Letter-sound Correspondences Research Articles

The Aesthetic Dimension of Reading: An Embodied-Ecological Approach

This paper aims at integrating insights from ecological psychology, pragmatism, and embodied cognitive science to shed light on the aesthetic dimension underlying daily activities. For this purpose, we discuss conceptions of the aesthetic developed by authors from diverse traditions, including Dewey’s pragmatism, Carroll’s cognitivism, and Saito’s everyday aesthetics. We focus on the activity of reading, which has traditionally been conceived as involving the establishment of letter-sound correspondences and the rule-based deduction of information. However, an embodied framework opens up a more ecological understanding of this activity encompassing dynamic, multimodal perceptual engagement which is dependent on: (i) who the reader is (ii) the task or purpose, and (iii) what the person-environment-system affords. This form of engagement, even in mundane everyday-reading, we argue, brings forth an aesthetic dimension to it. Specifically, we explore how bodily engagement such as olfactory, tactile, and prosodic processes, saturate even logical judgements and reasoning. This integration of embodied and aesthetic processes in a particular context, we claim, can effectively emphasise and cultivate an aesthetic attitude. This, in turn, will provide insight into how the aesthetic dimension of reading can be cultivated intelligently, enriching the overall experience and will also illuminate why we read at all.

To what extent are sacred language practices ultralingual? The experience of British Muslim children learning Qur’anic Arabic

This article draws on qualitative data from a study of young Muslims learning Qur’anic Arabic in the UK to reveal how they engage in sacred language practices that I choose to call ‘ultralingual’. Such practices inevitably foreground linguistic form and performance over meaning, at least in the referential sense. Observable in many faith contexts, the ability to acquire a certain proficiency in an invariably ancient sacred language and then participate, actively and passively, in a range of ritual acts is demonstrated by millions of children globally. Usually attending supplementary forms of education, such children learn to access the code of their respective faiths (e.g., Qur’anic Arabic for Muslims and Biblical Hebrew for Jews) through, usually, a traditional learning approach based initially on systematic instruction in sound-letter correspondences which eventually develops into secure decoding proficiency. An important characteristic of this language practice is the ambivalent role of referential meaning. Often, performers, whether in recitation or in the words uttered in prayers, have partial or no access to the meaning of the words they utter. This article calls this ‘ultralingualism’, a language phenomenon that occurs also in non-religious contexts such as vocal music and multilingual literacy mediation, but which is particularly apparent in faith practices which centre on an ancient text and its language. The young Muslims in this article, however, do not take part in meaningless activities. Much sacred language practice (and some co-sanctified language practice) happens ultralingually, that is, form is emphasised over referential meaning. Evidence in this article argues that such ultralingual practices are accompanied nevertheless by layers of meaning often unrelated to referential or lexical meaning.

수정된 그림책과 명시적 교수법을 활용한 보완대체의사소통 중재가 중도･중복장애중학생의 초기 문해력에 미치는 효과

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects AAC interventions with adapted books and explicit instructions on the early literacy(print concepts, phoneme awareness, and letter-sound correspondence) of middle school students with severe and multiple disabilities. The research participants include three middle school students with severe and multiple disabilities who had difficulties with communicating in spoken or written language and required an AAC system. Under the goal of investigating the effects of AAC interventions with adapted books and explicit instructions on the print concepts, phoneme awareness, and letter-sound correspondence of middle school students with severe and multiple disabilities - the study analyzed changes to their early literacy in a multiple probe baseline design across behaviors. A total of 38 to 48 sessions were implemented through the stages of baseline, intervention, generalization, and maintenance over four months with a 40-minute session occurring five times a week. Explicit instruction including the least-most prompt strategies was implemented. The adapted books and AAC symbols were helpful for the students in understand print concepts, phoneme awareness, and letter-sound correspondence activities – bring about positive changes. The results of this study will provide an abundance information on modified picture books and early literacy interventions for students with severe and multiple disabilities who require AAC.

A Prospectus for Bilingual Early Reading Instruction

In this paper, we describe a framework for bilingual decoding instruction, with a call for collaborators. Decoding is the ability to apply knowledge of letter-sound correspondences to pronounce words. We adopt a standard phonological approach for early instruction that could be expanded to include practice with constructive morphemes, like prefixes and suffixes, and reading for meaning. Decades of research have shown that word decoding is a bottleneck in reading comprehension. Unless children develop sight-word reading capabilities, comprehension of texts is severely hampered. The present approach draws on children’s spoken vocabulary knowledge in their native language as a bridge to decoding in a second language. The goal is to develop a tutoring system that draws on current and forthcoming multimedia technologies, and to implement the system in multilingual countries, e.g.: USA, India, Ukraine and across national borders. As a starting point, the authors will use a web platform https://ethicalengineer.ttu.edu designed in 2017 by the USA, Indian, and Ukrainian collaborators, several of them being co-authors of this paper, as a model for the new website for reading instruction. The Ethical Engineer website demonstrates one mechanism through which instructors can reach out to establish connections within and outside their native country around topics and issues of common interest and support educator cooperation and research development. The new model hopes to achieve success comparable to that of the EthicalEngineer. Using computer-based instruction allows for empirical testing of teaching methods, thereby optimizing the educational process. It is important to take advantage of this to ensure the most effective methods are used in early reading instruction for children. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Reading intervention for students with intellectual disabilities without functional speech who require augmentative and alternative communication: a multiple single-case design with four randomized baselines

BackgroundLiteracy is one of the most important skills a students can achieve, as it provides access to information and communication. Unfortunately, literacy skills are not easily acquired, especially for students with intellectual disabilities who require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). There are many barriers to literacy acquisition, some due to low expectations from parents and teachers and lack of evidence-based reading programs and reading materials adapted for AAC. Barriers as a result of extensive support needs is also a real factor. This trial aims to deliver reading instructions to 40 students with intellectual disabilities who require AAC and contribute in the debate on how to best support this population through reading instructions to maximizes their reading skills.MethodologyForty non-verbal or minimally verbal students (age 6–14) with intellectual disabilities who require AAC will be part of a reading intervention with a multiple single-case design with four randomized baselines. The intervention period will last for 18 months and will commence in March 2023. The students will receive the intervention in a one-to-one format, working systematically with a reading material that contains phonological awareness and decoding tasks based on the Accessible Literacy Learning (ALL) developed by Janice Light and David McNaughton. All the teachers will be trained to deliver the reading intervention.DiscussionThe reading material “Lesing for alle” (Reading for all) is based on and follow the strategies behind the research of ALL. The current trial will through a reading intervention contribute to move beyond only teaching sight words and combine several reading components such as sound blending, letter-sound correspondence, phoneme segmentation, shared reading, recognition of sight words, and decoding. The strategies and methods in use is built on the existing science of reading, especially what has been effective in teaching reading for students with intellectual disabilities who require AAC. There is limited generalizability of prior findings in reading-related phonological processing interventions to different populations of them who use AAC specially outside of the USA. More research is needed to understand how programs designed to improve reading skills across other settings understand the program’s long-term effects and to study the effectiveness when delivered by educators who are not speech language therapists or researchers.Trial registrationNCT05709405. Registered 23 January 2023.

Letter-sound knowledge in Icelandic children at the age 6 years-old

The aim of this study was to examine letter-sound knowledge when children start at school in Iceland. 392 children aged 5–6 years completed assessments of letter-sound knowledge, i.e., the names and sounds of uppercase and lowercase letters of the Icelandic alphabet (uppercase letter-name; uppercase letter-sound; lowercase letter-name; lowercase letter-sound). Whether the child had broken the reading code (could read words) was also recorded. The results revealed no significant difference between girls and boys in the four factors (letter name, letter sound). The results indicated that 56.9 % of the children had broken the reading code when they started school. 58.2 % of the girls and 55.6 % of the boys, not significant difference between the genders. There was a significant difference between the group which had broken the reading code and the group which have not in all the four factors. There was also a high significant correlation between all 4 variables from 0.915 between uppercase letter and lowercase sound to 0.963 between uppercase sounds and uppercase letter.Based on these data, it seems reasonable to advocate learning letter-sound correspondences early in the first year of school to form the best possible basis for breaking the reading code and further reading development.

Effect of the written language awareness activity on written language awareness, understanding of letter-sound correspondence, and reading interest among preschoolers

본 연구에서는 문자언어인식활동이 3세 유아의 문자언어인식, 글자-음절 대응관계 이해 및 읽기 흥미에 미치는 영향을 알아보고자 하였다. 본 연구의 대상은 전라북도 J시에 소재한 유치원의 3세 2학급 유아 30명이다. 연구도구는 김영실(1996)이 번안하여 수정한 WLAT, 윤혜경(1997a)의 글자-음절 대응관계 이해 검사, 그리고 임원신(1993)이 번안한 PPRAI를 사용하였다. 본 연구에서는 문헌연구를 근거로 문자언어인식에 초점을 맞추어 연구자가 고안한 문자언어인식활동을 1주에 2회씩 10주간 총 20회 실시하였다. 문자언어인식활동은 글자 기능 및 형태에 관심 갖기, 글자 활용하기, 글자 활용 결과물 공유하기의 3단계로 구성되어있다. 연구 결과, 문자언어인식활동이 3세 유아의 문자언어인식, 글자-음절 대응관계 이해 및 읽기 흥미에 긍정적인 영향을 미친 것으로 나타났다. 본 연구는 문자언어인식활동을 위한 체계적인 교수모형을 제시하고, 유아교육현장에서 적용할 수 있는 구체적인 자료를 제공하였다는 데 의의가 있다.

The effect of the simultaneous Prompting–Constant time delay instructional sequence on the teaching of early academic skills to students with intellectual disabilities

This study investigated the effectiveness of combining simultaneous prompting (SP) and constant time delay (CTD) (hereafter SP–CTD instructional sequence) in teaching early academic skills to five students with intellectual disabilities (ID). A multiple-probe design was used to examine the functional relationship between the SP and CTD instructional sequence and the acquisition of letter–sound correspondences and number recognition. The results showed the effectiveness of the procedure, as all students acquired their target skills in 7–12 sessions, with an average error rate of 8%. Maintenance effects were assessed at 2, 6, and 10 weeks after the intervention to measure participants’ retention of these acquired skills. Three students preserved their skills with 100% accuracy, while two students did so with more than 90% accuracy. The data indicate that instruction consisting of probe trials, 0-s trials, and 5-s trials leads to improvements in early academic skills among students with ID.

Multisensory Interactive Digital Text for English Phonics Instruction with Bilingual Beginning Readers

We investigated a technology-based tool for teaching English letter-sound correspondences with bilingual children learning phonologically and typologically distant languages: English and Chinese. We expect that learning about print at the phoneme level may be particularly challenging, given children’s experience with the morphosyllabic language of Chinese. This randomized-controlled study with 90 kindergarteners examined the effects of an iPad-based supplementary reading program compared with a control condition. The See Word Reading® program utilized picture-embedded cues for teaching phonics within lessons directed at the letter, word, and text levels. Measures of decoding, word reading, and spelling were taken at the pretest, posttest, and follow-up for both groups. Results showed better gains in word reading for the reading group, indicating the positive impact of this supplementary reading tool. Further, data collected online from the app showed that different types of letter-sound pairings were more challenging to learn, including pairings that are inconsistent and with phonemes that are specific to English.

Effects of adapted Letter-Sound correspondence instruction with older learners with complex communication needs and autism spectrum disorder

Individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) are often excluded from learning literacy skills that use phonological approaches due to challenges with verbal production of speech sounds. This study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of systematic literacy instruction with materials modified to teach letter-sound correspondences (LSC) to pre-adolescent and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) with minimal or no speech who use AAC. A single subject design across three letter-sound sets was used, with three individuals with ASD. A total of 12 LSC were targeted in the intervention. During the intervention, the participants were instructed using model, guided, and independent practice trials using low-tech letter tiles followed by two extension activities: letter sorting and initial letter-sound picture books. A functional relationship was established between the LSC intervention and the percent of correct responses on the LSC assessment probes. Very large and large effects sizes were calculated for all participants across the three LSC sets. The study adds to the very limited research base related to phonics instruction for older learners (ages 9 to 18) with ASD, demonstrating that LSC progress can still be made at an older age with systematic instruction.

FORMATION OF CHINESE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIVE AND RECEPTIVE SKILLS DURING THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE TEACHING

The article deals with the need to form the perceptive and receptive basis skills during the Ukrainian language teaching of foreign students at the ABC stage, since these skills are the foundation for the development of all types of speech activity. The authors have analyzed some problems faced by both Chinese students and teachers of Ukrainian as a foreign language, including those related to the perception peculiarity of the Ukrainian language by the Chinese students. In order to understand the causes of difficulties for students from China during the learning of the Ukrainian language, some differences between the Ukrainian and Chinese languages related to their origin, sound system, and writing have been considered. Special attention is focused on the differences observed in the phonetics of the two languages, in particular in the system of vowel and consonant sounds and the structure of syllables, because differences in the writing system and syllable structure, as well as the presence or absence of certain sounds in the languages are the cause of those difficulties and mistakes, which Chinese students can have while they are perceiving and pronouncing the Ukrainian sounds. In this article some most common pronunciation and accent mistakes in the Chinese students’ speech are analyzed, the causes of these mistakes are indicated, and also some ways to prevent their occurrence are offered: explaining the difference in the formation of problem sounds, using auxiliary sounds, fixing speech units in the written form, which contributes to the consolidation in the students’ memory of formed listening and pronunciation skills and the creation of sound-letter correspondences. The authors have proved the extreme importance of teaching foreigners who study the Ukrainian language the phonetic aspect of speech, because not only the success of learning the material and the psychological comfort of studying in a group with Ukrainian-speaking students depends on how well-formed auditory and speaking abilities and skills are, but also in general the quality of the acquired education. Key words: perceptive and receptive skills, types of speech activity, phonetics of the Ukrainian and Chinese languages, system of vowel and consonant sounds, structure of syllables, speech mistakes.

Online Training to Improve Service Provider Implementation of Letter-Sound Correspondence Instruction for Individuals Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication.

Service providers have limited training in adapting and implementing literacy instruction for individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), and therefore, opportunities to participate in phonological-based literacy activities are minimal. An online training was developed to teach service providers how to implement a systematic lesson in letter-sound correspondence (LSC) instruction with high fidelity for individuals who use AAC. The Active Implementation Framework was used to guide the investigation of implementation fidelity and intervention effectiveness after service provider completion of an online training in LSC instruction. Study 1 trained five speech-language pathologists, one paraeducator, and six special educators in schools (N = 12), and Study 2 trained four speech-language pathology master's students. Single case across participant methodology was used for both studies with an implementation fidelity checklist to measure changes in instructional behaviors. Additionally, social validity data from service providers were collected. Preliminary data on intervention effectiveness for individuals who use AAC were collected for three LSCs after service providers were trained. Prior to the online training, service providers implemented LSC instruction with low fidelity. After the training, 11 service providers in Study 1 and all four speech-pathology master's students in Study 2 demonstrated large gains in implementation fidelity. Eight of the nine individuals who use AAC demonstrated improvement in LSC. Access to the online training has the potential to change the implementation behavior of service providers and take steps toward closing the research-to-practice gap surrounding early phonological skill acquisition for individuals who use AAC. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.19400741.

A large-scale investigation of white matter microstructural associations with reading ability

Reading involves the functioning of a widely distributed brain network, and white matter tracts are responsible for transmitting information between constituent network nodes. Several studies have analyzed fiber bundle microstructural properties to shed insights into the neural basis of reading abilities and disabilities. Findings have been inconsistent, potentially due to small sample sizes and varying methodology. To address this, we analyzed a large data set of 686 children ages 5–18 using state-of-the-art neuroimaging acquisitions and processing techniques. We searched for associations between fractional anisotropy (FA) and single-word and single-nonword reading skills in children with diverse reading abilities across multiple tracts previously thought to contribute to reading. We also looked for group differences in tract FA between typically reading children and children with reading disabilities. FA of the white matter increased with age across all participants. There were no significant correlations between overall reading abilities and tract FAs across all children, and no significant group differences in tract FA between children with and without reading disabilities. There were associations between FA and nonword reading ability in older children (ages 9 and above). Higher FA in the right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) and left inferior cerebellar peduncle (ICP) correlated with better nonword reading skills. These results suggest that letter-sound correspondence skills, as measured by nonword reading, are associated with greater white matter coherence among older children in these two tracts, as indexed by higher FA.

The Developmental Change of Print‐Tuned N170 in Highly Transparent Writing Systems1

AbstractRapid and implicit letter‐to‐sound conversion is a remarkable ability that develops during school years, which is reflected in the left lateralization of the print‐tuned N170 event‐related potential. Previous studies have shown that elementary school children learning alphabetic scripts elicit bilateral N170, which reflects their underdeveloped phonological conversion processing. However, children learning Japanese hiragana, which has better letter–sound correspondence compared with alphabetic scripts, may acquire the automatic phonological conversion in the early stages of learning to read. To test this notion, we investigated the developmental change of the print‐tuned N170 by comparing 4th–6th grade elementary school children with college students. Participants were required to detect infrequent blue stimuli among a series of black‐colored hiragana words, nonwords, and foreign letter strings. College students showed typical left‐lateralized N170. In contrast, children elicited bilateral N170 for print stimuli, indicating that the implicit phonological conversion was still not established. The finding suggests that the automatization of letter‐to‐sound conversion requires a relatively long learning period even in orthographically transparent scripts.

A Computerized Syllable-Based Intervention for French-Speaking Children with Down Syndrome: What Effects on Reading Skills?

The aim of this research was to provide to eight children with Down Syndrome a syllable-processing software program that drew their attention to phonological and orthographic syllables. The children participated in a 10-hour training course (spread over 5 weeks) that used an experimental design with four assessment sessions, the first two of which were used to obtain a baseline in literacy skills. The effect of training was assessed just after training and two months later. A significant effect on decoding was observed at medium term after training. All children progressed in at least one domain, either in phonological skills, in decoding, or in word reading. Four children progressed in decoding and word reading. This study confirms the appropriateness of using phonetic approaches to reading instruction in order to stimulate learning to read in children with Down Syndrome. The syllable-based training facilitates the construction of associations between letters and syllables—the “syllabic bridge”—and could be a faster and easier way to learn letter-sound correspondences in French.

Personalized Early AAC Intervention to Build Language and Literacy Skills

Personalized augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention refers to an approach in which intervention is tailored to the individual's needs and skills, the needs and priorities of the individual's family and other social environments, the evidence base, and the individual's response to intervention. This approach is especially relevant to AAC intervention for young children with complex communication needs given their unique constellations of strengths and challenges, and the qualitative and quantitative changes that they experience over time as they develop, as well as the diversity of their families, schools, and communities. This article provides detailed documentation of personalized AAC intervention over a 6-month period for a 3-year-old girl with developmental delay and complex communication needs. The article describes (1) personalization of multimodal AAC supports to provide this child with the tools to communicate; (2) personalized intervention to build semantic and morphosyntactic skills; and (3) personalized instruction in literacy skills (i.e., letter sound correspondences, sound blending, decoding, sight word recognition, reading simple stories, reading comprehension, and encoding skills). Specific goals, instructional materials, and procedures are described; data on speech, language, and literacy outcomes are presented.

Introducing phonics to learners who struggle: content and embedded cognitive elements

A brief experiment was designed to examine cognitive flexibility practice embedded in beginning phonics instruction for kindergarteners with limited early literacy learning. Previously tested phonics content included single- and high-frequency two-letter grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs), introduced at a rate of 2–4 correspondences per week. Children entered with minimal alphabet knowledge and were randomly assigned within classrooms, stratified by English Learner status, to one of two conditions delivered individually over 6 weeks: plain explicit phonics (n = 35) or Flex instruction (n = 33) which covered the same Plain phonics content but with teaching tasks for practice switching letter or word dimensions. Results showed that kindergarteners in the Plain condition made significantly greater gains on tasks of writing taught letter-sound correspondences and spelling. Findings inform a rate for introducing letter-sound correspondences and learning of mixed-size GPCs. The Plain explicit phonics focus on initial accuracy had benefits for encoding taught letter correspondences. Findings support future research on effective tasks to develop reading-related cognitive flexibility in beginners, the optimal timing of this practice, and whether it benefits in particular those children most at risk for acquiring this foundational alphabetic knowledge.

An eye-tracking study of letter-sound correspondence in Japanese-speaking 2- to 3-year-old toddlers

Although the acquisition of letter-sound correspondences is a critical step in reading development, how and when children develop such correspondence remains relatively unexplored. In this study, we focused on Japanese hiragana letters to examine the implicit letter-sound correspondence using an eye-tracking technique for 80 Japanese-speaking toddlers. The results showed that 32- to 48-month-olds (but not 24- to 32-month-olds) directed their gaze at the target letter. An additional experiment on a letter-reading task showed that 32- to 40-month-olds could barely read the presented hiragana letters. These findings suggest that toddlers have already begun to grasp implicit letter-sound correspondences well before actually acquiring the ability to read letters.

Um breve histórico da escrita Mundurukú

Este estudo descreve três momentos que marcaram a formação e a evolução da ortografia da língua Mundurukú (Tupí). O percurso histórico mostra que, até recentemente, a função principal da escrita na comunidade eram os ensinamentos religiosos. Um dos primeiros textos escritos na língua foi um catecismo, produzido no início do século XX, de autoria de Frei Hugo Mense, missionário franciscano. A constituição de um alfabeto unicamente Mundurukú ocorreu somente na década de 1960, proposto por missionárias do SIL. É nesse momento que a escrita começa a se tornar uma ferramenta de ensino-aprendizagem da língua materna, porém ainda de forma secundária. Pouco tempo depois o alfabeto passou por uma revisão e alguns grafemas foram alterados, buscando-se alcançar uma semelhança maior com os grafemas da Língua Portuguesa. A análise das correspondências grafofonêmicas mostra que a função atribuída à escrita foi determinante para a escolha de quais características do Mundurukú falado deveriam ou não ser representados graficamente, e como essas escolhas impactaram o ensino da língua na educação local.

The Role of Paired Associate Learning in Acquiring Letter-Sound Correspondences: A Longitudinal Study of Children at Family Risk for Dyslexia

ABSTRACT Visual-verbal-paired associate learning (PAL) is strongly related to reading acquisition, possibly indexing a distinct cross-modal mechanism for learning letter-sound associations. We measured linguistic abilities (nonword repetition, vocabulary size) longitudinally at 3.5 and 4.0 years, and visual-verbal PAL and letter knowledge at 4.0 and 4.5 years, in pre-reading children either at family risk for dyslexia (N = 27) or not (N = 25). Only nonword repetition predicted individual differences in later letter-sound knowledge, and PAL did not make a cross-sectional nor a longitudinal contribution. The data show a continuous relationship between linguistic processing abilities and letter-sound learning, with no independent role for PAL.