Reading
Phonetics and word identification
"Phonological awareness requires that an individual be able to segment
words into syllables or sounds auditorily before letters are even introduced.
Many students do not learn to read even when provided written phonics
instruction, because they lack the prerequisite understanding of the basic
syllable and sound units within spoken language." 25
For many adults with learning disabilities, struggles with reading can stem
from their limited understanding of phonetics. Basic sound-symbol
association does not come naturally for many adults with learning disabilities.
Research has shown that programs designed to teach sound-symbol
correspondences directly, following a systematic sequence from simple to
complex and emphasizing multi-sensory instruction help improve adults'
abilities to read. This approach encourages practitioners to teach learners that
words are made up of blocks of sounds, i.e. "brush" has two units of sounds -
bru/sh, instead of "brush" has five letters.26
Phonetic Strategies
Keith Stanovitch (1993) outlines several activities that enhance phonemic
awareness:
- Phonemic deletion: What word would be left if the /k/ sound were
taken away from cat?
- Word-to-word matching: Do pen and pipe begin with the same sound?
- Blending: What word would we have if we put these sounds together:
/s/, /a/, /t/?
- Sound isolation: What is the first sound in rose?
- Phoneme segmentation: What sounds do you hear in the word hot?
- Phoneme counting: How many sounds do you hear in the word cake?
- Deleted phoneme: What sound do you hear in meet that is missing in
eat?
- Odd word out: What word starts with a different sound: bag, nine,
beach, bike?
- Sound-to-word matching: Is there a /k/ in bike?27
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