun to study the effects of emergent literacy intervention on preschool children with language impairments. As such, the current study continues this investigation of how to effectively implement an emergent literacy therapy aimed at supporting preschool children with language impairments. In addition to this, the current study explores emergent literacy intervention within an applied clinical setting. The setting, presents a host of methodological and theoretical challenges - challenges that will advance the field of understanding children within naturalistic settings. This exploratory study included thirty-eight participants who were recruited from Speech Services Niagara, a local preschool speech and language program. Using a between-group pre- and posttest design, this study compared two intervention approaches - an experimental emergent literacy intervention and a traditional language intervention. The experimental intervention was adopted from Read It Again! (Justice, McGinty, Beckman, & Kilday, 2006) and the traditional language intervention was based on the traditional models of language therapy typically used in preschool speech and language models across Ontario. 5 Results indicated that the emergent literacy intervention was superior to the ,t..3>~, ~\., ;./h traditional language therapy in improving the children's alphabet knowledge, print and word awareness and phonological awareness. Moreover, results revealed that children with more severe language impairments require greater support and more explicit instruction than children with moderate language impairments. Another important finding indicated that the effects of the preschool emergent literacy intervention used in this study may not be sustainable as children enter grade one. The implications of this study point to the need to support preschool children with language impairments with intensive emergent literacy intervention that extends beyond preschool into formal educational settings.

Assessing phonemic awareness skills in hearing impaired students

This paper discusses phonemic awareness and its role in providing appropriate literacy instruction to both hearing and hearing impaired children. The ability of hearing-impaired students to gain phonological awareness skills is examined and instructional models for teaching phonological and phonemic awareness skills are presented. Also included is a checklist to be used to assess phonological and phonemic awareness skills in hearing-impaired students.

Habilidades de consciência fonológica em criança portadora da síndrome da imunodeficiência adquirida: pré e pós-terapia fonoaudiológica

Este trabalho teve por objetivo caracterizar as habilidades de consciência fonológica em uma criança portadora da Síndrome da Imunodeficiência Adquirida (SIDA) pré e pós-terapia fonoaudiológica. A participante foi uma criança do gênero feminino, de 6 anos de idade, aluna do primeiro ano do ensino fundamental, portadora de SIDA adquirida por transmissão vertical. Foi realizada uma avaliação das habilidades de consciência fonológica por meio da aplicação do teste Consciência Fonológica - Instrumento e Avaliação Sequencial (CONFIAS). Após, foi desenvolvido um programa terapêutico fechado (15 sessões) para consciência fonológica, composto por atividades em níveis silábico e fonêmico. Na última sessão, o teste CONFIAS foi reaplicado para investigação da efetividade da terapia. Na avaliação pré-terapia, a criança apresentou escore de 18 pontos nas tarefas em nível silábico e um ponto em tarefas em nível fonêmico, totalizando um escore de 19 pontos. Na avaliação pós-terapia, o escore obtido em tarefas silábicas foi de 26 pontos e em tarefas fonêmicas 11 pontos, totalizando um escore de 37 pontos. Este estudo permitiu-nos caracterizar o desempenho de uma criança com SIDA em tarefas de habilidades de consciência fonológica e a efetividade de um programa terapêutico. A pontuação obtida na avaliação pré-terapia mostrou-se bastante inferior ao esperado para a idade e apresentou evolução significativa após a realização de terapia fonoaudiológica. Assim, os profissionais envolvidos com esta população devem estar atentos aos programas terapêuticos que abordem, além de outros aspectos, as habilidades de processamento fonológico.

Phonological Translation in Bilingual and Monolingual Children

Bilingual children face a variety of challenges that their monolingual peers do not. For instance, switching between languages requires the phonological translation of proper names, a skill that requires mapping the phonemic units of one language onto the phonemic units of the other. Proficiency of phonological awareness has been linked to reading success, but little information is available about phonological awareness across multiple phonologies. Furthermore, the relationship between this kind of phonological awareness and reading has never been addressed. The current study investigated phonological translation using a task designed to measure children's ability to map one phonological system onto another. A total of 425 kindergarten and second grade monolingual and bilingual students were evaluated. The results suggest that monolinguals generally performed poorly. Bilinguals translated real names more accurately than fictitious names, in both directions. Correlations between phonological translation and measures of reading ability were moderate, but reliable. Phonological translation is proposed as a tool with which to evaluate phonological awareness through the perspective of children who live with two languages and two attendant phonemic systems.

Language outcomes subsequent to treatment of brainstem tumour in childhood

While the occurrence and management of brainstem tumours in children would not traditionally indicate potential direct structural impact on classical language centres, recent theories have implicated some involvement of the brainstem in a functional language and cognitive neural loop between the cerebellum and the cerebral hemispheres. Thus, the present paper explored the impact of treatment for brainstem tumour on the general and high-level language abilities of six children treated for brainstem tumour, in addition to phonological awareness skills. Group analysis revealed that children treated for brainstem tumour demonstrated intact language and phonological awareness abilities in comparison to an age- and gender-matched control group. Individual analysis revealed only one of six children treated for brainstem tumour revealed evidence of language disturbances, with an additional child demonstrating an isolated mildly reduced score on one phonological awareness task. Language deficits identified in a child treated with a combination of both radiotherapy and chemotherapy were noted in the high-level language area of lexical generation. Findings highlighted that no overt language disturbances were evident in children treated for brainstem tumour. However, further analysis into higher-level language skills in the present study indicated that both general and high-level language abilities require long-term monitoring in this population.

Delivering phonological and phonics training within whole-class teaching

Background: Early, intensive phonological awareness and phonics training is widely held to be beneficial for children with poor phonological awareness. However, most studies have delivered this training separately from children's normal whole-class reading lessons. Aims: We examined whether integrating this training into whole class, mixed-ability reading lessons could impact on children with poor phonological awareness, whilst also benefiting normally developing readers. Sample: Teachers delivered the training within a broad reading programme to whole classes of children from Reception to the end of Year 1 (N=251). A comparison group of children received standard teaching methods (N=213). Method: Children's literacy was assessed at the beginning of Reception, and then at the end of each year until 1 year post-intervention. Results: The strategy significantly impacted on reading performance for normally developing readers and those with poor phonological awareness, vastly reducing the incidence of reading difficulties from 20% in comparison schools to 5% in intervention schools. Conclusions: Phonological and phonics training is highly effective for children with poor phonological awareness, even when incorporated into whole-class teaching.

COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC FACTORS OF READING ARABIC: THE ROLE OF MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS IN READING

Scientific reading research has produced substantial evidence linking specific reading components to a range of constructs including phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness, orthographic processing (OP), rapid automatized naming, working memory and vocabulary. There is a paucity of research on Arabic, although 420 million people around the world (Gordon, 2005) speak Arabic. As a Semitic language, Arabic differs in many ways from Indo-European languages. Over the past three decades, literacy research has begun to elucidate the importance of morphological awareness (MA) in reading. Morphology is a salient aspect of Arabic word structure. This study was designed to (a) examine the dimensions underlying MA in Arabic; (b) determine how well MA predicts reading; (c) investigate the role of the standard predictors in different reading outcomes; and (d) investigate the construct of reading in Arabic. This study was undertaken in two phases. In Phase I, 10 MA measures and two reading measures were developed, and tested in a sample of 102 Grade 3 Arabic-speaking children. Factor analysis of the 10 MA tasks yielded one predominant factor supporting the construct validity of MA in Arabic. Hierarchical regression analyses, controlling for age and gender, indicated that the MA factor solution accounted for 41– 43% of the variance in reading. In Phase II, the widely studied predictor measures were developed for PA and OP in addition to one additional measure of MA (root awareness), and three reading measures In Phase II, all measures were administered to another sample of 201 Grade 3 Arabic-speaking children. The construct of reading in Arabic was examined using factor analysis. The joint and unique effects of all standard predictors were examined using different sets of hierarchical regression analyses. Results of Phase II showed that: (a) all five reading measures loaded on one factor; (b) MA consistently accounted for unique variance in reading, particularly in comprehension, above and beyond the standard predictors; and (c) the standard predictors had differential contributions. These findings underscore the contribution of MA to all components of Arabic reading. The need for more emphasis on including morphology in Arabic reading instruction and assessment is discussed.

Rolandic Epilepsy And Dyslexia.

Although benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BECTS) is an idiopathic, age-related epilepsy syndrome with favorable outcome, recent studies have shown impairment in specific neuropsychological tests. The objective of this study was to analyze the comorbidity between dyslexia and BECTS. Thirty-one patients with clinical and electroencephalographic diagnosis of BECTS (group A) and 31 paired children (group B) underwent a language and neuropsychological assessment performed with several standardized protocols. Our findings were categorized as: a) dyslexia; b) other difficulties; c) without difficulties. Our results were compared and statistically analyzed. Our data showed that dyslexia occurred in 19.4% and other difficulties in 74.2% of our patients. This was highly significant when compared with the control group (p<0.001). Phonological awareness, writing, reading, arithmetic, and memory tests showed a statistically significant difference when comparing both groups. Our findings show significant evidence of the occurrence of dyslexia in patients with BECTS.

Pinch my wig or winch my pig: Spelling, spoonerisms and other language skills

Phonological processing skills have often been assumed to play a minimal role in skilled adult spelling despite evidence showing their importance in the development of spelling skills. The present study investigated the relationship between phonological awareness and spelling in adults. It was hypothesised that subjects demonstrating higher levels of spelling proficiency would also show superior phonological processing skills. This relationship was expected to be mediated by sound-spelling mapping knowledge. Given the irregularities of sound-spelling correspondences in English, it was also predicted that knowledge of orthographic conventions would be related to spelling competency. Two measures of each component skill were used on seventy three university students. As predicted, the importance of spelling-sound mapping skills in spelling were demonstrated, as was a relationship between phonological awareness and spelling-sound correspondences. In addition a moderate correlation was found between orthographic tasks and spelling performance. It was concluded that, among university students at least, phonological ability makes an important contribution to skilled adult spelling.

Segmentation of spoken words into syllables by English-speaking children as compared to adults

Given the importance of syllables in the development of reading, spelling, and phonological awareness, information is needed about how children syllabify spoken words. To what extent is syllabification affected by knowledge of spelling, to what extent by phonology, and which phonological factors are influential? In Experiment 1, six- and seven-year-old children did not show effects of spelling on oral syllabification, performing similarly on words such as habit and rabbit. Spelling influenced the syllabification of older children and adults, with the results suggesting that knowledge of spelling must be well entrenched before it begins to affect oral syllabification. Experiment 2 revealed influences of phonological factors on syllabification that were similar across age groups. Young children, like older children and adults, showed differences between words with short and long vowels (e.g., lemon vs. demon) and words with sonorant and obstruent intervocalic consonants (e.g., melon vs. wagon). (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.

Efeitos do treino da consciência fonológica em crianças pré-escolares, com e sem problemas de linguagem

Este estudo de intervenção tem como objetivo avaliar o efeito de um programa de estimulação da Consciência Fonológica em crianças pré-escolares, com e sem problemas de linguagem. Os programas de intervenção em Consciência Fonológica são exequíveis e devem ser implementados precocemente, tal como é sugerido por Capovilla e Capovilla (2000) e Nunes (2009), influenciando positivamente na futura aquisição da leitura e da escrita. Da mesma forma Sim-Sim, Duarte, Barbeito e Pereira (2010) enaltecem a importância da aquisição desta competência dando especial enfoque às “Metas de Aprendizagem”, na promoção da continuidade entre ciclos de ensino. Neste estudo participaram 62 crianças de cinco e seis anos de idade, a frequentar sete estabelecimentos de ensino pré-escolar, divididas em três condições experimentais: a) Grupo Experimental 1 (crianças sem problemas de linguagem); b) Grupo Experimental 2 (crianças com problemas de linguagem e da fala); c) Grupo de Controlo, sem intervenção em Consciência Fonológica. Os dois grupos experimentais foram sujeitos a uma intervenção em Consciência Fonológica. Os instrumentos utilizados foram a Prova de Segmentação Linguística (Jiménez e Ortiz, 1995) e o Programa de Treino da Consciência Fonológica (Silva, 2002). Globalmente, os resultados obtidos revelaram uma significativa superioridade das crianças dos dois grupos experimentais em algumas das sub-competências medidas, quando comparadas com o grupo de controlo. Comprovou-se ainda que o efeito da intervenção era específico dado que todos os grupos continuaram equivalentes numa variável não trabalhada (nível aritmético). Conclui-se assim que é possível estimular alguns aspetos relevantes do desenvolvimento da Consciência Fonológica em crianças de idade pré-escolar, com e sem problemas de linguagem, antes da iniciação formal à leitura e à escrita.

Avaliação de um programa para a estimulação da consciência fonológica em contexto escolar

Neste trabalho apresentamos um estudo sobre o desenvolvimento da consciência fonológica em contexto escolar, pois sabe-se que a consciência fonológica pode ser estimulada com ensino explícito e que, ao fazê-lo, se facilita a posterior aquisição da leitura e da escrita por parte da criança (Blachman et al., 2006; Adams et al., 2007), o que, em última análise, consiste no objetivo da estimulação da consciência fonológica. Vários autores referem que existe uma forte relação entre o nível de consciência fonológica e a iniciação à leitura e à escrita (Bradley e Bryant, 1995, Gillon, 2004) e de que algumas dificuldades na aprendizagem da leitura e da escrita estão associadas ao fraco desempenho em tarefas de consciência fonológica (Freitas et al., 2007). Assim, em contexto escolar, assume-se que a estimulação precoce e generalizada a todas as crianças, da consciência fonológica, funcionará como medida de prevenção do insucesso na aprendizagem da leitura e da escrita (Freitas et al., 2007). Para o estudo aqui proposto é desenvolvido um programa devidamente ajustado às propriedades linguísticas do português europeu e aos requisitos da aprendizagem da leitura e da escrita no referido sistema alvo. Assim, o nosso estudo tem como objetivo central a avaliação da eficácia desse programa de desenvolvimento da consciência fonológica. Para isso, são selecionados quatro grupos de crianças em idade pré-escolar e escolar, constituindo assim dois grupos de controlo e dois grupos experimentais. Numa primeira fase, antes de qualquer instrução formal, é avaliado o desempenho da consciência fonológica das crianças testadas. Posteriormente, é aplicado o programa por nós elaborado para depois se reavaliarem as crianças, a fim de se aferirem os efeitos dessa intervenção. Os indicadores numéricos mostram que, em todos os grupos, o desempenho da consciência fonológica melhora da primeira para a segunda avaliação. São então comparados os resultados da avaliação entre os grupos estimulados e não estimulados e concluímos que o desempenho da consciência fonológica melhora significativamente nos grupos estimulados com o referido programa, descartando assim a possibilidade de considerar esse aumento apenas como resultado de um possível efeito de escolaridade (Alves et al., 2010). Com isto é demonstrada a eficácia do programa desenvolvido no âmbito deste estudo, podendo este tornar-se uma mais-valia no trabalho de preparação para a iniciação da leitura e da escrita.

A abordagem e o ensino da escrita na Educação Pré-Escolar e no ensino do 1º ciclo do Ensino Básico

Mestrado (PES II), Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico, 1 de Julho de 2014, Universidade dos Açores.

As práticas educativas em contexto Pré-Escolar e 1º ciclo do Ensino Básico: a consciência fonológica e a aprendizagem da leitura

Mestrado (PES II), Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico, 3 de Julho de 2014, Universidade dos Açores.