Early speech difficulties and their relationship to literacy: What teachers might expect in the classroom, and how they might help.

Transcription

1 Early speech difficulties and their relationship to literacy: What teachers might expect in the classroom, and how they might help. Roslyn Neilson, Ph.D. Speech-Language Pathologist Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Wollongong University CHERI Conference, 1-2 September 2005 Learning about Learning Difficulties

2 Overview Children with early speech and language impairments are at risk of having later difficulties with reading and spelling. This has implications for early identification and monitoring of children at risk. Phonemic awareness (PA) is one of the important linking variables. PA remediation can and should take into account the nature of the children s speech difficulties.

3 What kinds of speech and language difficulties are relevant? Combined early language and speech impairments are known to be a very serious risk factor for subsequent literacy problems. But recent research suggests that even mild speech difficulties are a strong risk factor if they are still present at the time the child is introduced to literacy. NB: The risk factor does not apply to speech problems associated with peripheral causes (eg. cleft palate, cerebral palsy).

4 Identification of speech difficulties in the early school years: Serious problems involve lack of intelligibility. Common mild problems at ages 5 to 6 years: the child is generally intelligible, with some listener support. Consonant clusters reduced (boon/spoon). Consonant substitutions (eg. t/k; d/g). Confusions amongst w, l, r and y. Lisping (/s/ distortion) is NOT a warning symptom. Substitution of f/th may not be a symptom. On their own these errors may not be a concern; you should also look for patterns in the child s speech.

5 Warning patterns associated with mild speech difficulties: Stackhouse (1992): Children with dyslexia often have connected speech that is described as muffled, mumbled, jerky. Problems with polysyllabic words: Pronouncing familiar words Learning new words Deletion of unstressed syllables Sequencing errors

6 Example: Muffled speech, weak syllable deletion, problems with /l/ and /r/. Child: He will get the dog s favourite thing and?swap?drop it over. Ros: (Comment.) Child: My dog my got two favourite things, a ball and his, um, fake bone and it s a red (wed) one. Ros: (Comment.) What s your dog s name? Child: Molly uh, I got a boxer and a co e spaniel. A boxer called Molly, and a yittle and my little dog called Abby. The boxer s big. (Ros: What kind of dog?) Co e spaniel. Ros: (Comment.) Say this with me cocker spaniel. Child: Cocker spaniel.

7 Example: weak syllable deletion, sequencing errors No mistakes Context: I had noticed the child saying stake for mistake in conversation. Ros: Say: I didn t make any mistakes. Child: I didn t make any es..stakes. Ros: (Repeats sentence.) Child: I didn t make any es..s..stakes Ros: Mistakes. Child: Mistakes. Ros (Repeats sentence.) Child: I didn t make any mis..cakes Ros: Do you want to try mistakes again for fun (?!!) Child: Stakes. Ros: The first bit is mis mistakes. Child: Mistakes. Ros: Good! No mistakes? Child: No bisnakes.!!

8 Word-retrieval difficulties associated with imprecise speech: Context: The No Mistakes child also often said I forgot in conversation, when in fact he was familiar with the word. Ros: Remember the thing that was on the leaf? What s it called? Child: No response. Sigh. Ros: I ll say it, then you. Caterpillar. Child: Caterpillar. (Repeat?) Ca erpillar. Ros: What is the sport you do? Child: I forgotten. (Ros: Try again.) Child: Tae Kon Do. Ros: Tae Kwon Do. Child: Tae Kwon Do (big sigh).

9 Children are often very aware of their speech problems Ros: What s that he s singing into? Child: Mic..ho? Ross: Microphone Child: Mic..o..phone. Child: That s why my teeth can t talk properly.

10 Speech difficulties as an earlywarning sign Early identification: Speech difficulties are easy to observe, without the need for specialised testing. The difficulties may be apparent to parents and teachers even before it is possible to sort out children on tests of phonemic awareness.

11 When you think a child has a speech impairment: Monitor literacy progress carefully, and intervene early. This applies to parents as well as teachers. When children do have speech difficulties, Marie Clay (Reading Recovery) has suggested that phonemic activities should be avoided in early literacy work. BUT - recent consensus: You CAN introduce phonemic awareness tasks early; they will accelerate literacy progress, and may indeed help speech as well (Gillon 2003).

12 Conceptualising the relationship between speech impairment and literacy difficulties: It is NOT the case that children s writing and spelling errors simply mirror their speech errors. Child A says: Wight side. Child A writes: RIT SID or WIT SID Child B says Wight side. Child B writes: RPPSMT If we understand how the child s speech system is working, we will be more efficient at helping the child with phonemic awareness.

13 A theoretical model: Speech development, lexical representations and phonemic awareness. Warning: This next section may seem a little counter-intuitive. It is a research area that is currently buzzing with developments. Some of what I m going to say is still speculative. (See Conference Proceedings for references.)

14 Lexical Representations as Icebergs in the Head: How are the words we know SPECIFIED? Readily accessible Less accessible We know. What words mean. How words sound (auditory specifications) How words are articulated (motor specifications) And, once we are literate: How words are spelled.

15 How are representations specified as children develop language? 1. The Input side Auditory representations are developed as babies listen to people speaking, start to understand what they mean. Children s lexical representations probably start off involving the general sound shape of syllables an acoustic envelope, with few internal specifications.

16 2. The Output side Babies babble, practising making sounds with the vocal tract. Then they use the sounds in meaningful words. 9 months: koo-koo 12 months: koo-kie 24 months: kookabuwwa 36 months: kookaburra Their motor representations are first specified as syllablesized articulatory gestures, with little internal detail. The most basic gesture is a consonant-vowel (CV) sequence. The details come later, as words are refined.

17 To summarise: Moving towards adult speech Babies do not learn their first words by stringing phonemes together. Rather, they start with syllable-sized units. This means that the child s early lexical representations are specified at the level of the syllable, not the phoneme. With vocabulary development, more detailed, finer-grained specifications are included in the lexical representations, as more distinctions are made amongst words.

18 Fine-grained Lexical Representations In typical speech development, lexical representations eventually become detailed and precise enough for the child to be able to notice PHONEME sized units of information within the words. This allows children to develop phonemic awareness when they are exposed to formal literacy instruction they can attend to detail within the syllable.

19 Precise versus fuzzy speech: Evidence suggests that school-age children with speech impairments have fuzzy or coarse-grained lexical representations (Elbro, 1999). It is likely that clear, precise speech in a typically-developing five year old is associated with relatively fine-grained lexical representations.

20 Coarse or fuzzy representations and phonemic awareness: When children with coarse or fuzzy lexical representations are exposed to the alphabet, they don t readily access segments smaller than the syllable. Sounding out words remains a mystery, even if the children have been taught the letter-sound combinations separately. These children must be helped to discover the phonemes within words. That is, the potential phonemic cues in their own lexical representations have to become more salient.

21 Phonemic Awareness: The ability to attend to, identify and manipulate the phonemes in words. Note: PA is more than the simple ability to discriminate sounds, or tell that words are different. PA requires that you can actually identify the phonemes and their sequence in words.

22 Discovering the /k/ phonemes in car, back, rocker, backpack, ski, quick, act, Max There is no acoustic /k/ segment that is common to all these words. The words do, however, have in common the velar point of articulation for /k/ (and to a lesser extent, an unvoiced quality). These features of the /k/ phoneme must be clearly specified in the child s lexical representations if the child is to work with /k/ sounds in reading and spelling. Artwork: LiPS

23 Example: A child with weak PA Ros: Can you tell me, what s the difference between snack and smack? How are they different? Child: They re the same. (Some discussion) Ros: But how can you tell which one I said, if they sound the same? Child: Snack, smack. (Pointing to picture). Ros: Write snack. Ros: Now write smack. Child: (Pencil down, head on desk.)

24 Educational Implications: Do phonics programs help children to make phonemic distinctions salient? Letter chart approaches - C and K say /k/ for cat and king. Assume PA will emerge on its own. (Luckily it often does.) Ants in the Apple type approaches - Camels coughing, c..c..c. May work indirectly, through sheer bombardment. Letterland narratives around the phonemes, and lots of bombardment. Jolly Phonics gestures and images (castanets clicking), which are catchy and learnable, but may be confusing if child has weak PA. THRASS and Spalding lots of systematic modelling of phonemes. Reading Recovery Elkonin boxes (move counters into boxes to show c..a..t) simple modelling. ALL depend on PA emerging via modelling and/or bombardment. The teacher models what is in his/her own lexical representations. If this fails, give more of the same. No explicit help is planned for helping children to identify phonemes within their own lexical representations.

25 Explicit help for when PA needs scaffolding: Focus on articulation. Children can see and feel the relevant mouth movements and points of contact, as well as listening for the phonemes. They can use their own articulation as a resource. Articulatory features provide many consistent cues to phonemes, while the acoustic cues often vary.

26 How technical does explicit PA scaffolding need to be? A current controversy: should we teach children about the articulation of ALL phonemes, or do we only need to focus on those phonemes that are difficult to extract from the speech stream?? Cf. the Lindamood LiPS program, versus a range of less expensive and less complicated adaptations and variations. Research hasn t given clear answers yet.

27 My personal preference for making phonemes more salient: Keep it simple. Use auditory cues whenever they are easy to segment from the speech stream e.g. /s/, /m/. Attach these cues to letter names. Also routinely familiarise children with their own mouths attend to how sounds look and feel. This builds confidence in a strategy: Your mouth knows what the sounds are. Say the word and ask your mouth to tell you. We have a pet class puppet called Super Mouth.

28 When phonemes do not emerge easily from the syllable envelope: Plosives p, b, t, d, k, g are problematic. They are fast moving and can t be prolonged. By the time you ve said the sound, the articulatory information has disappeared. Strategy: I present plosives as GET READY sounds. Point out the place of articulation during the Get Ready phase.

29 Making plosives salient (cont.) Use mirrors and fingers (clean) to locate the place of articulation. Get ready for: /p/ and /b/: lips closed. /t/ and /d/: tongue tip up. /k/ and /g/: back of the tongue up. Use iconic hand gestures to mirror the plosive quality, and also to reflect the place of articulation.

30 Plosives and voicing: Explain the voicing distinctions (p, t, k versus b, d, g). Feel and listen for the throat vibrations (Super Mouth s engine room). Note: you need to listen for cues in the adjacent vowels, too. Anticipate voicing confusions with plosives at the ends of syllables. Practise contrasts in sorting games. Artwork: Black Sheep Press

31 Clarifying the POSITION of phonemes in the syllable: Stretch or slow down single-syllable (CVC) words in order to locate middle and end phonemes as well as the beginning sound. A useful gesture cue: the chewing gum stretch makes the location of the phonemes more concrete.

32 Scaffolding PA problems with consonant clusters: Help children to identify the separate phonemes in consonant clusters, especially the internal sounds. For example: the /p/ in spoon: feel the lips closing. the /n/ in went: feel it in your nose. There are predictable problems with /tr/ and /dr/; it helps if children attend to the place of articulation as they Get Ready.

33 Coping with polysyllabic words: Break longer words into manageable chunks, and show children which syllable goes where. Use a visual/spatial cue, not just clapping. Keep stress patterns accurate: Locate and anchor the stressed syllable. Help with the timing of unstressed syllables. Keep the vowel pronunciations accurate. Rehearse difficult words frequently.

34 Example: Helping with polysyllabic words or How to say mafematical! Context: A reading lesson - maths vocabulary.

35 Conclusions Speech impairments are important when it comes to literacy development. Relevant phonemic awareness strategies are easy to incorporate into routine classroom activities. But the strategies demand good understanding of phonetics on the part of the teacher. SO: Wouldn t it be useful if teaching institutions offered basic phonetics as part of the language and literacy curriculum?

36 Queries and comments Please feel free to contact me: Roslyn Neilson Thanks for listening!