[senco-forum] Y1 phonological awareness

To properly understand reading development requires some knowledge of how we
produce and perceive speech as print is spoken and heard speech put on
paper. The Motor Theory of Speech Perception explains much of the findings
from research in the area of speech perception and production and also
through the connections between print and speech much of reading
difficulties, see Liberman (1997) for a concise explication of the Motor
theory or type into Google John Skoyles who is another good source of
information on the same subject.  Briefly the Motor Theory holds that speech
is perceived and processed not on the basis of acoustic parameters as might
be thought (good old common? sense) but on the basis of manner and place of
articulation (where and how it is made, for example voiced / unvoiced /
affricative / plosive / nasal etc.) so when you deal with incoming speech
your speech production mechamism is working out what it would have to do to
make the same sounds but at the neurological level before muscle movements
are invoked else it would be far too slow and confusing, just try orally
shadowing incoming speech you will find that your comprehension will all but
disappear and you will start falling behind .  In short speech is perceived
throught the mechanisms of its production.   The Motor Theory fits much of
the empirical data from speech production and perception research.  Nature
as always is economical and it is a fact that there are fewer sources of
difference between speakers in terms of articulatory cues and processes than
in  terms of the acoustic cues and processes.  We all make the same sounds
in the same ways even though acoustically they might differ (gender, age,
size accent etc.) this is why you have to teach your speech recogntion
programme to recognize your voice and even then it keeps getting it wrong,
three year olds do not.

The evidence from speech development is that segmenting is easier than
blending, if you say the word the motor programme involved has already
executed and there will be some residual feedback available from this
process to the speaker, all hearing speakers monitor their speech by the
synchrony between what their mouths are doing and what their ears are
hearing, each speaker is also a listener to themselves, introduce a 50 - 250
miilisecond delay between what is said and what is heard and speech will
deteriorate and disappear very rapidly).

We perceive and produce speech in syllables not phonemes but our writing
system is based on the phoneme so phonological awareness and the capacity to
discriminate and categorize speech sounds at the level of the phoneme is a
sine qua non of literacy development but not in speech development and
children have been dealing with spoken and heard speech for five years or so
before they are introduced to print.  The problem for some beginning readers
is that the phonemes are co- articulated within the syllable and this makes
it diffiicult for those individuals to easily identify the boundaries so
that they can then map them to the grapheme.  It is children with this type
of difficulty who may have problems in dealing with phonic drill type
exercises and approaches such as synthetic phonics and Toe by Toe.  So
before The Man From The Ministry sends THEM after me, most children will
learn well enough with synthetic phonics.  The trick is to identify those
who will have difficulties in phonemic analysis and teach then via explicit
analytic phonics but as they have displayed problems when working with
another's voice (else they would not be having problems with synthetic
phonics) then why not teach them through the medium of their own voice, that
way they do not have to translate the incoming voice and also have access to
all the sources of feedback from their own voice making the word / syllable
/ phoneme.  It may be this simple trick that will allow them to absorb the
idea that words and syllables are made up from phonemes by getting them to
pay close attention to what their voice is doing when they speak.  Remember
also that the child will be listening to his/ her bone conducted voice but
to your air conducted voice and trying to match the two this may make it
difficult for him to monitor his speech in same way as you do as you are
dealing with his /her air voice which is very different from their bone
voice and it is the bone voice that is used to monitor speech, an example of
the presence of the bone voice may be found in second langauge learning, you
may well think that your accent is fine as you are monitoring it from the
inside as it were whereas the listener is hearing a very different set of
sounds, this is why langauge lab gear is twin track so that you can hear
your air voice and match it against the teacher's model.   Speech is a skill
acquired simply through exposure to adult models of speech, reading and
writing are unnatural and need to be explicity taught and it requires much
effort on the part of the learner to do this, those with problems in the
discrimination and categorization of speech sounds will find it even harder.
If you want more detail on working with the child's own voice contact me off
list.

Philip EP

Refs

Liberman A.M. (1997) "How Theories of Speech Affect Research in Reading and
Writing"  In Benita Blachman (Ed.) Foundations of Reading Acqusition and
Dyslexia. Mahwah NJ. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Anusianena at aol.com>
To: <maizie2004 at yahoo.co.uk>; <sfawcitt at dsl.pipex.com>;
<senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2006 8:44 PM
Subject: Re: [senco-forum] Y1 phonological awareness

>
> The problem with asking for help in a 2-line email is that of course I
> cannot go into everything that has been done before or is being done now.
>
> I just wanted some advice along the lines of "well, when we had some
> children with these difficulties we tried "x" and it really helped" - and
many
> thanks to those of you who came back with really practical suggestions -
you are
> all worth your weight in gold!
>
> Sorry, I don't have the energy to go into great detail - we use largely JP
> in reception.  Why should we want to confuse children about the process of
> reading?  "Work on them" is precisely what we are trying to do.  Using
whole
> word strategies we are trying to give them alternatives as their
phonological
> skills are very poor.  We will continue to work to develop  these - of
course.
>
> They do not "get" the word when we try saying the phonemes more  rapidly.
> Did you ever hear that clip from a radio quiz show where the  answer was
> "potato" and the DJs told the contestant to blend "pot - 8 - toe" and  she
simply
> could not do it - it was very funny to listen to but no matter how  fast
she
> tried to say it, she could not hear the blended word.  Well,  likewise our
> children - they just repeat the sounds faster and faster, but  phonemes
remain
> discrete.
>
> Just hoping someone will share ideas that have worked for them.
>
> Thank you.
>
>
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