Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

phonological awareness

Should we spend time teaching our kids to spell? If so, how, and what should we teach them?

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Learning to spell is hard and time-consuming. Should we invest precious school time teaching kids how to spell? I think so. Here’s why:

1. Teachers, bosses and peers judge people who can’t spell negatively

Misspelled words:

  • make writing more difficult to read (Graham et al., 2008); and
  • cause readers to devalue the quality of a writer’s message (Marshall & Powers, 1969).

At school, papers with misspelled words are scored more harshly by teachers for the quality of ideas than the same papers with no spelling errors (Graham et al., 2011). This is consistent with my experience in the corporate and finance sectors: many professionals (me included!) judge spelling errors as a sign of sloppiness and even incompetence – especially in business communications like resumes and business proposals.

2. Spelling problems detract from a person’s writing quality and can reduce motivation to write

For example:

  • if kids have to think hard about how to spell words correctly, they may have less brainpower to expend on the content of what they are writing. They may forget ideas they have yet to write down (Graham et al., 2002);
  • spelling problems can affect a child’s choice of words: they may choose a more general or even incorrect word to describe an object or idea simply because they are unsure of how to spell the more exact word precisely (Graham & Harris, 2005); and
  • kids who are aware that they have spelling problems may avoid writing whenever possible, and become convinced that they “can’t write”, leading to less writing practice and development (Berninger et al., 1991).

3. Learning to spell improves other literacy skills

Learning to spell can improve a child’s:

4. Spelling skills improve more when they are expressly taught to kids than when they are not taught to kids

For decades, researchers have argued about whether spelling should be explicitly taught to kids, or whether it’s better for kids to figure out spelling “naturally”, i.e. without being taught, e.g. from reading lots of stuff and recognising spelling patterns – so-called “statistical learning”. In other words, researchers argue about whether spelling should be “taught” or “caught”.

The weight of good quality, peer-reviewed evidence tells us that:

  • to learn a skill from our environment (e.g. spelling) without being explicitly taught it, we need to pay attention to the to-be-learned material (e.g. Toro et al., 2005). It’s true that kids do learn some spelling patterns from their environment and interests, e.g. how to spell their name. But, for many kids, printed words are simply not attractive enough for them to pay enough attention to spelling as they read. For example, a study showed that, on average, 4 year olds spent only around 5% of the time paying attention to written words when being read to by parents, with the majority of their time spent looking at the pictures (e.g. Evans & Saint-Aubin, 2005; Justice et al., 2008). This is not surprising: unlike with speech, humans did not evolve to pay attention to writing (Treiman, 2018); and
  • the best way to improve a child’s performance on a skill such as spelling, is to focus on the skill directly. In other words, to improve spelling, you need to practice spelling (and not other skills, such as working memory or pattern recognition) (Smith et al., 2015; McArthur & Castles, 2017; Treiman, 2018);
  • children learn to spell more efficiently and effectively when they receive systematic instruction about spelling than when they do not. A major meta-analysis of peer-reviewed spelling studies showed that direct and systematic spelling instruction:
    • improves students’ spelling skills by slightly more than one-half of a standard deviation, across a range of ages/years of school (from Kindergarten to Year 10!);
    • results in long-term gains;
    • results in gains that transfer to students’ performance in some writing tasks; and
    • improves phonological awareness and reading skills, including word reading and comprehension skills (but – interestingly – not fluency) (Graham & Santangelo, 2014).

5. Components of effective spelling programs

Spelling programs come in many shapes and sizes, ranging from practising lists of spelling words, to teaching specific spelling skills, to more sophisticated programs targeting a range of spelling skills. Consistent with our approach to literacy teaching and the weight of peer-reviewed evidence, we favour a phonics-based approach to teaching spelling, combined with phonological and morphological awareness training. This includes teaching students:

  • phonological awareness skills like blending sounds most often linked to letters to form words (and segmenting words into sounds);
  • links between combinations of letters and different speech sounds, e.g. “sh”, “ee”, “ou”, “ow”, “ai”, “ay”, “oi,”, “oy”, “oa”, “er”, “ir”, “ur”, “wor”, “ear”, “au”, “ck”, “ng”, “ch”, “ph”, and “ough”;
  • common spelling probabilities and patterns, including context rules (sometimes referred to as “graphotactics”), such as:
    • English words rarely ending in the letters “i”, “v” or “u” (hence “spy”, “love”, “have”, and “blue”);
    • “ck” being used to signify /k/ after a short vowel (hence “black” and “kicking”);
    • “ll” and “ff” being used to signify /l/ and /f/ after a short vowel in stressed syllables (hence “full” and “biff”);
    • vowel letters at the end of open syllables signifying a long vowel sound (hence “navy”, “be”, “I”, “no” and “music”);
    • using a silent “e” at the end of a word to signify a long vowel (hence “like” and “mate”); and
    • “c” signifying a /s/ sound when followed by “i”, “e” or “y” (hence “circle”, “ceiling” and “cycle”);
  • syllable segmentation tactics (recognising that, usually, each syllable in English contains at least one vowel sound); and
  • morphological awareness skills such as the meanings of common:
    • prefixes, e.g. “un”, “dis”, “super”, “sub”, “pro”, “pre”, “con”, “trans”, “ex”, “in”, “uni”, bi”, “tri”, “quad” and “bene”; and
    • suffixes, e.g. “s”, “es”, “ed”, “ing”, “er”, “est”, “ful”, “less”, “able”, “ous”, and “ness”; and
    • common word roots.

While the purpose of this article is not to promote any specific spelling program, we use a range of spelling and word attack programs in our clinic, including Spelfabet, Spalding and Yoshimoto’s morphological awareness programs. We’re also fans of Sounds-Write and other phonics-based programs that aim to teach kids to read through writing.

Clinical bottom line

Kids should be taught to spell because:

  • it improves their spelling, phonological awareness and some reading skills; and
  • poor spelling skills can affect academic and work achievements.

Kids can learn spelling skills through reading/exposure to print – through statistical learning – but progress depends on how much attention they pay to spelling when reading. Many kids don’t pay much attention to spelling patterns when they read.

Structured spelling instruction is more effective and efficient than statistical learning. Spelling programs that focus directly on spelling are more likely to benefit spelling than interventions that focus on other skills, such as working memory or pattern recognition.

Related articles:

Principal references:

  1. Graham, S. & Santangelo. (2014). Does Spelling instruction make students better spellers, readers, and writers? A meta-analytic review. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 27, 1703-1743.
  2. Treiman, R. (2018). Statistical Learning and Spelling. Language, Speech, and Hearing in Schools, 49, 644-652.

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Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Concord West, North Strathfield, Rhodes, and Strathfield, and all other suburbs of Sydney.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the PreLit early literacy preparation program by MultiLit, the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP). David sits on Speech Pathology Australia’s Ethics Board and Professional Standards Advisory Committee.

Free resources to help our preschoolers and primary school-age kids to read

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To help our kids to read, we need good tools to put independent, peer-reviewed research into practice. Decades of evidence-building tells us that kids need phonological awareness, vocabulary, synthetic phonics, comprehension and fluency skills to read well; and that oral language comprehension and morphological awareness are important, too.

Putting theory into action

The key challenge is how to teach these skills to kids with reading difficulties. It’s time-consuming (and often expensive) to find quality, evidence-based reading resources. But, there are researchers out there focused on how to implement evidence-based reading practices.

You just have to know where to look.

One of our favourite organisations is the Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR): a multidisciplinary research centre based at Florida State University.

Free reading resources, activities and ideas 

The FCRR houses a goldmine of free pre-reading and reading resources, ideas, and activities.

Most of the resources we use are found in two sections:

So check out the FCRR! We hope you find their marvellous free resources as useful as we do.

Related articles:

Key source: Florida Center for Reading Research, reviewed by Carol Westby, Word of Mouth 28:5 May/June 2017.

Editor’s note: we’ve used US spelling conventions for FCRR’s name; and Australian spelling conventions for everything else.

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Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Concord West, North Strathfield, Rhodes, Strathfield and all other suburbs of Sydney’s Inner West.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the PreLit early literacy preparation program by MultiLit, the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).

My loved one has reading problems. Where can I find evidence-based answers to get help? New free eBook

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Instantly download our new, 188-page, free eBook here:

What is it?

There’s so much information out there about reading difficulties, including dyslexia. It’s hard to sort:

  • the good stuff – based on independent, peer-reviewed evidence; from
  • the nonsense – the fads, the snake oil, patent-protected “systems”, “special lenses”, and expensive products and courses that are not backed up by independent evidence.

We wrote this book for parents, carers and other loved ones who have a family member or loved one with reading difficulties.

This book is fad-free. People with reading difficulties don’t have time to waste on stuff that doesn’t work. This book is designed to help you find the quality information you need to get good help, quickly.

What’s in it?

Evidence-based, plain English summaries answering our 24 most frequently asked reading questions.

How to use it

Read the bit (or bits) that seem most relevant to you, and then go from there. We’ve included hundreds of clickable links between the articles, so you can choose your own adventure through the book, at you own pace.

We hope you find it useful. If you have questions or feedback, please get in touch.

Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Concord West, North Strathfield, Rhodes, Strathfield and all other suburbs of Sydney’s Inner West.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the PreLit early literacy preparation program by MultiLit, the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).

Reading with – not to – your pre-schoolers: how to do it better (and why)

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Most parents know that reading books with their kids is important. But many parents don’t know why exactly. And it’s not as if parents get issued with an instruction book about how to read books with their kids for the best language, literacy, social and academic results.

Consider this article a mini-instruction book – a cheat sheet – based on some of the latest evidence about how to get the most out of reading books with your pre-schooler.

1. Why read books with your pre-schooler?

The peer-reviewed research evidence is very clear on this:

a. Read books with your kids:

Reading books with your kids:

  • has a positive effect on later reading and maths skills;
  • increases sustained attention; and
  • reduces negative behaviours (Baker et al., 2013).

b. Read books frequently with your kids

Reading books more often with your pre-schooler increases:

  • interaction, language, and pre-literacy skills (Hill & Diamond, 2013);
  • reading, cognitive (i.e. intellectual), and numeracy skills until at least 10-11 years of age (Kalb & van Ours, 2014);
  • letter knowledge and phonological awareness (Manolitsis et al., 2013);
  • word recognition skills (Silinskas et al., 2012);
  • receptive and expressive vocabulary (Senechal; & Lefevre, 2014);
  • later literacy outcomes (Cunningham et al., 1997); and
  • self-regulation (Walker, 2014).

2. How to read books with your pre-schooler

a. Read books “with” – not “to” your pre-schoolers

Peer-reviewed evidence shows that pre-schoolers have better outcomes when they participate actively in reading (Britto et al., 2006). On the other hand, reading books in a non-interactive way does not work as well, especially for children at risk for language delays or reading problems (e.g. Dickinson & Tabors, 2001). Children do not do as well when they just sit on your lap or lie in bed half-asleep being read to or at.

Academics love to call interactive reading “dialogic”, which is a word that comes to us from Greek, via Old French and Middle English. In simple terms, it means we want reading to be a two-way conversation with your kids about the book, with each of you taking turns and responding to the other’s gestures, words and observations.

b. Practical tips for how to turn passive book-reading into an active conversation

  • Books are not just for bedtime, when everyone’s tired and you want your kids to settle for sleep. I love bedtime reading. But you should mix it up and read at other times too. For example, when my boys were younger, we loved to read books straight after breakfast on Sundays and then act them out in the back yard (especially books about emergencies and battles).
  • Let your child choose the book. Your child will learn more from a book if it matches his/her interests. A quick trip to the library will give you a good idea of the types of books your child likes.
  • Don’t forget about non-fiction books. Story books are great. But if your son or daughter loves dinosaurs, trucks, or trains, explore their interest! I find many young boys with language delays love books about cars and dinosaurs, for example. I had one client who loved to read about going to the dentist!
  • If your child wants to read the same book over and over, just do it!
  • Focus on what your child is looking at in the book and go at their pace.
  • You don’t need to read the book in order, or cover-to-cover. If your child loves a particular picture, spend more time there talking about it.
  • Don’t do all the talking! Hold your peace and wait for your child to say something. Say something about the book, and then be quiet for 5 seconds and wait expectantly. Give your child time to take a turn or make a comment, and then respond enthusiastically.
  • Don’t ask too many questions – especially “yes/no” closed questions or “what’s that?” questions. Kids (like all of us) hate being interrogated about stuff when they know you know the answer. Make comments about the book, and then simply wait expectantly. Instead of saying “What colour is that?”, or “Is he happy?” or “What’s that?”, you could say “I like his green skin, it looks so slimy!”, or “I can see the frog swimming under the lily pad”, or “He looks so sad! I can see tears on his cheeks, poor frog!” and then wait for your child to have a turn and respond.
  • At the end of each page, pause and wait for your child to comment (even if it’s simply: “Hurry up Dad, turn the page!”).
  • If your child wants to expand on what’s happening in the story, show enthusiasm and join in!
  • Don’t be afraid of using and explaining advanced vocabulary – especially interesting words, e.g. “deciduous”, “drenched” and “destructive”, especially after multiple readings of the same book. With new words, say them slowly, make them louder and longer than other words, say them repeatedly in sentences, and tie the new word to other words your child already knows, e.g. “The bear hibernated – he went to sleep for a long time. He hibernated for weeks and weeks. He hibernated in his cave. He was very sleepy. He couldn’t wake up because he was hibernating!”. Here’s an example of how one of our amazingly creative clients learned about the word ‘catapult’ from Pamela Allen’s “The Pear in the Pear Tree”. Love it!

  • Act out the books. Use stuffed toys or puppets or Lego or action figures or dolls. I love doing this with books like Who Sank the Boat and There was an Old Lady who swallowed a Fly.
  • Read books that provoke or even irk your child into a response. My current favourite is ‘This is a ball‘, which never fails to get a strong response from even reluctant talkers!
  • When reading a book for the second (or 100th) time, help your child think more deeply about the story:
    • talk about the story elements: the main character, the setting of the story, the goal of the main character (or the problem he/she is tackling), what happens, and the ending and how it makes you feel.
    • think “out loud” for your child’s benefit about what’s happening in the story and why, e.g: “I’m thinking that the frog is sad”, or “I’m wondering about when the bear will wake up”, or “I’m trying to figure out what will happen when the princess kisses the frog”.
    • ask open, more complicated questions, like “How does she feel?”, “Have you ever felt that way?”, “What would you do?”, “What do you think will happen next?” and “Why do you think she’s happy?”. If, after waiting, your child doesn’t respond, answer your questions with what you think, then wait. Being a bit silly can sometimes provoke a response, e.g. “I think the princess will turn into a frog too!”. Connecting the action in the book to your child’s life can boost vocabulary development, comprehension and recall of facts (e.g. Aram et al., 2013).
  • With repeated readings of favourite books (or with alphabet books), bring your child’s attention to the printed words, letters and sounds to build their print awareness and phonological awareness:
    • help your child notice the letters and words to build their print awareness. Show them the cover page, the way the words are written across the pages from left to right, and how words are made of letters. Point out printed words wherever you see them during the day, e.g. on signs, cereal packets, and other books; and
    • highlight letters and explain the sounds they make to build your child’s phonological awareness skills, which are related to later reading outcomes.

Related articles:

Principal source: Greenburg, J. (2015). I’m Ready!: Coaching Parents to prepare their pre-schooler for literacy success. An eSeminar, which I attended on 10 May 2017. Many of the strategies highlighted above are based on this seminar, which, in turn, were derived from “I’m Ready! How to Prepare your Child for Reading Success” by Janice Greenburg and Elaine Weitzman of the Hanen Centre in Canada. (As noted below, I am an Hanen-certified speech pathologist.)

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Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Rhodes, Strathfield and all other suburbs of Sydney’s Inner West.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).

Preparing your pre-schooler to learn to read: skills to focus on first

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What can we do to help our pre-schoolers get ready to read without being accused of helicopter-parenting?

A lazy Google search will confirm there are loads of courses and programs marketed to worried parents of pre-schoolers. Many are not supported by evidence. (I shudder when I see glossy marketing for some of the drill-based, flashcard-happy “school readiness bootcamps” currently targeting families of 3-5 year olds.)  And many of the best evidence-based “school readiness programs” run mainly in cities and cost a small fortune.

Too often, the kids most in need of help with pre-literacy skills can’t access it.

Skills that promote later reading outcomes

Four main skills are linked to the later development of word recognition and reading comprehension:

What does “print knowledge” mean?

The term “print knowledge” – also called “print awareness” – describes children’s:

  • interest in print (e.g. on signs and labels, in books and, increasingly, on screens);
  • knowledge of the names and distinctive features of various “print units” (e.g. alphabet letters, words, and sentences);
  • knowledge of the ways in which different print units may be combined in written language; and
  • sensitivities to the ways in which print:
    • is used for different purposes; and
    • is organised, e.g. in story books and other print genres or “text types”.

An important part of print knowledge is, of course, alphabet knowledge, which we’ve written about at some length before here.

Why bother with print awareness for pre-schoolers?

At “big school”, children are taught how to read. Evidence-based reading instruction includes phonics instruction. Phonics instruction emphasises the links between letters and sounds.

For children to make the most of phonics instruction in Kindergarten and Year 1, they need to know the letters of the alphabet. The more developed a child’s understanding of the alphabet during pre-school, the more success they tend to have (on average) in learning to read.

For example, one meta-analysis of the early predictors of later reading achievement showed that children’s knowledge of print – both print concepts and alphabet knowledge – was the most important predictor of later reading achievement. The study found that print awareness was more important than oral language and even phonological awareness (Hammill, 2004). There’s also a body of research showing that print awareness and phonological awareness improvements lead to longer term improvements in reading (e.g. Byrne & Fielding Barnsley, 1991; Piasta et al., 2012).

Which pre-school kids are most at risk for later reading problems?

As with reading generally, kids don’t set about acquiring print awareness and other pre-literacy skills on a level playing field. Some children are at a heightened risk of reading problems, including children:

What kinds of evidence-based supports are out there to help pre-schoolers improve their pre-literacy skills?

  • Evidence-based practices anyone can learn, e.g. interactive story book reading (e.g. Mol et al., 2009).
  • Commercial programs, e.g.:
    • Specific courses for pre-literacy skills such as:
      • Let’s Begin with the Letter People (Abrahm & Company, 2000);
      • Doors of Discovery (Wright Group, 2001);
      • Literacy Express Preschool Curriculum (Lonigan et al., 2011); and
      • PreLit by MultiLit.
    • Broader courses with a pre-literacy stream such as:
      • Head Start Research-Based Developmentally Informed Intervention (Bierman et al., 2008); and
      • Evidence-based Program for the Integration of Curricula (Fantuzzo et al., 2011).

Overall, there is some decent evidence showing that literacy programs for pre-schoolers may have significant developmental value (e.g. see Mashburn et al., 2016).

But many of these courses are expensive: both for educators and (as a result) for their students; and require lots of training and materials to administer properly.

Are there any other (less “commercial”) options?

Yes.

Read It Again-PreK! (RIA) is an evidence-based pre-literacy intervention designed by Drs Laura Justice and Anita McGinty and colleagues. RIA is a 60-lesson, “whole class”, story-book based program targeting vocabulary, narrative skills, phonological awareness and print knowledge. Best of all, it was designed to “scale” easily and is available worldwide as a free manualised download – and only requires about $150 of materials (popular children’s books, many of which could be sourced second-hand or from libraries in a pinch). Free online training for providers is available via the researchers’ website.

In 2016, Dr Andrew Mashburn and colleagues (including Drs Justice and McGinty), published the results of a cluster randomised trial on RIA involving 104 pre-K classrooms (506 students) in a rural area of the United States. The researchers found (among other things) that RIA:

  • had a statistically significant positive impact on children’s print concepts; and
  • did not, on its own, lead to significant gains in children’s alphabet knowledge or oral language skills.

The study had some important limitations. For example, it’s not clear whether the program – which was trialled on US kids from a rural background – would yield the same results with city kids or kids from another place (e.g. Australia).

Several outcome statistics were measured and processed in multiple ways, which increases the risk of bias/errors due to so-called “data dredging” or “p-hacking“. And the program was tested by a research group that included members involved in creating the program (rather than an independent group).

Clinical bottom line

To improve later reading outcomes – especially for children at risk for later reading problems – pre-literacy training programs for pre-schoolers should target the development of vocabulary, narrative, print knowledge and phonological awareness skills. Several evidence-based programs exist to improve pre-school print awareness and other pre-literacy skills. But many of them are expensive and inaccessible to the children who need them most.

There is some promising evidence supporting the inexpensive and scalable Read It Again-PreK! program as a “whole of class” pre-literacy skills intervention for pre-schoolers. The program may be an option for children that cannot access another program for economic or logistical reasons.

Related articles:

Principal source: Mashburn, A., Justice, L.M., McGinty, A., & Slocum, L. (2016). The Impacts of a Scalable Intervention on the Language and Literacy Development of Rural Pre-Kindergartners, Applied Developmental Science, 20:1, 61-78.

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Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Rhodes, Strathfield and all other suburbs of Sydney’s Inner West.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).

“I’m not a child!” How to get help for a teenager or adult you love who can’t read

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Imagine for a moment that you can’t read or write; even at a basic level:

  • How would you apply for, find or hold down work?
  • If you found work, how could you review your employment contract? How would you communicate with workmates?
  • If you couldn’t find work, how could you get help with basic needs like unemployment benefits, or with training or housing?
  • How would you stay in touch with friends who text or use Facebook to converse?
  • How would you travel to places you’ve never been before? What would happen if your voice-guided app or device failed you?
  • Could you find out about stuff that mattered to you as quickly as friends who could read Google search results?
  • How could you educate yourself about your legal rights or obligations, e.g. when renting or buying a place to live, taking out a car loan, getting married or divorced, or managing a loved one’s affairs?
  • How could you resolve disputes or deal with unexpected tasks, like insurance claims or funerals?
  • How could you read articles like this one?

As we’ve noted before in some detail, poor reading skills can have a big negative life-long effect on your academic, social, and work outcomes (e.g. Snowling et al., 2007).

Now imagine you have a loved one – a teenager or adult in your life – who can’t read properly. How can you find evidence-based help?

What’s needed most

For people of all ages who can’t read properly, phonics decoding and word reading accuracy are essential skills for reading accuracy, fluency and reading comprehension (Carroll et al., 2011). “The case for synthetic phonics is overwhelming and much strengthened by a systematic approach” (Rose, 2006). Learning speech-sound-based decoding skills in an intense, focused, multi-sensory and systematic way can improve word reading, even for people with severe reading problems (e.g. Fletcher et al., 2007; Shaywitz, 2003; Singleton et al., 2009).

Overcoming additional barriers for teenagers and adults

Many reading programs are intended for primary school-aged kids (Brooks, 2007). For teenagers and adults, being given a garish, cartoonish phonics book designed for a 5 year old can be demoralising; even humiliating. This is a big problem: many teenagers and adults who can’t read already have low self-esteem and confidence (Jeffes, 2016). It’s essential that the materials are age-appropriate and that literacy workers don’t treat clients like young children.

What can help

In our clinic, we use a range of age-appropriate resources to help teenagers and adults to read, including texts tailored to a client’s personal, school or work interests and needs.

One resource we use for teenagers and adults with significant reading difficulties was first suggested to me by one of my co-mentors, Nel MacBean of Positive Speech. It’s called “Toe By Toe”.

Toe By Toe is a highly structured – at time almost pedantically so! – evidence-based multi-sensory reading program developed by Keda and Harry Cowling in the United Kingdom. The program has a close focus on phonics instruction and letter-sound links, but the program does not look like a kids’ reader and is never condescending. The more I use it, the more I like it for a number of reasons.

Does it work?

In 2016, Ben Jeffes published a study about Toe By Toe*, looking at outcomes of a 60-minute, once a week, 10-week reading program administered to 30 teenagers in Years 7-10, using the Toe By Toe program. He found that the students:

Interestingly, students reported that they liked the program more than the teachers, noting that the program gave them a chance to improve their reading one-to-one without “simply reading books”.

Our view

We like Toe By Toe because it helps students to:

  • learn methodically about letter-sound links;
  • overcome unhelpful and non-evidence-based reading “strategies” like word-guessing based on word shapes or the first letter-sound (so-called analytical phonics);
  • improve their phonological awareness (e.g. of words with consonant clusters and more than one syllable); and
  • improve their ability to identify and pronounce common morphemes,

at their own pace with age-appropriate materials. We also find that the later stages of the program (which no student in the study completed) help students with their decoding speed, word recognition and reading fluency skills, although we are not aware of any peer-reviewed studies to date that support our clinical observations to date.

Bottom line

For more than a decade, we’ve known the key skills needed to learn to read: (1) phonological awareness; (2) phonics; (3) fluency; (4) vocabulary; and (5) comprehension. But there is no single reading program that appeals to every age group.

It’s hard to motivate teenagers and adults to learn to read with materials designed for young children, even if the materials are evidence-based. One option for older readers is the Toe By Toe program, which has been shown to increase phonics decoding, word recognition and phonics decoding fluency. But it should be supplemented with instruction in evidence-based reading comprehension strategies, fluency practice (speed and expression), vocabulary instruction relevant to their school/work interests, needs and goals and, in some cases, morphological awareness training.

If you – or someone you know – needs help with their reading, there are many places to look for help – just make sure they are committed to evidenced-based reading instruction.

Related articles:

Principal source: Jeffes, B. (2016). Raising the reading skills of secondary-age students with severe and persistent reading difficulties: evaluation of the efficacy and implementation of a phonics-based intervention programme. Educational Psychology in Practice, 32(1), 73-84.

Additional resource: The Reading Writing Hotline.

* The Jeffes study was designed as a quasi-experimental, two group, baseline/test controlled study, with both groups receiving the training, at different times to measure outcomes. As the author himself notes, the study had lots of limitations, e.g. there was no real control group, the testers weren’t blinded to the groups or the results, and and the results may have been affected by bias, including as a result of the so-called Hawthorne effect where people improve because they know they are being observed and/or establish a good rapport with the people testing them. Importantly, no student completed the full program in 10 weeks, so the study doesn’t necessarily reflect the degree of reading gains that people who complete the program may make.

Image: http://tinyurl.com/lhm3jrz

Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Rhodes, Strathfield and all other suburbs of Sydney’s Inner West.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).