Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

reading comprehension

“I don’t understand what I’m reading” – reading comprehension problems (and what to do about them)

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The whole point of reading – for education, work, social activities, self-improvement, community participation, or entertainment – is of course to understand the words that you’re reading. Reading comprehension is crucial for success at school and life.

Reading comprehension depends on two main things:

  • word decoding skills (the ability to convert print into sound and to read fluently); and
  • listening comprehension skills.

How do we know?

The Simple View of Reading

Since the mid-1980s, reading researchers have found good quality evidence to support what is known as the “Simple View of Reading” (e.g. Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990; and Garcia & Cain, 2014). According to this theory, understanding written text is the product of decoding and listening comprehension. This theory (which is actually far from simple) implies that:

  • when decoding skills are poor, they limit reading comprehension; and
  • when decoding skills are stronger, listening comprehension becomes a more important influence on reading comprehension than decoding.

Examples: A tale of two struggling readers; and what can get in the way of reading comprehension

  • Jake struggles to “decode” text, and has significant reading difficulties, perhaps even dyslexia. He has to expend lots of effort to convert each printed word (“elephant”) and its letters (“e-l-e-ph-a-n-t”) into speech sounds (/ɛ-l-ə-f-ə-n-t/) and syllables (/ɛ-lə-fənt/). He then struggles to blend the speech sounds together to read the words fluently (/ɛləfənt/, “elephant”). When decoding text is such a struggle, it’s no wonder that Jake’s comprehension suffers!
  • Laura is pretty good at decoding the words on the page into speech, but, when quizzed, struggles to remember or explain what she’s read. She also sometimes has problems following complex directions in the classroom. At times, she fails to read between the lines and has a limited vocabulary. Her mum thinks she might even have hyperlexia.

Both Jake and Laura score poorly on reading comprehension measures on standardised reading assessments. But, unfortunately, many reading interventions treat them the same way.

What do we mean by listening comprehension (and why does it matter)?

“Listening comprehension” is often used by researchers when talking about the Simple View of Reading because Gough and Tunmer used the term in their original paper. It’s a shame, because the term isn’t technically “a thing”. What the researchers mean is oral language comprehension, otherwise known as “oral receptive language“.

A recent 5-year longitudinal study of almost 200 Norwegian school children – starting when the kids were in Year 2 and ending in Year 7 – found that variations in reading comprehension amongst the children were almost completely explained by differences in:

  • decoding skills; and
  • listening comprehension skills.

The researchers found that differences amongst the children in listening comprehension were almost entirely explained (95% explained) by a factor defined by:

The researchers also found that oral language comprehension was a predictor of early and later growth of reading comprehension skills (Lervåg et al., 2017 – see citation below).

The findings of this study sit well with the:

  • Simple View of Reading; and
  • growing body of evidence showing that improvements in oral language skills lead directly to improvements in reading comprehension, both with younger and older children (e.g. Fricke et al., 2013; Clarke et al., 2010).

Note, however, that the Lervåg study had some limitations. For example, the Norwegian alphabet and spelling system are simpler than their English counterparts; and it’s unclear how easily the findings can be applied in countries where English is the main language.

Clinical bottom line: How to help readers with poor reading comprehension skills

  • Anybody struggling to understand what they read – such as Jake and Laura above – should have a comprehensive reading assessment covering the Big 5 skills needed to read successfully. But they should also have their oral language skills assessed by a speech-language pathologist; in particular, to assess their receptive oral language skills.
  • Decoding problems can be a bottleneck for the development of reading comprehension skills. As a priority, readers like Jake who struggle to decode text should receive evidence-based treatments to improve their decoding. (The Lervåg study found that even fairly small gains in decoding skills for poor readers can have big effects on reading comprehension.)
  • Readers like Laura who have relatively good decoding skills but poor reading comprehension should be treated with interventions focusing on improving a broad set of oral language skills, including grammar/syntax, morphological awareness, narrative skills, and inference making.

Related articles:

Principal source: Lervåg, A., Hulme, C., Melby-Lervåg, M. (2017). Unpicking the Developmental Relationship between Oral Language Skills and Reading Comprehension: It’s Simple, but Complex. Child Development, in press, published online on 12 June 2017, see abstract here.

Image: http://tinyurl.com/yayukqqe

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 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).

“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).

How to find out if your child has a reading problem (and how to choose the right treatment approach)

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There’s so much nonsense out there about kids’ reading problems and treatments. Unfortunately, lots of education, technology, and health businesses cash in on parents’ concerns by selling them expensive products and services unsupported by research evidence.

We get lots of calls and emails from anxious parents who are – understandably – worried about their children’s reading progress. Many are totally confused by the conflicting advice, jargon, glossy brochures and other clever marketing tricks used by different organisations to describe reading problems and how to “fix them”.

In this article, we discuss reading problems without the jargon. We also highlight reading treatment approaches that have been proven to work by high quality research.

1. Reading problems. Are they the same thing as “dyslexia”, “specific learning disorders with impairments in reading and/or writing” and “reading disabilities”?

Confusing and overlapping terms for reading problems are a big barrier for many parents looking to get reading help for their kids.

To learn to read, children need to acquire the Big Five evidence-based reading skills: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension skills and reading fluency. Difficulty acquiring one of more of these skills can cause reading and spelling problems.

Some reading problems – particularly to do with problems decoding written words – are called “dyslexia”. The term “dyslexia” is controversial and fiercely debated internationally for a few (good) reasons. One of the many definitions out there says that children with dyslexia usually have a significant impairment in their acquisition of:

which cannot be explained by:

  • low IQ; or
  • vision problems; or
  • neurological damage (e.g. a brain injury); or
  • (controversially) “poor educational opportunities” (Lyon et al., 2003).

You can read more about the dyslexia debate here.

Some researchers refer to statistically significant reading problems as “reading disabilities” (e.g. Galuschka et al., 2014). This term is also controversial – in part because reading (unlike talking) is “biologically unnatural” – everyone has to learn to do it from scratch, and some people can’t do it because they haven’t been taught properly. The word “disability” can also be very confronting for some worried parents.

“Specific learning disorder with impairment in reading (or writing)” is the (very wordy) language used by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, (the DSM-5) the “bible” of mental health professionals in America and in many other countries, including Australia. Meeting the criteria for this disorder can be very important in some situations, e.g. to qualify for funding or special exam allowances (see below).

To side-step all this confusion, we’ll refer to reading problems as….(drum roll): “reading problems”.

2. Are all reading problems the same?

No.

Some are severe. Some are moderate. Some are mild. Some affect mainly one aspect of reading (e.g. comprehension but not decoding, as in hyperlexia). Others affect more than one aspect of reading (e.g. problems with phonological awareness, decoding, reading fluency and reading comprehension).

3. How can you find out if your child has a significant reading problem?

Most parents who contact us know their child is struggling to keep up with peers in reading, e.g. because they have observed the problems directly or have been told by their teachers.

The simplest way to get to the bottom of what’s going on is for your child to undertake a comprehensive and reliable standardised reading test. For example, in our clinic, we administer the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension – Australian Edition (Snowling, et al., 2012) (the YARC), which has been shown to be reliable and valid for Australian school children (see YARC manual, pages 100-103).

4. You’ve seen someone about it. How severe is the problem?

In the best of worlds, your child’s speech pathologist, educator or educational psychologist would tell you clearly in their written assessment report.

In reality, some formal reports are very hard to read and understand unless you have a background in health, education or statistics. If you don’t understand the report, ask the professional to explain it in Plain English. To make reading reports easier for families, I have posted a Plain English guide to understanding standardised test scores: here.

How do we categorise reading problem severities? Consistent with published reading studies (e.g. Galuschka et al., 2014), we are of the view that a:

  • severe reading problem is where your child’s reading performance is below the ~2.5th percentile (at least two standard deviations below the average). In other words, where at least 97.5% of your child’s peers are better readers. Other rules of thumb are where your child is at least two years below grade/year level, or has at least a two-year gap between his/her actual age (also called chronological age) and reading age.
  • moderate reading problem is where your child’s reading performance is below the 16th percentile (at least one standard deviation below the average). In other words, where at least 84% of your child’s peers are better readers. Other rules of thumb are where your child is at least one year below grade/year level, or has at least a one-year gap between his/her actual age (also called chronological age) and reading age.
  • mild reading problem is where your child’s reading performance is below the 25th percentile. In other words, where at least 75% of your child’s peers are better readers.

5. Does my child need to undergo a battery of expensive IQ and other tests before he or she can get help with reading?

No. No. No.

Read the next sentence carefully:

The best evidence-based treatments for kids with reading problems are exactly the same for:

  • kids with a formal diagnosis of dyslexia or learning disorder; and
  • kids without a formal diagnosis of dyslexia or learning disorder.

(This is something many “dyslexia assessment specialists” don’t tell you.)

In some situations, a formal and expensive diagnosis (e.g. of “dyslexia” or a “Specific learning disorder with impairment in reading”) might get your child special funding or exam allowances (or both). Again, this is controversial because it favours children from families who can afford to pay health and education experts to complete batteries of expensive IQ and other tests.

But a simple (much cheaper) standardised reading assessment like the YARC will tell you if your child has a significant reading problem and needs help to learn how to read.

6. Where should professionals look for the best evidence about reading treatment approaches that work?

As with any question about evidence-based treatments for our clients, we look first to the results of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) published in peer reviewed, quality journals. RCTs reduce the risk of bias and are the most rigorous way of determining whether a treatment actually works (Sibbald & Roland, 1998). RCTs about reading treatments are particularly important because of the very opinionated squabbles that break out between different reading “experts” over the best approach to reading instruction. You can read more about RCTs and why they are considered the “gold standard” of good research here.

Interested readers can also access the full texts of several landmark reports published about effective reading instruction by following the links at the bottom of our article about what works in reading instruction, including the US National Reading Panel report of 2000.

7. So what kinds of reading treatments work?

In 2014, a so-called “Meta-Analysis” of the then-published RCTs of reading treatments was published (see citation below). Here are some of the key findings made by the authors:

  • Phonics instruction is the “only approach whose effectiveness on reading and spelling performance in children and adolescents with reading disabilities is statistically confirmed“. This finding is consistent with earlier meta-analyses published in 2001 and 2012 (McArthur et al., 2012; Ehri et al., 2001).
  • Systematic instruction of letter-sound correspondence and decoding strategies, and the application of these skills in reading and writing activities, is the most effective method for improving literacy skills of children and adolescents with reading disabilities.
  • Phonics instruction has been shown by RCTs to work in English-speaking countries, but also in studies conducted in Spain, Finland and Italy.
  • Reading fluency training alone is not an effective way to enhance the reading or spelling ability of children and adolescents with reading disabilities.
  • Phonemic awareness training has been shown to be effective for preschool children at risk for reading disabilities (e.g.  Ehri et al., 2001; Bus et al., 1999). However, as a standalone treatment, it does not appear to have a significant effect on school children’s reading or spelling performance.
  • Phonics instruction combines elements of reading fluency and phonemic awareness training; and has the potential to increase the reading and spelling performance of children and adolescents with reading disabilities.
  • Using Irlen tinted lenses and overlays does not improve literacy: positive results reported in some lower quality studies are mainly due to placebo effects. (You can read independent research about why Irlen tinted lenses and overlays are not recommended here.)
  • Auditory training focused on sub-skills underpinning reading does not significantly improve children’s reading and spelling skills.

Bottom line

High quality, peer-reviewed research evidence demonstrates that even severe reading and spelling difficulties can be ameliorated with appropriate treatment. At this stage, the best treatment approach available for children and teenagers with significant reading problems is phonics instruction. In our clinic, we’ve applied these findings to inform our approach to helping children with reading problems to read.

Related articles:

Principal source: Galuschka, K., Ise, E., Krickm K., & Schulte-Korne, G. (2014). Effectiveness of Treatment Approaches for Children and Adolescents with Reading Disabilities: A Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials, PLOS One, 9(2), open access (full text) available here. Note the correction.

Image: http://tinyurl.com/m7qzuog

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).

Breaking the vicious cycle for older kids with reading problems: how to help

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Older kids with reading problems get trapped in a vicious cycle: because these students don’t read well, they generally don’t read much. They miss out on countless opportunities for reading practice and for learning from what they have read (Anderson et al., 1988). They become victims of the Matthew Effect: while good readers get better, poor readers fall further behind and get poorer compared to their peers.

So what can we do about it?

A. Context: too many older kids can’t read properly 

  • We’ve talked here about some of the terrible reading statistics in Australia.
  • Things are no better in the US: more than 1/4 of 8th grade and 1/3 of 4th grade readers do not read well enough to understand concepts and knowledge needed to understand grade-level texts (Perie et al., 2005).
  • Some of these kids can catch up if given extra, extended instruction in small groups (Torgesen, 2005). But, the older and further behind the student is, the more ground needs to be covered.

B. How to help older students with reading problems

1. Figure out what’s going on with a reliable test

  • There are five areas essential to effective early reading instruction: (1) phonemic awareness; (2) phonics; (3) fluency; (4) vocabulary; and (5) comprehension.
  • Each of these Big 5 areas should be assessed with a reliable standardised reading test. In our clinic, for example, we use the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension.
  • Because of the link between oral (spoken) language and reading disorders, oral language should be assessed too, just in case the student has an undiagnosed language disorder. In our clinic, we do this with either (or both of the) Clinical Evaluation of Language Functioning-4 and/or the Oral and Written Language Scales II.
  • A good report should cover the Big 5 and oral language development and summarise reading strengths as well as challenges.

2. Identify areas of difficulty and strength

  • Many kids who are labelled as having learning disabilities (LD) have problems with more than one part of the reading process.
  • Some older kids are “victims” of poor early reading instruction and have problems with basic phonics and phonemic awareness skills, including skills like letter-sound links and blending sounds into words. For these kids, a continued focus on synthetic phonics may be appropriate and necessary.
  • Other kids may have received good instruction in phonics but continue to have problems with reading fluency or comprehension.

3. Design a reading program targeting the student’s area(s) of reading weakness using evidence-based strategies

This may include:

  • Word-study instruction (e.g. Scamacca et al., 2007). If students can decode single syllable words correctly, but have difficulties with multisyllabic words, they may benefit from learning word analysis strategies. These are sometimes called “advanced word study” (Curtis, 2004) e.g. learning:
    • rules of thumb about how to break a word into syllables;
    • analysis of the parts of words (“morphology”), e.g.:
      • prefixes (e.g. un, ante, dis, magna);
      • suffixes (e.g. ous, ible);
      • word roots (e.g. ped meaning foot and “manu” meaning hand); and
      • inflectional endings (e.g. “ed” for regular past tense verb forms, and “‘s” for possessive forms); and
    • letter patterns associated with predictable speech patterns, e.g.:
      • “si”, “ci”, “ti” being pronounced “sh” in second and later syllables of multisyllabic words (e.g. session, electrician, nation); and
      • the letter “c” pronounced /s/ when followed by an “e”, “i” or “y” (e.g. ceiling, circus, cycle).
  • Fluency instruction. Good readers read about 120 to 170 words a minute when reading aloud (Tindal et al., 2005). They read most words automatically allowing them to focus on higher order processes, e.g. understanding, inferring and interpreting (e.g. Archer et al., 2003).
    • Fluency interventions: often involve repeated (“deep”) reading of the same passages; but older students can benefit from non-repetitive “wide” reading of different texts, which exposes students to new vocabulary, different content and text types (e.g. Homan et al., 1993).
    • Fluency instruction can be combined with focused word-learning with target words embedded in otherwise readable text.
  • Vocabulary instruction.
    • For typically developing students, up to 12 exposures of a word may be necessary for a student to learn it (McKeown et al., 1985). Students with LDs may need many more.
    • Direct vocabulary instruction can speed up comprehension (Stahl, 2003), and may be particularly effective for students with learning difficulties (e.g. Jitendra et al., 2003).
    • A reliable way to improve vocabulary for older students is to read a lot, read well, and read widely (Cuningham & Stanovich, 1998).
    • The focus should be on words that are useful to know and likely to be encountered across a variety of settings (e.g. Beck et al., 2002), e.g. “regardless”, “compromise”, “evaluate”, “analyse”.
    • Technical words (e.g. in science) can be taught using simple definitions, examples and non-examples, and the use of semantic maps that cover the likely uses of a word (e.g. Kim et al., 2004).
  • Reading comprehension instruction.
    • Evidence-based comprehension techniques include teaching students to visualise, predict, summarise, make connections with existing world knowledge, re-read, restate, and question what they are reading with “why” and other “wh” questions (Vaughan et al., 2007). Click these links for more detail on evidence-based reading comprehension and studying techniques.
    • Struggling readers may not have the prior world knowledge that supports integrating new information. Don’t assume knowledge.
    • Graphic organisers e.g. story builder can be used to help students organise and remember what they read (e.g. DeCecco & Gleeson, 2002).
    • For specific topics, knowledge organisers can also be used.  I’m a big fan of these and plan to write more about them in a future article.
    • We can help students by modelling important organisational steps, providing structured practice opportunities/feedback, and presenting examples of what we are after.
    • Struggling readers should be taught multiple strategies.
  • Motivating the student. We don’t talk about this enough. Reading complex texts for meaning is hard work. Students need to be motivated to do it. Students with reading problems often lack this motivation (e.g. Morgan & Fuchs, 2007), which is part of the vicious circle we are so focused on breaking. So how do we do help here? Guthrie and Humenick (2004) identified four things that affect motivation to read:
    • providing interesting goals that matter to the student (e.g. vocational, hobby-related goals);
    • supporting student autonomy;
    • providing interesting content/texts; and
    • increasing social interactions between students related to reading.

C. Bottom line and further reading

Many older students with reading problems feel (accurately) that their learning falls further behind their peers every year they are at school. Poor reading creates a vicious cycle, which can be hard to escape.

Students need to know that it is never too late to get help. When helping an older student, teachers, speech pathologists and other reading professionals need to identify the student’s reading strengths and weaknesses with reliable tests and then tailor their help to the student’s needs and goals. Students need to be motivated to do the work. In this article, we outlined several ways of helping older students with reading problems.

Related articles:

Principal source: Roberts, G., Torgesen, J.K., Boardman, A., & Scammacca, N. (2008). Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 23(2), 63-69.

Further reading and research update: Interventions for Adolescent Struggling Readers: A Meta-Analysis with Implications for Practice – 2nd Edition (2010) retrieved from here on 13 March 2017. This site contains a wealth of evidence-based materials, including free training modules.

Image: http://tinyurl.com/hf9zeqc

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).

Is your child struggling to read? Here’s what works

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On reflection, I’m incredibly lucky.

Both my parents were teachers. Growing up, my house was full of chatter, stories and books. My early state school education in regional Victoria was long on “old school” phonics and short on fads.

I learned to read without much trouble. I discovered many of the things I’m still passionate about in life – dinosaurs, planets, social justice, travel, speech and language, consumer rights, history, current affairs, philosophy, and bad science fiction – because I could read. Reading lets me learn new skills, explore the world, entertain myself and my kids, connect with friends and colleagues, and of course, earn my living as a speech pathologist and lawyer.

Children and adults who struggle to read miss out on many of the opportunities good readers take for granted. Helping people to learn to read is important work – far too important to waste time, energy and money on false ideas and programs that don’t work.

In this article, we summarise some of the key evidence-based principles to help children (and adults) to read. We also include links to peer-reviewed evidence, leading researchers’ websites, and some evidence-based literacy programs and resources.

12 principles I apply

A. Learning to read is a right, not a privilege 

1. Reading is a human right, and affects your health, work opportunities and life-participation.

  • The General Assembly of the United Nations is convinced that: “[L]iteracy is crucial to the acquisition of every child, youth and adult, of essential life skills that enable them to address the challenges they may face in life, and represents an essential step in basic education, which is an indispensable means for effective participation in the societies and economies of the 21st century.” (GA Resolution 56/116.)
  • Low literacy may impair health, affecting the patient-doctor communication dynamics, and leading to substandard medical care. It is associated with poor understanding of written or spoken medical advice, adverse health outcomes, and negative effects on the health of the population (e.g. AHRQ Report, see below).
  • Early reading difficulties are related to children’s ability to develop positive social skills (e.g. Bennett et al., 2003).
  • Academic problems, like poor reading, often foster behavioural problems, which frequently result in disciplinary practices that remove the student from school (Christle et al., 2005).
  • Low levels of literacy affect educational attainment and labour force participation (ABS, 2009).

2. Learning to read opens doors; poor reading ability closes them. Literacy creates opportunities for lifelong learning and training, a good job, housing stability and improved health across your life (Gakidou et al., 2010). (Not being able to read has big negative effects on school achievement, job opportunities, mental health and participation in society.) Arguably, reading is more important than ever, with most jobs in the West now requiring literacy (e.g. Murnane, 2004), and with access to the Internet, social media platforms and even texting friends requiring a degree of literacy to participate socially (e.g. Durkin et al., 2011).

B. Reading instruction should be based on independent, peer-reviewed evidence (not ideology), and should take the client’s socio-economic background and oral language skills into account

3. Reading is “biologically unnatural“. Humans have only been reading since about 3000BC (Fischer, 2001). Unlike speaking, you have to learn to do it (e.g. Gough & Hillinger, 1980). That’s why literacy is still not universal (e.g. Gough, 1996). While it’s true some kids find reading easy to learn, others need a lot of help.

4. Reading instruction should be based on the “Five Big Ideas” (aka the “Big Five”). Independent, peer-reviewed scientific research evidence reviews (cited below) say that, to learn to read, you need to be taught these “Big Five”:

  • Phonemic awareness (also known as phonological awareness): knowledge about the sound structure of the language and the ability to manipulate the sound making up that structure (Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, and Seidenberg, 2001).
  • Phonics: see below.
  • Vocabulary: it’s been estimated that, to cope with the curriculum, a Year 2 child needs to understand 300-400 words; a Year 3-4 child needs to understand 3,000-4,000 words; and a Year 5 student needs 10,000! (Hempenstall, 2005).
  • Comprehension skills.
  • Reading fluency.

5. As one of the Big Five, direct synthetic phonics instruction is essential. In the USA, Australia and the UK, independent evidence reviews affirmed the need for systematic, direct and explicit phonics instruction so that children master the essential alphabetic code-breaking skills required for foundational reading proficiency. (The importance of teaching teachers to do this was recognised by the New South Wales Board of Studies in 2015 – New South Wales Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards. (2015).)

The best phonics to teach children is “synthetic phonics“. Synthetic doesn’t mean “fake”, here; it means “synthesising” (or blending) the sounds (phonemes) together to read words. You can read an excellent explanation of “synthetic phonics” by some of my favourite literacy researchers here.

6. It’s a myth that you can’t use phonics to read English words. In fact, according to Hanna et al., (1996):

  • 50% of English words are directly decodable with synthetic phonics;
  • 36% have only one “breach” of the sound-letter link (usually a vowel);
  • 10% can be spelt properly if morphology and word histories/roots are taken into account; and
  • only 4% are truly irregular.

7. Oral language skills (talking and understanding) and reading skills are linked; oral language and reading skills are mutually beneficial. Improvements in spoken language skills improve reading skills, and vice versa. Oral language and reading skills piggy back on each other during the school years (Snow, 2016). If one is impaired or delayed, the other suffers. For example, children with speech-language language disorders (diagnosed or not) are at a high risk of having reading problems.

Similarly, children with reading problems may have problems learning new words and higher level language skills, which then affect their oral language development. (This, by the way, is why I screen oral language and phonological awareness in addition to decoding and reading comprehension when assessing a school-aged child with reading problems.)

8. Kids learn to read on an uneven playing field. Socio-economically disadvantaged children are at greater risk of language and reading difficulties than children from higher socio-economic backgrounds. Even though oral language development is biologically natural, it’s vulnerable to environmental factors. For example, the foundations of early language development (and the emergence of emotional security) both depend on a high dose of quality carer engagement. By the age of 4 years, on average, children of high income, professional parents may have heard 30 million more words than some children from a socio-economically disadvantaged background (e.g. Hart & Risely, 1995).

Different children have very different levels of exposure to language and books when the turn up for their first day at school. Unsurprisingly, this has knock-on effects for readiness to learn to read (see the discussion about the Matthew Effect below).

C. Evidence-based reading instruction for young struggling school-aged children is urgent: the critical 3-year window to teach children to read well

9. The 3-year learning-to-read “window”. In the first three years at school, the focus is on helping children learn to read. This is when good evidence-based reading instruction is most important. Your child’s access to good reading instruction in this period is important for all children, and vital for children from low-socioeconomic backgrounds and children struggling to read.

10. The “fourth grade slump”. Starting in the fourth year of school, the focus of the curriculum switches away from learning to read. Instead, children are expected to “read to learn”. For good readers, this is no problem. For poor readers, this is where the real trouble begins:

  • By the fourth year of school (year 3), a child’s performance relative to his/her peers becomes fairly fixed (Spira et al., 2005);
  • your child’s reading level by the start of the third grade is a good predictor of:
    • later academic achievement; and
    • later mental and social health; and
  • the “Matthew Effect” kicks into high gear.

11. The Matthew Effect. With reading (as with money), the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Good readers read more, learn more word meanings and then improve their reading skills. Children who are poor readers read less, and don’t learn new words as quickly, which further slows their growth in reading ability (Stanovich, 1986). As school progresses, the gap between good and poor readers grows and grows and grows.

That’s not to say that older kids and adults can’t learn to read. It’s just that it’s harder. As with language difficulties generally, the earlier you get help, the better. But it’s never too late!

D. Too many children and adults can’t read properly

12. Literacy levels are a big problem in Australia:

  • In 2011, a quarter of Australian Year 4 children are below the expected standard in reading; and 7% performed “extremely poorly” (ACER, 2012).
  • In 2009, 43.7% of adults were at or below Level 2 in their reading skills on a 5 point scale (ABS, 2009).
  • In 2011, the Industry Skills Council of Australia  found that millions of Australians have insufficient language, literacy and numeracy (“LLN”) skills to benefit from training or to participate effectively at work (ISCA, 2011).

The human, social and economic costs of low literacy are enormous.

E. So what gets in the way?

A controversial question!  Here are some candidates:

  • Professional divides: An unhelpful divide exists between the knowledge bases and expertise of teachers, speech pathologists and education psychologists. Teachers are educators, whereas psychologists and speech pathologists are health professionals. Reading failure is of course both an education and health problem. But the lack of coordination between different professionals doesn’t help clients with reading problems or their families. When I work with a school-aged child, my first port of call is the parents. My second port of call (with parents’ consent) is to teachers and any health professionals who’ve worked or are working with the child. The more we can coordinate our care and approach, prioritising the client’s interests and goals, the better things tend to go.
  • Ideological squabbling. If you’ve got a day or two to waste surfing the Internet and getting confused at all the navel gazing and self-interest, Google “Reading Wars”. In short, the “war” was fought between supporters of:
    • a phonics- and phonemic awareness-based approach to reading instruction, focused on letter-sound links and blending sounds to read words; and
    • so-called Whole-Language theories, based on post-modern theories of child development, teaching children to read words from “cues”, like context and pictures in predictable texts.

Although it was hoped that the independent reviews in the USA, UK and Australia (cited below) resolved the “reading wars” in favour of phonics and the rest of the Big Five, there are still programs influenced by Whole Language philosophies used today, including the much-maligned “Reading Recovery” program (which you can read about here). In any case, the key casualties of the war were and continue to be children failing to learn to read.

  • Inadequate training in the Big Five (and the “Peter Effect”). You can only give what you have; and you can only teach what you know. If you haven’t been taught properly how to teach reading using evidence-based teaching methods, you will have great difficulty teaching school children to read – especially struggling students. Unfortunately, some teachers, speech pathologists and psychologists haven’t been trained in how to teach reading using the evidence, especially if their University lecturers subscribed to the Whole Language ideology. Any education or health professional engaged in helping people to read should have training in how to teach the Big Five.
  • Commercial programs unsupported by independent evidence, glossy products and fads. Unfortunately, there is a big market for children and adults with poor literacy in Australia and elsewhere. Lots of reading programs seek to “exploit” this market, and some of them have no evidence to support their effectiveness. Of course, it’s hard for parents (and even some teachers) to know which ones are evidence-based. Fortunately, there are independent research groups that publish evidence summaries to assist. In our clinic, for example, we only use evidence-based programs based on the Big Five.

Whatever the reasons, we should all strive to read and apply the best quality, independent evidence to better support school-aged children, young adults, and adults with reading problems.

Related articles:

Principal source: Snow, P.C. (2016). Elizabeth Usher Memorial Lecture: Language is literacy is language – Positioning speech-language pathology in education policy, practice, paradigms and polemics. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 18:3, 216-228. (This article should be mandatory reading for any teacher, speech pathologist or education psychologist working in literacy.)

Further reading

Reading as a human right that affects your health:

US AHRQ’s Evidence Report No. 87, Literacy and Health Outcomes (summary) 

Evidence for what works, including evidence supporting the Big Five:

Rose, J. (2006). The [UK] Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading (aka “The Rose Report”)

Evidence that too many children and adults in Australia are poor readers:

Thomson, Sue; Hillman, Kylie; Wernert, Nicole; Schmid, Marina; Buckley, Sarah; Munene, Ann (2012). Monitoring Australian year 4 student achievement internationally: TIMSS and PIRLS 2011. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER).
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2009). Adult Literacy.

Industry Skills Council of Australia (2011). No More Excuses.

The role of speech pathologists in the development of literacy:

Speech Pathology Australia. (2011). Position Statement: Literacy.

On the shoulders of experts: evidence-based literacy researchers, organisations and blogs I follow: 

If you are interested in the science of reading and evidence-based reading programs and resources, here are some of the key experts, organisations and literacy/language blogs I follow closely (in no particular order):

Toe By Toe

Image: http://tinyurl.com/z3rgm3u

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).

24 practical ways to help school-aged children cope with language and reading problems at school and home

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Too many school-age children struggle to understand instructions, express their thoughts and feelings, read and/or write. So what can parents and teachers do to help at home and at school?

A. Knowledge is power: first, learn more about the child’s challenges

A key aim of this website is to provide free, evidence-based information to parents and teachers about language disorders.

Over the years, we’ve talked – a lot – about developmental language disorders, including risk factors, common signs and symptoms, the role of underlying issues with working memory, auditory processing and attention, bilingualism, phonological speech sound disorders, reading decoding, reading comprehension, writing, as well as some of the effects of language disorders, e.g. on school readiness, school and work outcomes, behaviour and mental health, and youth justice issues. We’ve done our best to translate some of the peer-reviewed research findings into Plain English.

B. Implement strategies and use free resources 

Here are 24 simple strategies and resources. Most can be implemented easily by parents at home and teachers at school at no cost:

  1. Speak slowly. Reduce your speaking rate, and pause more between sentences.
  2. Speak loudly and clearly (but be careful not to strain your voice). Consider amplification and other systems that will help the child hear what you are saying, even if there is background noise.
  3. Use good intonation, stressing key points – make key words longer and louder than less important words, e.g. “He WANTS to GO to the BEACH on TUESDAY”.
  4. Give the child more time to think about and answer your questions. Many children with language disorders need more time. Count to five if you have to, but don’t give up or jump in too early.
  5. Prepare children for what you are about to talk about, e.g. “We’re about to talk about insects. Today, I’m going to talk about 4 insects: bees, wasps, ants and termites”. Or: “Tomorrow, we’re going to the zoo. We’ll need to leave early. We’ll need to bring our good camera to take photos of the animals”.
  6. If the child is having difficulty, give clues, prompts (e.g. sentence starters), and binary choices (e.g. “Is it an ant or a bee?”).
  7. Speak and write to the child in Plain English:
    1. replace abstract, complicated words and jargon with simple words (e.g. instead of “acquire”, say “get”; instead of “purchase”, say “buy”; instead of “execute”, say “do”). If you need help to write more simply (a common issue for university graduates), check out the free Hemingway Editor; and
    2. where possible, avoid (or at least explain) ambiguous language (e.g. words with multiple meanings or non-literal/figurative language requiring higher level language skills).
  8. Break complex sentences and multi-step instructions into simple sentences.
  9. Use the “When…then” technique to replace complex instructions with simpler ones (e.g. Instead of “Before you go to lunch, finish your art project and clean up your desks”, say “WHEN you finish your art project and clean your desks, THEN you can have lunch.”).
  10. Introduce a “Word of the Week” at home and at school that you all use all week. Stick it up on a wall or fridge. Choose words that are useful at school and at home, e.g. high frequency verbs or words used in maths or sport.
  11. Use pictures and videos to help the child learn words and concepts. For example:
    1. draw stick figures, comics or line drawings to illustrate concepts;
    2. if you can’t draw (like me), use Google Images (in safe mode) and YouTube; and
    3. use mind maps, text planners, paragraph planners, word walls, story builders and question scaffolds.
  12. Give the child written notes to support what is taught orally in class.
  13. Make sure the child knows words needed for their favourite activities. For example, if your child loves basketball, help them understand terms like “double dribble”, “travel”, “time-out”, “cross-court” and “technical foul”). If your child loves dancing, make sure they know the names of the dance moves (sorry, I can’t help you there!).
  14. Teach the child words used in more than one subject, e.g. words used in exam instructions (e.g. “evaluate”, “criticise”, “assess”, and “compare”).
  15. For new words, REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT (at least 12 times): make sure the child feels confident enough to read it, recognise it when s/he hears it, say it correctly, spell it, define it in his/her own words and use it in more than one context. More information on vocabulary teaching strategies appears here.
  16. Use a Learner’s Dictionary, rather than a traditional dictionary.
  17. Teach common root words, prefixes and suffixes – more than 60% of multisyllabic words can be worked out from their word parts (Bromley, 2007). Use a Word Origin dictionary, or look at websites like etymonline.com.
  18. Teach high frequency synonyms, antonyms and homonyms, as well as age-appropriate idioms.
  19. For assignments and homework projects, teach children how to find, sort, cull and weigh different sources of information. For example:
    1. look up synonyms for the key words used in the question to help the child find the right search terms for Google and library catalogues;
    2. *controversy alert* use the free Simple English Wikipedia to read some background on the assignment topic;
    3. use the wonderful and free resource rewordify to simplify complex text and assignment questions;
    4. learn information literacy frameworks, e.g. Herring’s PLUS model to help children sort credible information from less credible information; and
    5. give the child examples of “good” assignments, e.g. model answers, so they can understand exactly what you want them to do.
  20. Get the child to self-monitor their comprehension by teaching them evidence-based reading comprehension techniques like summarising, predicting, visualisation, and inference-making.
  21. Teach the child evidence-based studying techniques, e.g the “Why technique”, memory peg systems, interleaved practice, note taking and mock exam practice.
  22. Teach the child Graham & Wong’s 3H strategy – Here, Hidden, Head – reading comprehension technique.
  23. Break down texts into their parts and analyse them one at a time, e.g. title, index, first and last paragraphs, unfamiliar vocabulary, glossaries, then each paragraph – use paragraph-by paragraph pop quizzes, or colour coding of paragraphs or sub-topics to help.
  24. For children struggling with writing, use acronyms to help plan and produce good paragraphs. For example:
    1. PEELS – Point, Evidence, Explanation, Link and Style;
    2. PIE – Point, Illustration, Evaluation; and
    3. TEEL – Topic sentence, Explanation, Evidence, and Link (Brent & Millgate-Smith, 2008).

Principal source: Starling, J. (2016). Language Friendly Classrooms: Supporting Primary and Secondary students with language and literacy difficulties. Learning Difficulties Coalition seminar I attended on 8 November 2016 in Parramatta, Sydney.

Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of Dr Julia Starling’s practical research. See, for example: How to help our secondary teachers support teachers with language disorders at school. (As always, any errors of interpretation are my own.)

Image: http://tinyurl.com/oewj5hc

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).