Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

reading

Too many children can’t read. We know what to do. But how should we do it?

by

The goal is clear.

You wouldn’t know it from Twitter, but literacy researchers, teachers, speech-language pathologists, education psychologists, and reading tutors all want the same thing when working with someone who can’t read. 

We want them to be able to read. More specifically, we want them to understand what they read.

What we disagree about is how we should teach reading. 

The stakes are high

When we get it wrong, students suffer the most. But, actually, we all pay for it:

  • Illiteracy costs the global economy more than $1 trillion a year in direct costs.
  • Low literacy is a major contributor to inequality.
  • Low literacy increases the likelihood of workplace accidents, medication errors, involvement in crime  and welfare dependency (World Literacy Foundation, 2015).
  • Even in rich countries, around 20% of 15-year olds can’t read well enough to participate effectively in life (OECD, 2016).

Individually, and as a group, we can do better.

The science is solid. Gaps remain.

A growing body of peer-reviewed research evidence (sometimes called ‘the science of reading’) tells us a lot – but not everything –  about how we should teach reading. But, too often, ideological, political and professional differences distort or drown out the key ideas. Too often, teachers, speech pathologists, and others are not taught the science of reading in university or college. Too often, sunk costs and other biases, training gaps, and resource and time limitations get in the way of us putting the science to work. 

We can all get better at teaching reading. We need to be honest about what we know, and don’t know. We need to reflect on the limits of our own skills and resources and invest in reducing them. We need to listen to feedback. We need to read new research.  

It’s hard work. But we must do it. 

We owe it to our students. Our job is to:

  • know which approaches work best;
  • explain why they work to others, including students, teachers and parents;
  • know how to teach reading by working on the right things at the right time;
  • stay open and honest about the many things we don’t know;
  • keep questioning what we’re doing, keep learning, and be prepared to abandon practices no longer supported by evidence;
  • measure our results; and
  • keep improving our knowledge, systems, processes, techniques and resources to seek better results.

Teaching reading: how? 

We’ve written at length about what works. 

In this article, we outline how we go about translating reading science into practice – explaining what we do – recognising that we still have much to learn. That we all have much more to learn. We’ve tried to focus on evidence-based practices, rather than broad theories or ideologies, but we’ve referred to some of the key mental models we use when necessary to explain why we do (or don’t) do something.  

We organised our thoughts on this very important topic after reading a great paper by Professor Anne Castles and colleagues (a citation and link to the full text of the article appear below), and reflecting on our clinical experiences and changing practices over the years.

The basic recipe (with messy ingredients)

Let’s start at…the start. To read well, students need to learn:

To teach reading well, you need to know how these skills typically develop over time. You need at least some idea of how they interact with each other. You then need to apply that knowledge to the student in front of you.

We think our practices are supported by evidence. But we’re open to different views and criticism. We will – no doubt – abandon some practices and adopt others as we learn more. Where possible, we have linked to articles we have written summarising the evidence we rely on to support our practices.

How we support preschoolers to set the stage for later reading success 

(a) Oral language and speech development are essential for later reading success

We are hard wired to understand oral language and to speak it. Most (but not all) of us learn to do it without needing to be taught. Parents, early educators and others can play a big role in helping to stimulate early language development by using language stimulation strategies, and engaging activities like play and simply exploring the world. We written hundreds of articles about promoting oral language and speech development. (We’ve created quite the rabbit hole of information, if you have the time.)

(b) Early treatment of speech and language disorders is very important

A child’s oral language competencies (listening and talking) are highly predictive of school readiness and success. And many (but not all) preschoolers with unclear speech go on to have problems with reading. Early intervention is important for children with language disorders and speech sound disorders. But it’s never too late to seek help.

(c) Some phonemic awareness skills are important for later reading

Many preschoolers, including some children with speech and language disorders,  need extra help to figure out, for example, that the first sound in ‘pot’ is /p/, or that the last sound in ‘pot’ is /t/, and that the sounds /p/, /ɒ/ and /t/ can be blended together to make the word ‘pot’. These skills can be taught to preschoolers. For school-aged children, we do not teach phonemic awareness in isolation. Instead, we build phonemic awareness skills through letter-sound and early decoding exercises. In other words, we teach sounds with letters, and sound blending and segmenting skills with written words. Read more here.

(d) Letter knowledge is an important precursor to learning letter-sound links 

Here are some things you should know when teaching the alphabet to your child.

(e) Increasing print awareness can help preschoolers prepare for reading

Here is a summary of some of the research.

(f) Read quality picture books with preschoolers every day

Here’s how to do it. Here’s why you should do it. This practice should continue well into primary school.

(g) Read nonfiction to your preschoolers to build world knowledge

Read more non-fiction books to your preschoolers. Here’s why.

(h) Listen to audio books and high quality read-alouds with your child

We include some suggestions here. This practice should also continue into primary school, and we make some specific recommendations of audiobooks, with links, for school age children here (Kindergarten and Year 1) and here (Years 2-6).  

How we support school-aged students and adults

(1) Reading needs to be taught.

Unlike with talking and listening, we are not biologically primed to read. Everyone needs to be taught. But some children need more help than others.

(2) Use the ‘Simple View of Reading’.

When we look at a student’s reading strengths and challenges, we apply the ‘Simple View of Reading’. You can watch our short video summarising what we think about here. Or you can read a longer article we have written here. In summary, we see the ultimate goal – reading comprehension – as the product of two elements: Word Reading x Listening (language) Comprehension.

(3) Beginners are not experts. 

Beginning piano players can’t play Chopin’s Etude Op. 10 No 4. Beginning artists can’t paint The Lady with the Ermine. I’ve been reading, nerdishly, for more than 40 years. Why would we expect a beginning reader to read like we do: automatically and effortlessly, understanding what we read, as we read it? If you can’t read the words on the page, you can’t understand what you are reading, even with excellent oral language skills. So we have to start with the squiggles on the page.

(4) Unlike, say with Chinese or Japanese, English has an alphabetic writing system.

In alphabetic systems like English, the speech sounds (phonemes) of the language are represented by letters or groups of letters (graphemes). Most children need to be taught these letter-sound links because they don’t pick them up without being taught. Early in reading development, reading comprehension is highly constrained by decoding limitations. Poor decoding can be a bottleneck that stops students from understanding what they are reading about. 

(5) Systematic phonics instruction.

There is a strong scientific consensus on the effectiveness of systematic phonics instruction during the initial period of reading instruction (Castles et al., 2018).  

(6) Systematic phonics systems teach letter-sound links in an ordered way. 

In English, we have 26 letters that, in different combinations, are used to represent the roughly 44 phonemes (speech sounds) we use (depending on our dialect). There are many evidence-based letter-sound sequences around. In our clinic, we used to use the UK Letter-Sound sequence. But we have now adopted the Sounds-Write letter-sound Sequence because it is logical. This sequence teaches children the basic code first (including the sounds most commonly linked to the 26 letters of the alphabet), and then an extended code of frequent letter combinations and the sounds most commonly associated with them, e.g. <ai>, <oo>, <er>, <oy>, <ew>.

(7) One sound per letter to start with.  

In English, some letters and letter combinations are linked to more than one speech sound. For example, <c> is linked to /k/ in ‘kangaroo’ but /s/ in ‘city’; <g> is linked to /g/ in ‘get’ but /dʒ/  ‘giraffe’; <ch> is linked to /tʃ/ in ‘chicken’, /k/ in school, and /ʃ/ in ‘chef’); and, infamously, the letter combination ‘ough’ is linked to at least six different speech sounds (e.g. ‘though’, ‘through’, ‘rough’, ‘cough’, ‘thought’, ‘thou’). 

Before 2016, we followed the Spalding approach of explicitly teaching multiple sounds linked to letters and letter-sounds. But, since then we have opted – initially – to teach the sound most commonly associated with each letter or letter combination, and to later teach context-sensitive rules once children have mastered the basic mappings. 

For example, once beginning readers have mastered the basic mappings, we will teach them that <c> is linked to /s/ in words where the <c> is followed by <i>, <e> or <y> (as in ‘circle’, ‘ceiling’ or ‘cycle’), and that <oo> is linked to  /ʊ/ when followed by /d/, e.g. ‘hood’, ‘stood’, and ‘good’. We have found, clinically, that many children (including some children with working memory, speech or language disorders) have difficulty mapping different sounds to letters; and some children rote learn the multiple sounds, but cannot then apply them when decoding words. We have also found that starting out with a limited set of letter-sound links, puts many children on the path to independent reading earlier than if we dedicate too much time to teaching context-sensitive and less common links early. 

(8) We take a synthetic phonics approach to systematic phonics instruction.

I wish it had a better name. Synthetic doesn’t mean ‘fake’. It means that we teach children early to blend individual phonemes together to make words. Another word for blending is ‘synthesise’, which is where we get the term ‘synthetic phonics’.

Note: we don’t wait until children have mastered all their letter-sound links to start reading words. As soon as they have mapped the first five letter-sound links in our sequence (<a>, <i>, <m>, <s>, <t>), we practice blending the related sounds together in different combinations, so we can read words like ‘mat’ and ‘sat’ and ‘tim tam’). (There are other approaches to phonics instruction. One is called analytic phonics, which teaches children to break down whole words into parts. We’ve seen some evidence that synthetic phonics is better, e.g. Johnson & Watson, 2004, 2005, but I would love to see more evidence and am keeping an open mind.) 

(9) We consolidate early decoding skills with encoding (spelling) practice, following the same letter-sound sequence.

There’s good evidence it helps to improve phonological awareness skills, including letter-sound links and word reading skills, which you can see summarised here. We are big fans of the inexpensive Spelfabet resources to support this practice, although you can make your own.

(10) We focus on real words in reading instruction.

Nonword reading and writing tests are a great way to test a child’s phonological awareness, and to figure out if a child is learning to decode words phonically. That’s why we support the Phonics Check.

But, for most students, we focus on real words. Children with small vocabularies can find it hard to know whether a word is ‘real’ or not, and we’d rather spend the time helping them to build their vocabularies. One caveat: some children with excellent language skills are able to pretend they are decoding, when in fact they are guessing from context, from pictures or because they are reading predictable books (e.g. ‘I see a square. I see a circle. I see a triangle.’). For these children, we sometimes use non-words in instruction to help them to break the habit of guessing words. 

(11) We are not against supplementing early phonics with 100 or so high frequency ‘sight words’.

Most alphabetic writing systems have at least some degree of spelling-to-sound irregularity. English includes many high frequency words that are highly unusual. Teaching sight words is controversial, and some people think it confuses children. The evidence doesn’t support these concerns. There is a case for teaching children the pronunciations of a small number of high frequency sight words directly, including words like ‘the’, ‘come’, ‘have’, ‘said’. One study shows that teaching the 64 most common letter-sound mappings combined with 100 or so of the most frequent sight words allows children to read aloud 90% of the words in texts they typically encounter, again promoting independent reading (Solity & Vousden, 2009).

Many evidence-based reading programs, like MultiLit, include sight word lists. We think that sight word learning is likely to be most successful when children have basic letter knowledge.

(12) We think that there is a role in early reading for decodable books.

Decodable books are texts written for children that consist mostly of words that they can read correctly using the letter-sound links they have learned and some high frequency sight words like ‘the’ and ‘said’. These books give children an opportunity to practice what they have learned and to experience success in reading independently. 

We use decodable books while children are learning the basic and extended codes. Some of our favourites include the InitialLit, Moon Dogs, SPELD SA, and Talisman readers. We have also made our own without pictures, and mapped to the Sounds Write Sequence to check that children are reading (and not guessing from pictures). We’ve made them available for free.

Once children have acquired basic decoding skills, we fade out decodable books, and move on to books with a wider variety of vocabulary and knowledge, in part to support ongoing language development, and in part to keep children motivated to read about the things that interest them the most. 

(13) We supplement early reading lessons with access to high quality audio books and books. 

As noted above, during the early years of primary school, we should continue to expose children to high quality books to support oral language development and later reading skills. There is no reason why this can’t happen at the same time as early phonics instruction, and both practices are supported by evidence. 

(14) For skilled readers, we know word reading involves more than just alphabetic decoding (but you have to walk before you can run).

Although the focus on our reading work with beginner readers is on letter-sound links and blending speech sounds to make words, we know that skilled readers use more than just decoding. There are two key processes in word reading: one that involves effortful phonics-based decoding, and another that involves gaining access to meaning directly from the spelling.

In skilled readers, both processes are used: we use the (more efficient) direct access from spelling method for familiar words, and (effortful) decoding for new and unfamiliar words. For example, when reading the Castle et al., 2018 article, I was flying through, until I hit the word ‘pseudohomophone’. I had to pause and decode this word using both my knowledge of the extended code letter sound links (<ps> is sounded out as /s/, <ph>, as /f/) and my morphological awareness skills (e.g. knowing the meanings of pseudo-, homo- and -phone). More on morphological awareness in a minute.

(15) As children become skilled and get more reading practice, the need to decode word-by-word decreases.

When you see a young reader go from laborious word-by-word decoding, and start to read fluently, it seems like a miracle. Complex computational ‘dual pathway’ models far beyond my ken, like the DRC model (Coltheart et al., 2001), the Triangle Model (Harm & Seidenberg, 2004) and the CDP+ model (Perry et al., 2010) recognise that reading involves both knowledge of learned words and knowledge of the relationship between spelling and sounds. We all want kids to recognise words rapidly and automatically without having to decode them sound-by-sound. We all want kids to read independently as soon as possible.

The self-teaching hypothesis (e.g. Share, 1995) suggests that the act of decoding itself provides opportunities for children to become more familiar with the spelling of words. As children build mental representations of words, cognitive resources are freed up for comprehension. Through repeated exposure to words, a child develops word-recognition optimised for reading for meaning. 

What seems to matter most are increasing a child’s exposure to print, getting lots of experience reading, increasing the frequency of times a child reads particular words over time, and the diversity of contexts in which they read particular words. You can read more about the importance of reading fluency here.

(16) For some readers who have mastered the basic and at least some of the extended code, teaching morphological awareness can help to increase reading skills.

This includes explicitly teaching children things like the spellings of high frequency prefixes and suffixes, and Greek and Latin roots of words.  You can read more about morphological awareness here. Importantly, for beginning readers, we think it is better to prioritise letter-sound links and basic decoding skills. But some people disagree – the science is not settled – and we are keeping an open mind. We see an important role for early oral morphological awareness and explicit grammar instruction for many children, including many children with language disorders, including targeting Brown’s 14 morphemes.

(17) Do what it takes to motivate children to read! 

The most effective pathway to fluent word reading is print experience: children need to see as many words as possible, as frequently as possible in print. There are extreme variances here.

One older (pre-digital era) study of Year 5 children found that children at the 10th percentile read about 60,000 words a year; those at the 50th percentile read 900,000 words; and those at the 90th percentile read more than 4 million words a year (Anderson et al., 1988). This contributes to the Matthew Effect: where good readers keep getting better, and poor readers fall further behind over time (Stanovich, 1986). 

So how do we motivate children to read? We have written about reinforcements in detail here. Some behavioural scientists suggest external rewards can help (e.g. iPad time for doing enough reading), but other experts suggest that external rewards can in some circumstances reduce the intrinsic (internal) motivation to do the activity (here reading) for its own sake (e.g. Deci et al. 1999). Effective practical strategies suggested by Willingham (1997) and others include to: 

  • increase availability of reading matter about topics of personal interest, e.g. comics, car manuals, sports magazines, movie tie in novels, movie scripts, YouTube scripts, reading movies from subtitles (with no sound), DIY books, etc;
  • make reading materials highly visible and easy to pick up. This is why we have piles of books scattered throughout our clinic, free to borrow, including reception areas and clinic rooms; and
  • allow you child to go on ‘library sprees’ where the student can borrow any book they want (within reason and subject to parent discretion!).

For more strategies, read this.

(18) The better students become at reading, the more they want to read.

This seems obvious. But children are motivated to read more when they know they are good at it (e.g. Willingham, 2017). Ideally, we want students to see themselves as readers.

(19) Reading comprehension is really complex. It is not a single idea and cannot be explained by one model. 

To understand what you are reading, you need a whole host of skills:

(20) Don’t forget to keep working on higher level language and other language skills

These include academic vocabulary and evidence-based study skills.  

In skilled readers, the correlation between oral language and reading comprehension is almost perfect, meaning oral language limitations will limit reading comprehension (and vice-versa). 

(21) Some people with reading difficulties benefit from compensatory strategies.

For some people, e.g. with severe dyslexia or otherwise protracted and severe reading difficulties, consider compensatory strategies like text-to-speech and speech-to text tools and, of course, audiobooks. Read more about these strategies here. 

Clinical bottom line

To help children and adults to read, we should:

  • foster oral language development, including of vocabulary, semantics, phonology, word forms, sentence level syntax, narratives and nonfiction books in the preschool and school years; 
  • start reading instruction by understanding that the English writing system is alphabetic: letter-sound links and the ability to blend speech sounds to form words are crucial to develop more advanced reading skills;
  • recognise that early decoding problems can be a major bottleneck in the early reading comprehension, and that even modest improvements in decoding can make a big difference to a student’s understanding;
  • encourage children to read as much and as widely as possible to increase fluent, automatic word-reading;
  • recognise that reading comprehension – the ultimate goal of learning to read – is very complex. Reading comprehension problems can be caused by decoding problems, oral language problems, or both;
  • carefully assess people with reading difficulties, so that we know where the breakdowns are happening and can develop evidence-based plan to address them; and
  • keep up-to-date with the research evidence, and apply it – even when it means abandoning long-standing practices.   

Principal source: Castles, A., Rastle, K., Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5-51.  

This is one of the most influential, practical papers I have read in the last couple of years.  Even better, it’s available for free via Sage Journals. In my view, this paper should be required reading for all reading professionals. (Note that any errors of interpretation above are mine and mine alone.)

Related articles:

Why poor kids are more likely to be poor readers (and what we can do about it)

by

Over the school holidays, I’ve been reading some influential business books in preparation for a course I’m giving. By definition, these books were penned by highly literate, highly educated authors. Writers who have enjoyed great financial and life success. 

A pervasive theme in these books is the idea that you can “Think Yourself Rich” ™. The sentiment seems innocent, inspiring even. But, the more I think about it, the angrier I get. For, if you flip it around, it insinuates something atrocious – that, if you are not rich, you have somehow failed to think hard enough about it to escape poverty.

If only life were that simple!

Good books can change your mind

When I was 22, I stumbled on Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I read it in a single, sunny day in a pretty park in the fairy-tale town of Český Krumlov. It’s a terrific, powerful, troubling, hilarious, and devastating read. It changed my view on many things, including poverty. 

Consider this quote (ostensibly about Americans, but applicable to most of us):

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure trove for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for the poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.”

Poverty and reading outcomes

Now, why am I writing about poverty on a speech pathology blog?  And just what does poverty have to do with reading?

Well, it turns out poverty has a huge, well-known, and negative impact on literacy achievement in all English-speaking countries. In Australia, you can look at any number of stats to see it. Here are just a few:

  • In 2009, 13.9% of Australian children in the lowest socioeconomic quintile were assessed as “developmentally vulnerable” in language and cognitive skills, compared to 4.7% of kids in the highest quintile (Australian Early Development Index Survey, 2009).
  • In 2009, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) team assessed the literacy of 15 year-olds in Australia and several other countries. They found 25% of 15 year old young adults in the lowest socioeconomic quartile scored in the lowest literacy band or below, compared with 5% of the children in the highest quartile (Thomson & Bartoli, 2010).
  • In 2015, PISA again assessed the literacy of 15 year-olds. For Australian students, they found: 
    • students in the highest socioeconomic quartile achieved (on average) significantly higher literacy scores than students in the lowest socioeconomic quartile: representing over one proficiency level or around three years of schooling! The score for students in the lowest socioeconomic quartile was significantly lower than for students across the OECD; and
    • only 5% of students in the lowest socioeconomic quartile were high performers compared to 8% of students in the second socioeconomic quartile, 12% in the third socioeconomic quartile and 21% in the highest socioeconomic quartile (Thomson et al., 2016). (You can read more about these results – here  and here.)

Why?

Well first, let’s look at what we mean by “socioeconomic status” (SES). 

It doesn’t mean “not much money”; and different studies use different definitions. For example, two measures used by the OECD to represent socioeconomic background are:

  • the highest level of the father’s and mother’s occupation; and/or
  • the index of economic, social and cultural status, based on three indices: the highest occupational status of parents; the highest educational level of parents in years of education; and home possessions. 

Other studies use self-reported, sometimes slightly weird measures, such as the number of books in the family home (e.g. The Progress in Reading Literacy Studies, or PIRLS).

What’s becoming clear is that SES (however defined) is just a proxy –  a stand-in – for other things that are more likely to affect literacy directly (e.g. Fergusson et al., 2008). It’s also becoming clearer that a student’s achievement is predicted not just by their own SES but by other factors, too.

So what are some factors that can affect literacy outcomes for low SES students?

Researchers Dr Jennifer Buckingham, Professor Kevin Wheldall and Dr Robyn Beaman-Wheldall published a wonderful paper on this back in 2013 outlining some key ideas. I’ve read it several times, and I think about it a lot when I’m working on improving services, or giving advice to families, students and teachers.

So here are 10 factors that may explain (at least in part) why low SES is a significant risk factor for poor reading outcomes. If you are like me, you won’t be able to stop thinking about things we could try to help fix the problem. There are some great minds working on it. But all of us working with kids with reading difficulties have a part to play.

(1) Differences in early pre-literacy skills

  • Kids from low SES backgrounds tend, on average, to demonstrate lower skills in phonological awareness and oral language (including vocabulary) (e.g. Henning et al., 2010; Hart & Riseley, 2003). Both skills are key elements to early literacy.
  • Early literacy is a strong predictor of a child’s literacy performance throughout their school life (e.g. Claessens et al., 2009). Reading ability is not set at 5 years of age – there is a lot of movement in the primary school years – but low SES students are more likely than high SES students to remain poor readers if they start school as poor readers.

This research is the main reason I support high quality, free preschool instruction (including phonological awareness and vocabulary training), for all low SES children (and, in fact, for all children).

(2) Genetic factors – potential versus achievement

You can’t change your genes. And genetic factors play a big part in determining a student’s potential. But the extent to which that potential is realised depends on the student’s environment. High SES students tend to be limited by their innate abilities. But, for many low SES kids, environmental factors can get in the way of students reaching their true potential (e.g. Turkheimer et al., 2003; and McGrath et al., 2007).

In our clinic, we set high expectations for every student we meet. A few people think we sometimes push too hard, and there may be some truth to that. But our goal is always to help students reach their potential, never to settle. 

(3) Home factors

  • Parent attitudes/encouragement: It turns out that values and parenting practices are stronger factors than income (over a basic level) or parents’ education levels (Hattie, 2009). In other words, low SES kids’ reading skills can be supported by parents having high educational aspirations and expectations for their kids, and encouraging their kids to read and to reason (e.g. Fan & Chen, 2001; Fergusson et al., 2008; and Wilder, 2013). This isn’t a case of thinking yourself literate. It’s more about developing a student’s motivation to read, and building a self-concept as a reader and for self-regulated learning (e.g. Guthrie et al., 1999; Petscher, 2010, Katzir et al., 2009; and Xu et al., 2010). Thus, parents’ and students’ expectations are strong predictors of later achievement (Chowdry et al., 2011).
  • Books in the house: an Australian study suggests that having books in the home has a greater impact on children whose parents had the lowest levels of education than children with university-educated parents. (Evans et al., 2010)

We work with parents to instill high expectations for school. We also have a free book borrowing program and encourage families to join and use the local library. 

(4) Time spent reading/print exposure/reading for pleasure, with the focus on fiction and non-fiction books (rather than magazines, comics or newspapers)

  • The link between reading time and reading achievement is important for students of all abilities. Even reading just 10 minutes a day outside of school can have a significant, positive effect on reading skills for below average and average readers (e.g. Taylor et al., 1990). Some researchers think that having dedicated reading time at home is more directly related to creating a positive home environment for reading, than simply reading itself (McKool, 2007). 
  • Other researchers think that the amount of print exposure is more reliable than how much time kids spend reading (e.g. Mol & Bus, 2011).
  • Differences in time spent reading for enjoyment appear to translate into literacy performance (e.g. Thomson & De Bortoli, 2010). Reading books outside of school time – fiction and non-fiction – is a predictor of vocabulary growth (Lawrence, 2009). Interestingly, reading magazines, comics and newspapers seem to have very little or even negative effects on reading performance and vocabulary! (Lawrence, 2009; Thomson & De Bortoli, 2010).
  • With reading skills, good readers get better, and poor readers slip further behind – the so-called Matthew Effect. Kids who don’t master the basics tend to read less than peers who can decode easily (see below).

In our reading intervention programs, we encourage both structured practice of fundamental skills, including through decodable books, as well as less structured reading for pleasure. Regular library visits where the student gets to pick any book they want, along with providing recommendations based on a student’s reading skills and interests, can make a big difference!   

(5) Physical health and sleep

  • Kids in the lowest SES quartile are twice as likely to be rated as developmentally vulnerable in terms of physical health and well-being (Centre for Community Child Health and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, 2009).
  • Poor health can impact school attendance (e.g. Pahel & Lee, 2011).
  • Some low SES kids are at a heightened risk of early onset, chronic otitis media, which can cause hearing loss and affect speech and language development (even if the effects are temporary) (e.g. Winskel, 2006).
  • On average, lower SES kids tend to get less sleep than higher SES kids (El-Sheikh et al., 2010). There is some evidence that insufficient sleep may affect cognitive functioning, intellectual ability, language comprehension, letter-word recognition and passage comprehension (e.g. Eide & Showalter, 2012).

For preschoolers at risk for communication and reading disorders, we inform parents about the importance of adequate sleep and sleep routines, with a view to establishing routines well before ‘big school’ starts. For older students, we counsel them about the importance of sleep and limiting things like blue light exposure before bed. 

(6) Behavioural problems?

The link between SES and behaviour is complex and controversial. There is some evidence that the proportion of kids assessed as developmentally vulnerable increases as SES decreases. Kids with developmental language disorders are at heightened risk of behavioural difficulties. But the direction(s) of the relationship(s) between SES and behaviour at different points of development are not clear, and it usually not possible to establish cause and effect. 

(7) School attendance and mobility

  • There is a clear positive relationship between school attendance and literacy achievement from Kindergarten and Year 1 (e.g. Attendance Works, 2011).
  • Children from low SES backgrounds have, on average, lower attendance rates and a higher prevalence of chronic absenteeism (missing more than 10% of the school year), which places them at a higher risk for reading failure. 
  • Moving schools is also correlated with reading – kids who change schools a lot are at a higher risk of lower reading achievement throughout primary school and high school. The relationship between moving schools and reading is stronger for low SES families (e.g. Burkam et al., 2009).

This research explains, in part, why so many schools in our area strongly discourage long school absences – especially in Kindergarten and Year 1. We agree with them.

(8) School-level SES is more important than student-level SES

  • Now this is an important point: In most OECD countries, the literacy performance of 15 year-olds is more strongly related to the SES of the school than the individual student (OECD, 2010).
  • A strong body of research supports the idea that school-level SES is more important than student-level SES (e.g. Sirin, 2005).
  • School SES is likely to be a proxy for other factors:
    • students with low SES are more often found in lower quality schools than students with high SES (e.g. Cassen & Kingdom, 2004); and
    • the academic context of the school may be more important than SES – things like teacher expectations of students, how safe kids feel at the school, curriculum rigour, and homework completion (e.g. Marks, 2009).

Families need to know about this research so they can make informed choices. For families with a choice of local schools (and it’s worth remembering, many families don’t have a choice), the school with the higher SES may be the better option for reading and academic outcomes.

(9) Teaching quality

  • Note we’re not talking about teacher quality.
  • Teaching quality includes lesson content and the teaching philosophy used by teachers at the school. Things like direct instruction, teacher-student relationships, reciprocal teaching and feedback are rated as “quality teaching” by students (Hattie, 2009).
  • Among other things, there are some clear implications for initial reading instruction (see below).

(10) Initial Reading Instruction

  • Effective early reading instruction in the early years is critical to help “close the gap” between high SES and low SES kids. Research shows that the best reading programs develop the Big 5 skills: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and language comprehension (e.g. Rose, 2006). You can read more about these principles here. 
  • Systematic, synthetic phonics instruction is important, especially for children at risk and from low SES backgrounds (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000); and children who begin school with poor phonological awareness and other pre-literacy skills – again low SES students are over-represented in this population (e.g. Foorman et al., 1998; Sonnenschein et al., 2010).
  • Oral language skills also need to be developed, especially vocabulary and comprehension skills (e.g. Adams, 1990; Teale et al., 2007).

Families deserve to know whether their child’s future school trains its teachers to implement evidence-based reading instruction practices. Although many schools in our area deliver evidence-based reading instruction based on the principles above, some do not, and poor reading instruction is particularly detrimental to students from low SES backgrounds.

Clinical bottom line

Having a low SES background does not condemn students to be poor readers. However, low SES students are at a higher risk of reading difficulties than high SES students; and we are beginning to understand why. 

Evidence is growing that high quality preschool and early school phonological awareness, oral language and evidence-based literacy instruction can play a major role in narrowing literacy gaps. We need to support both more research teasing out these contributing factors and “boots on the ground” implementation of high quality reading instruction in all schools. 

Finally – and, yes, this needs to be said – we should never judge families or students on their backgrounds. In the real world, you can’t think yourself rich, regardless of what the self-help business gurus say.

Principal source: Buckingham, J., Wheldall, K., & Beaman-Wheldall, R. (2013). Why poor children are more likely to become poor readers: the school years. Australian Journal of Education, 57(3), 190-213.  

If you want to read more about Vonnegut’s views on poverty, I recommend this excellent, free article from Open Culture.)

Related articles:

Image: https://tinyurl.com/y599yjwe

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 is a part-time Associate Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney’s Graduate School of Health. David sits on Speech Pathology Australia’s Ethics Board and Professional Standards Advisory Committee.

Dyslexia vs Developmental Language Disorder: same or different, and what do we need to know about their relationship?

by

Dyslexia is a language-based disorder. But so is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Are they the same thing?

Tricky question – and one that comes up a lot in my clinic when I’m working with struggling school-aged students.

Luckily, much bigger brains than mine – including Professors Suzanne Adlof and Tiffany Hogan – have been looking at this question. This line of research has helped inform our approach to assessing and treating children with dyslexia, DLD, and both dyslexia and DLD.

We thought it would be useful to summarise some of our key takeaways to help others who may be thinking about the relationship between dyslexia and DLD.

1. But first, some difficult definitions

The definition of dyslexia is controversial. Despite attempts to reach consensus, there is also no universally accepted definition of DLD.

Definitional issues get in the way of research, knowledge translation and advocacy. Without minimising the academic importance of such debates, parents, front line educators and health professionals, and others working with children with dyslexia and/or DLD need to understand the recent research so they can seek/deliver the best outcomes. So, for this article only:

“dyslexia” means:

  • severe difficulty learning how to read; despite
  • normal vision; and
  • adequate reading instruction; and
  • adequate cognitive abilities (i.e. no intellectual disability) (e.g. Lyon et al., 2003); and

“DLD” means an unexpected deficit in language abilities despite adequate environmental stimulation and cognitive abilities with no neurological impairments (e.g. Bishop et al., 2017).

2. Parallels

Clearly, there are some parallels. Both dyslexia and DLD:

  • are language-based disorders; 
  • are deficits that are “unexpected” given the absence of intellectual disabilities or other medical explanations; and
  • require the child to have received adequate environmental stimulation: appropriate reading instruction for dyslexia, and adequate human language interactions for DLD. 

3. So what’s the difference?

(a) Phonological deficits vs. multi-dimensional language deficits: 

In dyslexia, the principal deficit is word reading. Most definitions of dyslexia include marked difficulties with word reading, decoding, and spelling. Many descriptions focus on phonological deficits as a core feature of dyslexia (e.g. Moats, 2008). 

Phonology is the system of contrastive relationships among the speech sounds that constitute the fundamental components of a language. Phonological deficits impact the specificity at which sounds are stored and recalled in words, as well as the reader’s ability to manipulate sounds in words and connect sounds to letters to read words. Lots of evidence shows that children with dyslexia, on average, perform poorly on tasks that involve phonology, including phonological awareness, word and nonword repetition, and word retrieval (e.g. Vellutino, et al., 2004).

In DLD, children may have language deficits across multiple dimensions of language. These can include phonology. But they can also affect vocabulary, semantic knowledge, morphology, syntax, and the social use of language: the so-called content, form and use of language. 

(b) Biologically primary v. secondary knowledge

Oral language is biologically primary knowledge – humans as a species have a natural instinct for it. Reading words is biologically secondary – or unnatural. In evolutionary terms, decoding written words is a recent development and everyone has learn how to do it. (Incidentally, that’s one reason why many definitions of dyslexia (controversially) exclude reading problems caused by poor instruction. Otherwise, everyone who was illiterate would be dyslexic, which is not the case.)

4. But don’t forget the Simple View of Reading!

There is an important – if confusing – overlap of concepts when it comes to reading. Being a good reader means more than only reading the words on the page – you need to understand what you are reading, too. Reading comprehension is the product of accurate and efficient word reading and language comprehension. So when assessing people with reading problems, education and health professionals need to look at both decoding skills (which may be relevant to a diagnosis of reading difficulties or dyslexia), as well as general language comprehension skills (which may be relevant to a diagnosis of DLD). 

Many reading comprehension skills are based on biologically primary oral language or other knowledge. Oral language comprehension skills, phonological awareness, vocabulary and naming skills, theory of mind, knowledge of human relationships, knowledge of biology (notably animals and plants), and physical environments – as well as background knowledge about the world – contribute to helping kids understand what they read.

The key point is that good reading comprehension requires good decoding skills and good language comprehension skills; and that deficits in either (or both) can cause clinically significant reading problems. In other words, children with dyslexia and many children with DLD have reading problems. But reading problems can be caused by decoding problems, language comprehension problems or both – and it is essential to find out which deficits are contributing to a child’s difficulty reading so that you can plan the right intervention.

(You can read more about the so-called “Simple View of Reading” here. You can read more about biologically primary and secondary knowledge here.)

5. So, if dyslexia is a language based disorder, do all children with dyslexia have DLD? Will all children with DLD be dyslexic?

The short answer appears to be “no” and “no”. Although the science is not yet settled, DLD and dyslexia appear to be distinct disorders that can co-occur. 

Catts et al., 2005, for example suggests that:

  • the majority of children with DLD do not have dyslexia; and
  • the majority of children with dyslexia do not have DLD; and
  • phonological deficits are more closely related to dyslexia than DLD.

This research supports the so-called “fully distinct hypothesis”, which can be depicted as follows:

(Picture credit: Adlof & Hogan, 2018 – see full citation below)

Current evidence also suggests:

  • dyslexia and DLD frequently co-occur, although no one knows exactly how often (different studies, with different designs, show a 17-71% co-occurrence!);
  • some children with dyslexia who do not have DLD still present with relatively weak language skills compared with typically developing peers, e.g. with poorer vocabulary, sentence repetition, and syntax comprehension skills, that are still within the normal range (e.g. Bishop et al., 2009);
  • some children with dyslexia present with normal or even above-average oral language skills (e.g. Alt et al., 2017; De Groot et al., 2015); and
  • some children with dyslexia but normal oral language skills (i.e. no DLD) show poor word learning compared to typically developing children, especially when it comes to learning the phonology of new words (e.g. Alt et al., 2017).

6. What do we do with this research? Our clinical takeaways

This research has had – and continues to have – a big impact on our clinical practice. Our key takeaways are as follows:

  • Everyone working in child literacy – parents, researchers, speech pathologists, teachers, educational psychologists, and students themselves – need to know that dyslexia and DLD are distinct but often co-occurring disorders.
  • It is likely that at least half of the children identified with reading difficulties in schools will have co-occurring (but perhaps undiagnosed) DLD (e.g. G.M. McArthur et al., 2000).
  • Many children with dyslexia who perform within normal limits on standardised language tests may still have significant (if sub-clinical) language difficulties that may warrant monitoring and accommodations.
  • Students with dyslexia – regardless of whether they also have DLD – are at risk of slower language acquisition and slower growth of world knowledge across their lifetime because of reduced reading experience – the so-called Matthew Effect. In addition to high quality, evidence-based reading instruction, these students may benefit from compensatory techniques that build their exposure to great books/texts and increase knowledge about the world other than through print, e.g. through audiobooks or video recordings of school texts (e.g. Milani et al., 2010).
  • When assessing school-aged children with reading difficulties, it is essential that the assessment battery include both reading and oral language assessment tasks including tests of phonology, orthography (spelling), morphology, semantics, vocabulary, syntax and discourse processing. 
  • Regardless of the label (or labels), intervention needs to be tailored to target each child’s strengths and weaknesses across all domains of language, in part because they all impact reading comprehension. 
  • Teachers, speech pathologists, psychologists, reading specialists and special educators need to collaborate to help support students with multiple needs. We also need to educate each other – to share our knowledge and avoid inconsistent jargon – to address reading and oral language issues for students under our care.

Principal source: Adlof, S. M., and Hogan, T.P. (2018). Understanding Dyslexia in the Context of Developmental Language Disorders, Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 49, 762-773.

For more information about DLD, see, follow and support the wonderful work of Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder. 

Related articles:

Image: https://tinyurl.com/y4wf5de6

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 is a part-time Associate Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney’s Graduate School of Health. David sits on Speech Pathology Australia’s Ethics Board and Professional Standards Advisory Committee.

For struggling school kids, what’s the difference between seeing a speech pathologist and a tutor?

by

Over the years, parents have asked me this a few times. I’ve also been asked why speech pathologists are allied health workers; whereas most tutors come from teaching or education backgrounds.

Clients and their families should be fully informed about this stuff. So here’s my attempt to answer these tricky questions, recognising others may have different views:

Basic distinction: biologically primary and secondary knowledge

As health professionals, most speech pathologists are concerned mainly with helping students with disordered or significantly delayed “biologically primary knowledge” – communication-related knowledge and skills humans are wired to acquire and that most kids get at developmentally appropriate times without being explicitly taught.

Tutors, as education professionals, help kids learn biologically secondary skills, including subject-specific skills that kids learn at school, e.g. about maths. Some kids struggle with one or more subjects at school, and school tutors work with teachers to help them out.

Clear as mud?

Let me explain the difference in more detail by reference to some of the science, specifically evolutionary theory and one of its offshoots, cognitive load theory.

Speech pathologists and biologically primary knowledge

Human brains have evolved to pay attention, process, and respond to information that is significant for survival and reproduction. In other words, we are wired to learn and use “biologically primary” or “core” skills we need to cope in our communities.

Although languages and cultures can look and sound very different from each other on the surface, there are many common features beneath the surface that make us all human. To survive in any human society, people need to manage relationships with other people, other living things (including plants and animals), and their physical surroundings. Although details differ community-by-community, several “core” abilities are needed to do this successfully:

  • In/out grouping skills to help break our social world into categories of people (e.g. family, friends, enemies, races, religions, tribes, States and Nations).
  • Attention to the biological and physical world around us, including skills needed for hunting, horticulture, navigation, and tool use. These skills include knowing movement patterns of potential predators and prey, the ability to form mental representations of our environment, knowledge about the “essence” of different species of plants and animals, and the ability to categorise them.

Human communication skills are much more advanced than those of other species, including the other “Great Apes”, like chimpanzees and bonobos. Some researchers think early-developing communication skills advantaged human babies with care and attention from adults, with later communication skills helping kids (and adults) succeed socially within groups of adults and peers. In other words, developing these skills from a young age helps us to survive within our families and communities and to reproduce.

For most people, biologically primary knowledge is acquired with very little cognitive effort. We’re wired to pay attention to this information and to respond to it efficiently. We apply several rules of thumb to respond to situations requiring primary knowledge quickly and simply. For example, we respond almost automatically to social signals like smiling, and gravitate to things like sport and dance, and hanging out socially with friends. Amazingly, most of us learn how to speak intelligibly in our native language without being taught how to do it.

But some of us don’t. For example, some people have:

Many of my clients have more than one of these issues affecting their communication skills.*

Teacher, tutors and “biologically secondary knowledge”

Biologically secondary knowledge consists of academic and vocational knowledge we need for cultural, vocational, political and knowledge transfer reasons. It includes most of the content in the school curriculum like maths, science, literature, and history.

Unlike the case with biologically primary knowledge, acquiring biologically secondary knowledge tends to be conscious, relatively difficult and effortful for everyone, although some kids struggle more than others. For example, no-one learns algebra, or about the causes of World War I, or the elements of the Periodic Table, or how to program a computer without taking the effort to learn how.

Most of these biologically secondary skills seem to be subject (or domain) specific. That means if you want to get better at algebra, you need to practice solving algebra problems not, say, playing chess or the violin.

The importance of transferring biologically secondary knowledge to our kids and young adults is the key reason schools, teachers and tutors exist. Great teachers and tutors are highly skilled at teaching subject-matter content to kids in such a way that they learn it.

Are there grey areas, or overlaps between biologically primary and secondary knowledge?

Yes. Probably the best example is reading.

Many kids first learn about books in one-to-one social interactions with a parent while discussing picture books. Shared reading practices often include parent and child pointing, object naming, and language learning mechanisms – all biologically primary systems.

As we discuss in detail here, reading itself is biologically secondary – or unnatural. In human evolutionary terms, it’s a recent development and everyone has learn how to do it. (Otherwise, we’d have near universal literacy, which is – unfortunately – far from the truth.)

Many reading skills are based on biologically primary oral language or other knowledge. Oral language comprehension skills, phonological awareness, vocabulary and naming skills, theory of mind, knowledge of human relationships, knowledge of biology (notably animals and plants) and physical environments contribute to helping kids decode and understand what they read.

Brain studies have shown that reading engages many of the same areas of the brain involved in expressing and processing language (including the Broca’s and Wernicke areas, as well as areas of the brain evolved for object naming. Literacy is thus essentially a language skill. And kids with oral language, social use of language and/or speech disorders are at a heightened risk of having reading problems, including dyslexia.

Learning to read is both a health and education priority. Both speech pathologists and tutors who are up to date on the scientific research and trained in how to apply it know that children learn to read most effectively with systematic, organised and adult-led direct instruction focused, initially, on letter-sound links, blending and segmenting of speech sounds, and word decoding skills using a synthetic phonics approach. Both speech pathologists and tutors with literacy training have an important role to play in helping kids with reading difficulties learn to read.

Other ways speech pathologists can help with reading and academic issues

Many (though not all) of the students I see for reading instruction have underlying language and/or speech deficits. That’s why our literacy assessments include tasks probing underlying primary communication skills, including phonological awareness skills like letter-sound links, vocabulary, receptive and expressive oral language skills, and speech clarity. This can help us figure out whether a child’s reading problems are related to decoding written words into speech, oral language comprehension, or both. (You can read more about this here.)

Language and speech disorders can have long-term academic and social effects on children and teenagers. As children move from learning to read to reading to learn, kids with language disorders can struggle with reading comprehension and writing tasks. They can also struggle with other language-dependent tasks, like understanding academic verbs, maths and other subject-specific vocabulary, complex syntax used in exam questions and school texts, organising their thoughts into written and spoken language at the discourse level (e.g. in stories, presentations, and essays), understanding higher level language (e.g. idioms, jokes, metaphors, and analogies), and planning and executing evidence-based study practices.

Speech pathologists frequently collaborate with teachers and tutors to implement strategies to help students with communication disorders cope with the school curriculum.

Clinical bottom line

I’m lucky to have good relationships with many excellent local teachers and experienced tutors. The key issue is making sure that the student is getting the right help from the right people at the right time. By working collaboratively with:

  • students;
  • parents;
  • teachers, principals, and learning support staff;
  • tutors;
  • allied health colleagues like occupational therapists, audiologists, and education psychologists; and
  • other medical professionals like general practitioners and paediatricians,

we can help clients and their families identify and prioritise communication and other issues affecting academic and social participation at school, treat health issues like communication disorders (and mitigate their effects), and educate students in areas of academic challenge so they can pursue their work and life goals.

Principal sources:

Geary, D. (2008). An Evolutionarily Informed Education. Educational Psychologist, 43(4), 179-195.

Tomasello, M. & Gonzalez-Cabera. (2017). The Role of Ontogeny in the Evolution of Human Cooperation. Human Nature, 28:274-278.

Kirschner, P.A., Sweller, J., Kirschner, F., Zambrano, J. (2018). From Cognitive Load Theory to Collaborative Load Theory. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 13:213-233.

*For completeness, I should add that some people also have problems swallowing food, drink and/or medicine. Speech pathologists help these people, too.

Whoops, you're not connected to Mailchimp. You need to enter a valid Mailchimp API key.

Image: https://tinyurl.com/ybuysfw6

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.

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

by Leave a Comment

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).

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

by Leave a Comment

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).