Introduction
The following is an adaptation of Reading and Spelling Are Language Based Skills: Speech Pathology is a Language Based Profession, submitted to the Australian National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy by Speech Pathology Australia (2005).
We have extracted key points, simplified terminology and omitted more technical details with the aim of making the information easier to understand for clients and parents. We hope this helps to make the information about reading, reading difficulties and speech and language therapy accessible to more people.
For the full text, you may refer to:
Speech Pathology Australia. Reading and Spelling Are Language Based Skills: Speech Pathology is a Language Based Profession. Melbourne, Victoria, 2005. This article is available on the Speech Pathology Australia website.
Background information on language difficulties
Spoken and written language – what’s the connection?
Young children and speech difficulties
Older children and Specific Language Impairment (SLI)
Phonological awareness, phonics and early reading
Is phonological awareness the same as phonics?
Identifying children with potential language difficulties
At earlier stages
At later stages
Dyslexia (and other learning difficulties)
Intervention – is it really necessary or beneficial?
Ordinary classroom teaching practices
Why intervene?
Studies on the effectiveness of intervention
About speech therapy and what it can do
The speech language therapy profession
Identifying and analyzing language difficulties
The therapy process
What is speech?
The term ‘speech‘ refers to the physical production of the consonants and vowels which form the sounds of language. Children with speech disorders say these sounds incorrectly and can be difficult to understand in comparison to children their own age.
Three major types of speech difficulties involve:
Articulation: sound distortions, isolated sound difficulties and structural problems.
Phonology: rule based sound errors that affect related groups of sounds.
Dyspraxia: co-ordination and motor planning problems.
Background information on language difficulties
Spoken and written language – what’s the connection?
- Spoken language affects reading, which in turn affects learning in general.
- Children require a solid foundation in oral language before they can learn to read and write. A good speech processing system and a good awareness of different sounds are important for the early stages of reading and spelling.
-
Oral language abilities are critical in guiding children’s thinking and learning. These abilities include being able to put ideas into sentences, tell stories that make sense and understand what they hear and read.
-
Knowledge about vocabulary, word meanings, and concepts, is also critical in supporting literary development through the school years.
Young children and speech difficulties
- Because speech is a critical foundation for reading, spelling, and writing, children with speech difficulties are at risk of later having written language difficulties.
-
41% to 75% of children with early speech difficulties later exhibit reading problems at age 8.
-
Speech problems may not be a developmental stage that children naturally outgrow. In preschool children, it is often followed by language difficulties that persist through childhood into adolescence and beyond.
Older children and Specific Language Impairment (SLI)
- Young students with a history of SLI are seriously disadvantaged: 52% of students with ‘resolved’ SLI, and 93% of students with ‘unresolved’ SLI, continue to have language difficulties at adolescence.
-
Limitations in speech/language, reading, and writing are associated not only with poor classroom performance, but also difficulties in social language use, peer interactions, social-emotional and behavioural difficulties, and mental health.
-
This has a subsequent impact on career and life choices.
-
Early identification and intervention are important. Otherwise, many students with speech, language or phonological processing and awareness difficulties will be unable to develop literacy to the fullest of their learning potential.
Phonological awareness, phonics and early reading
Is phonological awareness the same as phonics?
- Phonological awareness is not to be confused with phonics.
– Phonological awareness involves the auditory skills (to process and analyse sounds) and the conceptual understanding that spoken language is comprised of a series of individual sounds.
- Phonological awareness skills include segmenting words into syllables (‘hearing’ syllables in a word), segmenting and identifying individual sounds in syllables (‘hearing’ individual sounds), recognising and producing syllables, recognizing and producing rhyming words, identifying individual sounds, blending sounds, and manipulating sounds.
-
Phonological awareness is critical in supporting early literacy development. One skill that builds upon phonological awareness is the ability to matching sounds to letters (and vice versa), which constitutes phonics.
– Phonics refers to the relationships between letters and the sounds.
Identifying children with potential language difficulties
- One of the most important predictors of literacy development is the status of the child’s oral language skills when he starts to read.
-
Many students with literacy difficulties have pre-existing speech difficulties. These affect vocabulary, comprehension, expressive language, and phonological awareness.
-
In a class setting, children often work hard to disguise their problems as a way of surviving socially and fitting in with peers. Language difficulties can be overlooked, or misunderstood as behavioural and/or social-emotional issues.
– Does your child show any of these signs that predict increased risk of literacy difficulties in children?
- speech disorders that are associated with specific phonological
- processing difficulties rather than a delay in speech development
- difficulty pronouncing longer words
- difficulties with receptive vocabulary
- difficulties with expressive vocabulary
- imprecise in speech patterns and vocabulary.
- difficulties with listening comprehension
- difficulties with using correct morphological markers (e.g. verb tense, plurals etc)
- difficulties with telling stories.
Dyslexia (and other learning difficulties)
Dyslexia is a reading and spelling problem that is not due to sensory or neurological damage, lack of educational opportunity, or low intelligence. But it is not the only reading difficulty.
Reading comprehension generally varies in 2 aspects: word recognition and listening comprehension.
Subtypes of reading difficulties:
Dyslexic: Difficulties in word recognition – learning to decode sounds in words, and developing a sight vocabulary – and having associated sound processing weaknesses (e.g. poor phonological
awareness). However, listening comprehension is generally intact.
Reading disabled: Difficulties with both word recognition (and phonetic decoding) as well as listening comprehension. Also known as ‘language-learning disabled’.
Specific listening comprehension difficulties: Demonstrate good word recognition skills, but poor at listening comprehension.
It is important to identify specifically what kind of problem each child has, and what factors are contributing to them, rather than treating all children with difficulties as one homogenous group. This
ensures more accurate goal setting and targeted teaching rather than the application of a generic remedial program.
Intervention – is it really necessary or beneficial?
Ordinary classroom teaching practices
- The ultimate goal of reading is to gain meaning from printed words.
-
A good teaching programme needs to address both the ‘technical’ know-how of reading (e.g. recognizing words) as well as the skills for processing words into meaning (e.g. vocabulary, comprehension).
-
Typically, we subconsciously use multiple strategies to read:
- some words are instantly recognized and converted to meaning
- some words’ meanings are guessed/predicted from what we already know
- unfamiliar words must be ‘decoded’
- understand the content of the text and integrating its meaning into a coherent story
- To fully develop these strategies, it is important to have skills in sound, word, and language recognition and manipulation.
Why intervene?
- Classroom teaching generally has a one-size-fits-all approach, and is unable to
address all the needs of all the students. Therefore some students may miss out on developing the necessary strategies. -
Due to the constraints of the classroom, teachers are seldom able to provide such focused attention to students needing more help.
-
Furthermore, teaching approaches do not specifically target the underlying causes and factors (e.g. learning disabilities) behind language difficulties.
-
Here is where speech language intervention (in the form of therapy) comes in. It supplements classroom teaching in order to address the specific needs of children, especially those encountering difficulties.
-
Intervention programmes also provide instruction that is much more explicit,
systematic and intensive than ordinary classroom teaching.
Studies on the effectiveness of intervention
- Studies have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention
programmes in different areas of language (e.g. phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, word recognition skills). -
There is powerful evidence to show that directly teaching phonemic awareness and phonics is effective.
-
Intervention programmes that incorporate both the phonological aspect and
meanings of language produce much better results than programmes that focus on only one of them. -
Programmes provided in instructional groups of three to four children are most effective.
About speech therapy and what it can do
The speech language therapy profession
- Speech language therapists are trained professionals with specialized knowledge and expertise in the area of sound awareness and oral language skills.
-
Their training combines research from medicine, neurology, psychology, linguistics, education and child development – providing them with a broad base of knowledge and experience.
-
Speech language therapists complete extensive study in oral language development and disorders in various areas of language.
-
They are trained to identify, assess, and manage children’s language skills, phonological awareness and processing capacity.
-
Speech language therapists have particular expertise in analyzing the sound system of language, and can conduct an assessment of speech competence and phonological awareness, which would enable them to identify children at risk of future literacy difficulties.
Identifying and analyzing language difficulties
- By assessing language and processing skills, therapists are able to identify children at risk of language difficulties very early on – before they start formal education, or even before parents start taking notice of the problems.
-
Analyse strengths and weaknesses of each child by conducting tests in these areas:
- expressive phonology
- short-term memory of sounds (e.g. sound repetition tasks)
- sound retrieval (e.g. rapid naming tasks)
- sentence syntax skills
- story-telling skills
- comprehension skills
- If it turns out that the child’s difficulties are due to problems with vision, hearing, mental processing, attention or intellect, the therapist can make the appropriate referrals.
-
After analyzing the child’s oral language skills and identified areas where work needs to be done, the therapist can plan a specifically targeted intervention (or prevention) programme.
The therapy process
- Direct work with children to improve language and literacy by carrying out a planned intervention program that specifically targets weak areas, e.g.
- speech development
- phonological awareness development
- sound processing skills
- meanings and vocabulary
- expressive skills (writing sentences or texts)
- comprehension
- Coming up with techniques to help children compensate for their difficulties.
-
Collaboration with parents, teachers, psychologists and others involved with the child’s education, in order to provide an effective teaching strategy targeting areas of need (rather than just repeating the same thing that is being done in class).
Our Contributor
The author, Ms Magan Chen brings with her more than 30 years of speech and language therapy experience in both private hospital and enrichment centre settings. This gives us exceptional understanding of our clients’ medical and/or school needs.
She has helped more than 1500 individuals to overcome their communication or learning difficulties.
Ms. Magan Chen trained in London, U.K. (M.Sc. Human Communication) and Sydney, Australia (B. App. Sc. in Speech Pathology).
Magan is a registered Certified Practising Speech Language Pathologist (CPSP) with the Speech Pathology Australia.
She is also the founding President and a registered member of Speech-Language and Hearing Association Singapore (SHAS, the professional body representing Speech Language Therapists in Singapore.
Magan has been interviewed and featured in various newspapers and magazines such as Young Parents Magazine, The Straits Times & The New Paper.
Together with Magan, our team of competent and caring speech language therapists and teachers help hundreds of individuals improve their ability to communicate and have more say in life.
If you would like to see a highly experienced speech language therapist / pathologist for an initial consultation, please call us at (65) 6386-7532.
Our Website
LeoMagan.com promotes sharing of valuable speech, language development & speech therapy information. Our website provides valuable original Information (FAQ, articles) on child speech / language development, speech therapy, communication skills, reading and learning contributed by educational / medical professionals and related parent stories.
We have added a Speech Therapy FAQ page on what is speech therapy, who is a speech therapist / pathologist and who needs speech therapy.
We welcome contribution from individuals, parents and teachers. If you would like to share your story, please click here to go to our blog.