[senco-forum] Y1 phonological awareness

Thank you so much for that Philip.  This is one I shall print off and keep.  Ally

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk on behalf of Philip MacMillan 
	Sent: Sun 01/10/2006 22:30 
	To: Anusianena at aol.com; maizie2004 at yahoo.co.uk; sfawcitt at dsl.pipex.com; senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk 
	Cc: 
	Subject: Re: [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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