Language Disorders:from Infancy through Adolescence:

Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, and Communicating

Rhea Paul, PhD, CCC-SLPProfessor, Yale Child Study Center

New Haven, Connecticut

Courtenay F. Norbury, PhD

Senior Research Fellow Department of Psychology Royal Holloway University of London London,England

pages 411-416

discontinuities between oral and written language

biological bases for oral language

oral language is a primary,biologically based system with a developmental progression in that is similar across cultures,specialized neural structures adapted specifically for its functioning,and universal appearance in individuals with normal development.

until well into the twentieth century,only a minority of people were literate,and there was no particular stigma or handicap attached to illiterate.

writing systems

pictographic,logographic,or ideographic,each symbol stands for a whole word

syllabary,such as that used in the kana form of japaness writing

alphabetic cipher,each symbol represents a phoneme(more or less),it requires a great deal of phonological awareness,the ability to break words down into componet sounds.

the key to reading in an alphabetic cipher

phonological awareness is comprised of the ability to break words down into component sounds,to realize that these units of sound can be representd by letters,to learn letter-sound correspondence rules,to analyze words into component sounds(for spelling).and to synthesize sounds represented by letters into words(for reading).

children who exhibit phonological awareness skills have been shown to learn to read more easily than children who don't.

performance on phonological awareness tasks in kindergarten and first grade is strong predictor of later reading achievement.

direct teaching of phonological awareness and letter-sound correspondence to children who are not yet reading improves,their reading and spelling development more than other forms of reading readiness instruction.

phonological awareness teaching works best when combined with explicit instruction in letter-sound correspondences,especially when the two are taught in separate activities.

what does it take to learn to read?

stage 1:word recognition,most of the child's attentional resources are devoted to using letter-sound correspondence rules and phonological synthesis abilities to decipher single words.comprehension,or attention to meaning,can be limited during this period because so much attention is going into decoding.

need literacy socialization opportunities,and lots of experience talking about words and sounds.

stage 2:reading becomes more fluent,decoding is more automatic,and more attention is available for comprehension.

stage 3:the child is reading to learn,able to get new information and derive fuller meaning from print.

children need different kinds of instruction at different points in development.

language-learning disorder need more exposure and practice to the same basic principles of word identification and comprehension,in individualized,more intensive settings.

the role of the school SLP in literacy development

SLPs' role in emergent literacy and decoding

creating a print-rich environment in which signs,lists,and labels are placed prominently throughout the classroom and referred to frequently during the day's activities.

SLPs' role in later literacy development

aspects of literacy beyond decoding

fluency(the ability to read connected text rapidly,smoothly,effortlessly,and automatically with little conscious attention to the mechanics of reading)

reading comprehension(the ability to understand draw inferences and conclusions,recall, summarize,paraphrase,and acuqire new information from written texts)

spelling(the phonological and orthographic skills that enable conventional alphabetic representations of words)

writing(the planning,production,and editing of written texts)