Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

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

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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:

What I think about when I meet a child who can’t read

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Too many students have significant reading comprehension problems. When working with a struggling reader, you need an evidence-based plan. 

But, before you can plan, you need to know what you’re looking for, and why. In this short video-blog, we outline the key mental models we apply when assessing students with reading difficulties.

We hope you find it useful! 

Our free eBook: Reading Problems and what to do about them

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.

My child struggles to understand what she’s reading. Should I give her a text-to-speech tool?

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A confession: my navigation skills are abysmal. I’ve been known to get lost in car parks and Mario Cart. But, since downloading Google Maps a few years ago, I’m rarely lost (for long) these days. I’ve used a cheap technology to compensate for a skill gap that really bugs me.

In the same way, text-to-speech and read-along software tools are being used in many homes and schools to help students and others with reading comprehension difficulties.  

Are they a good idea?  As with many tricky questions, the answer is that “it depends”.

What do text-to-speech tools do?

Software, such as Classmate Reader or Texthelp Read&Write, can ‘translate’ written text into spoken words, enabling you to listen to text while reading along, or simply to listen.

The idea itself isn’t new: we’ve had audiobook tapes and CDs, for several decades, for example. But recent, major improvements in voice recognition software – including some of the technologies underpinning Artificial Intelligence-enabled tools and apps aligned with products and assistants like Google Cloud Text to Speech, Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, and Cortana to name a few – are making text-to-speech (and voice-to-text) tools much more accessible and potentially much more useful and socially accepted than in the past. 

Remember that reading comprehension problems are not all the same 

We’ve written at length about reading comprehension difficulties. To recap the most relevant points: 

  • Reading comprehension difficulties are caused by two main things:
    • difficulty ‘decoding’ (or translating) written letters, words and sentences into speech sounds and spoken words and sentences; and/or
    • difficulty understanding the language used in written texts (e.g. the vocabulary, sentence structures, or inferences to be drawn in a particular reading task).
  • Some people experience only one of these problems, i.e. decoding problems or language disorders. Others have difficulties with both. The “Simple View of Reading” implies that:
    • when decoding skills are poor, they limit reading comprehension; and
    • when decoding skills are stronger, language comprehension becomes a more important influence on reading comprehension.
  • “Dyslexia” or “specific learning disorders with impairments in reading” are both normally used to describe children with significant decoding issues. Poor reading accuracy and rate has a direct negative effect on reading comprehension and may leave fewer cognitive ‘resources’ free to try to figure out the meaning of texts (e.g. Smythe, 2005). Even fairly small gains in decoding skills for poor readers can have big positive effects on reading comprehension (Lervåg, 2017).
  • During the school years, oral language comprehension and reading skills ‘piggy back’ on each other (Snow, 2016). People with decoding problems may have problems learning new words and higher level language skills, which can then hamper their oral language development. Poor decoding skills can drag down higher level language skills that students learn as they read to learn.  

Why are text-to-speech tools potentially helpful

Text-to-speech tools remove the need to decode reading material. This helps people with decoding issues understand the material. For example, ‘read aloud’ tools might help students who have decoding problems complete assessment tasks at school (much like human readers in exams help many students with reading difficulties).

Text-to-speech and voice-to-text tools are no longer fringe technologies

Voice-to-text and text-to-speech software used to be hampered by poor accuracy, poor voice selections, and poor speech naturalness.

Now have a look at this amazing chart:

In 2018, Google’s machine learning word accuracy rates exceeded 95% for the first time. Some of their competitors are not far behind. Many of these technologies now sit nested in home and electronic devices: tools like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri. Increasingly, I’m writing notes and even blogs using Google voice-to-text, plugged into apps with voice-to-text features like Evernote or Google Docs. 

These technologies can also be used the other way around to read text using artificial voices (or even clones of your own voice): artificial intelligence-driven voice technologies like those developed by Lyrebird, Baidu and Mozilla and Google’s DeepMind are coming along in leaps and bounds.  It’s an exciting time to be involved in communication science!

Back to the current state of play: what does the peer reviewed research evidence say?

The research base lags the use of text-to-speech tools, and is far from cohesive at this point. There are a few reasons for this, including:

  • the fast rate of technology advances;
  • different research goals: some studies look at text-to-speech tools as a way of compensating for decoding issues; and other studies look at text-to-speech tools as a way of improving decoding skills. (The goal of compensation is to help students access texts they would otherwise not be able to read because of decoding problems. The goal of treatment is to improve decoding skills.);
  • the number of different commercial programs available, including:
  • the number of different features that can be manipulated in differences services, including reading rate, voice type, document tagging, dynamic highlighting;
  • the different populations of people that researchers have looked at, e.g. people with unspecified disabilities, reading disabilities, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder and many other disabilities; and
  • the different outcome measure used in different studies to measure effects.

In 2014, two meta-analyses were published on the compensatory effects of read-aloud accommodations on assessments:

  • Li (2014) looked at the effects of read-aloud accommodations on reading and maths assessments, comparing their effects on children with and without disabilities (broadly defined and not restricted to children with reading difficulties alone). Li found positive effects for both groups on reading and maths tasks, but smaller effects for maths.
  • Buzik & Stone (2014) looked at the effects of read-aloud accommodations for students with and without disabilities on standardised assessments. Again, read-aloud accommodations helped both groups with reading and maths tests, with smaller effects for maths.

In 2018, Dr Sarah Wood and colleagues from Florida State University published a more focused meta-analysis of 22 studies on the effects of text-to-speech technologies on reading comprehension for students with reading difficulties (see citation below). They found that text-to-speech technologies may assist students with reading comprehension. However, as noted by the authors, the findings were limited by the small number of studies on the issue to date, the diversity of the tools and measures, the lack of detail in many studies about appropriate dosage, and the lack of controls for placebo effects and bias. 

Clinical bottom line

For children with reading comprehension problems caused by decoding issues, text-to-speech tools may help children to understand texts that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to read. The evidence is not clear for children with good decoding skills and poor language comprehension skills. We don’t yet know exactly how or why text-to-speech tools help some children. But students with normal oral language comprehension are likely to benefit from having the text read to them when decoding is the bottleneck.

When advising parents and students about text-to-speech tools, teachers, speech pathologists, education psychologists and others involved in helping students with reading difficulties should think hard about:

  • the main factor(s) contributing to the student’s reading difficulties – decoding, language comprehension, or both;
  • the goal(s) of using the tool – i.e. is it to compensate for a student’s reading difficulties (e.g. in an assessment), or is it intended to help improve reading skills? (and if so, how?);
  • the positive functional impact using the tool might have on the student’s participation in class and access to the curriculum; and
  • whether the time spent using the tool might better be spent working on improving decoding skills through explicit synthetic phonics instruction, which has a higher level of evidence at this point. Just as a physiotherapist might temporarily tie up a patient’s “good arm” to encourage her to use and rehabilitate her injured arm, might we be better off in some cases working directly on decoding skills and turning off tools that might enable the patient to avoid using them.

Fundamentally, we all want people we care about to succeed and participate at school, work and in life. And let’s be honest. As these technologies become more mainstream, people with reading difficulties will no doubt turn to their smart phones and other devices to help them to understand what they’re reading – regardless of what experts may think about the merits and evidence base. 

In exactly the same way that I turn to Google Maps to find a destination.

Important note: We do not have any commercial relationships with any of the text-to-speech products or services referred to in this article, and make no recommendations about them. They are provided as examples only.

Related articles:

Principal source: Wood, S.G., Moxley, J.M. Tighe, E. & Wagner, R. (2018). Does Use of Text-to-Speech and Related Read-Aloud Tools Improve Reading Comprehension with Reading Disabilities? A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51(1), 73-84. 

Image: https://tinyurl.com/y2fvujsk

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.

Starting high school? 6 practical, evidence-based principles to help students succeed at STEM subjects

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My undergraduate degree is in science, so I’m keen on:

  • supporting clients to study and succeed in STEM subjects – Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics; and
  • using the latest cognitive science research to help clients achieve their school and life goals.

Starting high school is an exciting time – new school, new teachers, new friends, new subjects. I remember being overwhelmed, with 11 different subjects in my timetable, including English, Maths, History, Geography, and Science.

So much to learn!

STEM courses contain lots of specialised vocabulary and new concepts. Many students – including students with language, reading and other learning disorders – struggle with STEM subjects because of their limited vocabulary, conceptual, and categorisation skills.

 

So how can we help these students?

Here are six key cognitive science principles supported by research evidence:

 

Principle 1. Identify student misconceptions and prior knowledge

Students bring a range of misconceptions into the classroom. These can include:

  • factual errors (e.g. “the Sun revolves around the Earth”);
  • misunderstood vocabulary (e.g. “perimeter means the size of a shape”);
  • simplistic models (e.g. “animals are things with legs”); and
  • lack of understanding of scales (e.g. “the stars and the moon are the same distance from the Earth”).

These misconceptions need to be identified and corrected to help students to learn. Ideally, these misconceptions will be addressed before the introduction to a new topic. In reality, this can happen at any stage.

 

How?

(a) Identify what students already know, and what they think they know about the topic. You can do this with a general discussion, or a pre-quiz. For example: in a biology unit on “life”, you could ask the question “what does it mean for something to be alive?”.

(b) List misunderstandings. For example, a student may think that movement is a key feature of life. This may mean the student thinks that non-moving things (such as trees and flowers) are not alive.

(c) Correct these misunderstandings. Adult-driven explanations are not enough to do this (Schunn et al., 2018). Students need to overcome their own misconceptions. Adults can support students by:

  • comparing student predictions with actual results. (e.g. If a flower isn’t alive, what might happen when we cut it from the root? If it is alive, what might happen?)
  • structuring case comparisons. (Comparing properties of different examples from a category for similarities and differences.) (See Principle 2.)
  • using visualisation. (Teaching students how to interpret images, tables, and graphs themselves, rather than relying on an adult.) (See Principle 3.)

 

Principle 2. Make Comparisons

This is simply the process of contrasting cases to identify similarities and differences. It:

  •  improves understanding of course content and test results (Alfieri et al., 2013);
  •  prepares students with basic conceptual understanding and can help address misconceptions; and
  • is an especially important skill for students who have difficulties with semantic (meaning) knowledge and categorisation.

There are several templates available freely online which help students:

  • learn about similarities and differences; and
  • learn to compare and contrast concepts.

 

Free resources:

We like the (free) “Semantic Feature Analysis Grid” from Reading Rockets. This can be customised for any level of vocabulary or concept.

For younger students, our free resource is useful for discussing attributes of objects.

 

Example:

Begin listing various features (e.g. appearance, location, what it does) of different objects. For example, “tree”, “ant” and “dog”. These all fall within the category of “life”, while only “dog” and “ant” are animals. By examining similarities, students can begin understanding which features are necessary for “life”, including the fact they all:

  • are composed of cells;
  • reproduce;
  • are found on Earth; and
  • are not man-made.

Some features only apply to dogs and ants, not trees. For example, only dogs and ants:

  • have legs;
  • eat food; and
  • are able to move around.

These differences help students understand subcategories of “things that are alive”, such as plants versus animals.

For students who have trouble generating features, using a range of ‘wh’ questions can help structure their thinking (e.g. “What is it made of? What does it do? Where do you find it? When would you use it? What does it look like? How does it feel/smell/taste?”).

 

Principle 3. Complete visualisation Exercises

Many students have difficulty interpreting illustrations, which are often critical to understand content. Visualisation exercises help students learn how to interpret different aspects of visuals. For example, you can look at a diagram discussing the use of:

  • colour;
  • scale;
  • arrows;
  • axis titles;
  • text boxes; and
  • other conventions of diagrams and graphs.

 

How?

(a) Start with images that have only one feature requiring interpretation (e.g. scale or colour).

(b) Discuss what that feature represents and how to interpret it, as well as common conventions. For example: “Look at the legend to see what each colour means when interpreting a graph.” or “The overlapping part of a Venn diagram illustrates the similarities. The non-overlapping parts represent the differences.”.

As students become more familiar with interpreting different features, begin introducing more complex illustrations. For example, create a Venn diagram of different things that are alive, and what they have in common (see Principle 2 for how to help generate these).

Principle 4. Interleaved practice

Blocked practice – where you study one subtopic or type of problem for a single long block of time – can lead to confusion between similar content. For example, between:

  • different science concepts (e.g. gravity versus mass versus weight);
  • different math techniques (e.g. calculating perimeter versus area versus mass); and/or
  • different vocabulary (e.g. illusion versus allusion, compare versus contrast).

As we’ve discussed previously, “interleaved”  practice – where you mix up subtopics and different problem types – encourages comparison and contrast of content. (See Principle 2). It requires the student to understand when and how to apply the content (Rohrer, 2012).

 

How to do it

  • When teaching a new concept, e.g. in mathematics:
    • first, give several problems with the same formula. (This helps the student learn to apply the formula);
    • then, give a mix of math problems that need the student to decide which formula to use.
  • While studying/revising:
    • don’t spend your whole time on one type of problem. This encourages rote completion of the task rather than active engagement; and
    • instead, practice over several days and do a variety of questions each day. This helps the student learn to discriminate between problems. They also learn when to apply each concept.

 

Principle 5. Over-learning

When do you stop a study session? After one correct answer or three?

Research suggests that it all depends on how long you have left before the test!

“Overlearning” means studying more after the student has “mastered” the content (e.g. continuing to practice vocabulary after one correct response). “Overlearning” helps in the short-term, but the gains fade rapidly over time. So:

  • if there’s only one week until the test – overlearning appears to be beneficial. Cram away!
  • if the test is a longer time away – say more than three weeks – it may be more time efficient to move on to another concept. You can then revisit concepts after a break (see Principle 6).

 

Principle 6. Spaced Testing (spacing + testing combined) 

This is aimed at avoiding ‘forgetting’. It’s a combination of two evidence-based study tips:

  •  “Spacing”- revisiting concepts after a delay; and
  •  “Testing” – quizzing yourself on content, which is more beneficial than simply reviewing content.

In the main study cited below, the authors completed “Spaced Testing” by:

  • daily ‘warm-up’ questions; and
  • end-of-section quizzes, with questions from current and previous sections of the unit. (Notice how this also incorporates “Interleaving”- see Principle 5!).

 

Clinical Bottom Line

There’s a range of ways to support students with (and without) language disorders across STEM subjects. One way to help students is by applying cognitive science research principles. It’s likely that there is a cumulative impact to using these techniques together, rather than in isolation.

Related articles:

Key References:

Schunn, C. D., Newcombe, N. S., Alfieri, L., Cromley, J. G., Massey, C., & Merlino, J. F. (2018). Using principles of cognitive science to improve science learning in middle school: What works when and for whom? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 32(2), 225-240.

Alfieri, L., Nokes-Malach, T. J., & Schunn, C. D. (2013). Learning through case comparisons: A meta-analytic review. Educational Psychologist, 48(2), 87-113.

Rohrer, D. (2012). Interleaving helps students distinguish among similar concepts. Educational Psychology Review, 24(3), 355-367.

Rohrer, D., Taylor, K., Pashler, H., Wixted, J. T., & Cepeda, N. J. (2005). The effect of overlearning on long‐term retention. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19(3), 361-374.

Image: https://tinyurl.com/ybe4uofl

 

Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language

Brittany Richardson holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Neuroscience/Linguistics from the University of New South Wales. Brittany is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).

Brittany is Hanen-certified and trained in the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering. Brittany’s experience includes working in a community health setting to assess and treat a range of speech, language and fluency disorders in children. Brittany is particularly interested in speech sound disorders and early language development. Brittany sees clients at Banter Speech & Language on Thursdays and Fridays.

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, as well as all other suburbs of Sydney.

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

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

Putting theory into action

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

You just have to know where to look.

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

Free reading resources, activities and ideas 

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

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

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

Related articles:

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

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

Image: https://tinyurl.com/y7ufaan8

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).

10 great words to teach young high-schoolers (and why) – with brilliant free resources!

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Welcome to 2018, dear readers!

Over the last years, we’ve published hundreds of free articles, and ebooks summarising some of the latest research about speech, language, reading, stuttering, accent management and voice. You can access them all, anytime, on our new website.

This year, we’re committed to bringing you more free, Plain English, evidence-based information. But, this year, we’re going for something different.

Based on reader feedback, you’ll see fewer long articles covering theoretical academic debates in minute detail. You’ll see more short, sharp articles summarising practical strategies and tips you can implement at home, at school, or in your clinic.

So let’s get started!

Based on the terrific work of Dr Sarah Spencer and colleagues, here are 10 words we should teach young high-schoolers (12-14 year olds) and older children with language or reading difficulties.

1. Which words should you teach?

  • Interpret
  • Evaluate
  • Exclude
  • Sustain
  • Discriminate
  • Infer
  • Contribute
  • Generate
  • Summarise
  • Consult

 

2. Why these words?

All these words are:

  • cross-curriculum words. In other words, they are used in high school across multiple subjects. Cross-curriculum words are also known as “academic words” or “tier 2 words”. You can read more about these words, find out why they are so useful, and access longer words lists and other free resources here;
  • highly functional. They can be used in all sorts of places, with all sorts of people in the “real world”; and
  • verbs. Verbs are harder to learn than nouns, especially for children with language, learning or reading difficulties (e.g. Nash & Snowling, 2006).

To date, vocabulary interventions show that you can teach kids new words with lots of effort. But choosing the right words is really important because:

  • it takes lots of work for a child to learn a new word, especially if the child has language, learning or reading difficulties; and
  • learning a word doesn’t seem to automatically help a child learn other words (e.g. Snow et al., 2009).

 

3. How should the 10 words be taught?

  • Intensively: at least an hour a week, with home exercises between sessions.
  • Teach one word at a time, e.g. spend a teaching session talking only about “consult”.
  • Define the word explicitly (you can teach children to use a dictionary at the same time), e.g. “consult means to seek information or advice from, or to seek permission or approval from”.
  • Use lots of repetition, in lots of different contexts, e.g. you can consult a rulebook, the teacher, a school counselor, the principal, an umpire, a dictionary, Ikea instructions, a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a psychologist, a speech pathologist, an accountant, a weatherman/woman, a psychic (although not recommended!), Centrelink, the Department of Housing, a website, etc.
  • Teach to small groups (3-5 children) so they can work together and discuss the words based on their real world experiences.
  • Give children lots of opportunities to use the word in different ways.
  • Focus on different aspects of the word including the:
    • meaning of the word;
    • speech sounds and syllables that make up the word /kənsʌlt/, rhyming words (e.g. cult, adult, result);
    • grammatical role of the word, e.g. “consult is a verb” – it’s something you do;
    • morphology of the word, including the word origin (Latin meaning “take counsel”), its prefix (“con” meaning “with”) and root (“sult”, meaning to leap upon), as well as different word forms, e.g. consult, consults, consulted, consulting, consultant, consultation; and
    • spelling of the word (c-o-n-s-u-l-t).
  • Use activities the kids like to increase motivation and engagement (e.g. by consulting “experts” on YouTube or Reddit).
  • Act out the word (there is some evidence that miming an action while saying the word can help younger children to learn verbs e.g. Riches et al., 2005).
  • Give the kids personal challenges at the end of the session where they have to use and act out the word at home or out and about.

Final tip: when teaching kids new words, go for depth of word knowledge, rather than breadth.

 

4. Where can you find free resources to teach these words to young high-schoolers?

For more information and resources (including free lesson plans!), go to this wonderful, evidence-based website run by Dr Spencer, a Lecturer and Speech and Language Therapist at the Department for Human Communication Sciences, at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. Free lesson plans and resources for each of these 10 words can be found here.

 

5. How can you assess whether your high-schooler has learned the words properly?

Check out Dr Spencer’s Word Knowledge Profile here.

 

Clinical bottom line

Young teenagers at risk of school failure often have poor knowledge of cross-curriculum words like the 10 listed above. Knowing cross-curriculum words can be a big help at school and in life.  We should teach cross-curriculum words to teenagers, especially those at risk of school failure.  Thanks to the wonderful research and resources provided by Dr Spencer and her colleagues, we’re well equipped to teach at least 10 of these words.

Principal source: Spencer, S., Clegg, J., Lowe, H., Stackhouse, J. (2017). Increasing adolescents’ depth of understanding of cross-curriculum words: an intervention study. International Journal or Language and Communication Disorders, 52(5), 652-668. Abstract link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1460-6984.12309/abstract

Further reading and free resources:

Image: https://tinyurl.com/ybaufb2o

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).