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Encouraging Pre-Literacy Skills
IN CHILDREN WITH SPEECH AND LANGUAGE DISORDERS
 Copyright © 1998 Caroline Bowen
This page contains an article about early literacy acquisition. Cite it as:
Bowen, C. (1998). Encouraging pre-literacy skills in children with speech and  language disorders. Retrieved from http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/pre-literacy.html on (date).
 
Speech and language disorders and literacy
Children with developmental phonological disorders have difficulty learning and organising all the sounds needed for clear speech, reading and spelling. Children with specific language impairments (SLI) have difficulty learning to comprehend and use spoken and written language. Children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) have a difficulty with motor planning and programming for speech (praxis), sometimes combined with linguistic problems such as those observed in developmental phonological disorders and specific language impairment.

Some children who have had speech pathology intervention, and who have apparently overcome their developmental phonological disorder, specific language impairment or Childhood Apraxia of Speech, in that their speech is quite all right, have difficulty learning to read (Leitao, Hogben & Fletcher, 1997).  Many of these children are slow to acquire the pre-literacy skills that are a necessary foundation for learning to read fluently, understand what they have read, and spell. This is because they have poor phonological awareness in particular, and poor metalinguistic skills generally.

What is phonological awareness?
Phonological awareness is the ability to recognise and manipulate the sounds and syllables used to compose words.

What is metalinguistic ability?
Metalinguistic ability is the capacity to think about and talk about language.

Who are the activities for?
Except where otherwise stated, the following activities are intended for 

  1. children with 'mental ages' of 4 or 5, with signs of 'reading readiness' who have had developmental phonological disorders as three and four year olds, and who seem "late" with reading and spelling in their first year or two at school;

  2. children with specific language impairment (SLI);

  3. children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS); and,

  4. children with a combination of these disorders.

About the Activities
The activities are aimed at developing opportunities for metalinguistic discovery, with the aim of encouraging the child to think about, and talk about language, especially at a phonological (speech sound) level.

Some of the activities are suitable for simplification for children under 4, or adaptation by teachers (who will find them very familiar) for small-group work at school. Some of the activities can be done at home, one to one with an adult, or as games the whole family may be able to participate in. The materials required to implement the activities include children’s picture and story books, and picture cards representing speech sounds and minimally contrasted word pairs.

Examples of word pairs that might be used are listed at the end of this article. Note, that in each case, when they are spoken, the words differ by only one (consonant) sound. Paste a picture of each of the words onto a card, and print the word, in lower case, under the picture. Children often enjoy becoming involved in making home-made card games such as these.
 
1. Activities to nurture pre-literacy skills
  1. The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children. This is especially so during the pre-school years. (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott & Wilkinson, 1985) 
  2. Expose children to "literacy materials" (picture books, story books, alphabet books, activity books, card games such as snap, word games such as ‘I spy’, learning words of songs and rhymes, etc) as early as possible. 
  3. Read to children daily (books they enjoy, and that you enjoy reading). 
  4. Read to yourself in the presence of your children. Let them see that reading can be both a pleasurable and a useful thing to be able to do. 
  5. Encourage "print recognition" in everyday situations (e.g., reading labels such as ‘McDonalds’, and signs such as ‘STOP’ and ‘WALK’). 
  6. Ask children Wh-questions about what you are reading to them (e.g., What is the boy’s name? Where are they going? Who did they see?).  
  7. Encourage children to make inferences about what is being read to them (e.g., ‘Who will they ask to help them?’ ‘What’s going to happen, do you think?). 
  8. Encourage children’s interest in numbers and letters. 
  9. Encourage children to ask questions about books, stories and pictures. 
  10. Do ‘cloze sentences’ when you read to children, in which the child says the next word in a familiar phrase (e.g., ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a ...; 'Jack and Jill went up the..."; ‘Once upon a time there were three little ...). 
  11. Do not force children who are not keen to listen to stories. Try to find books and activities that are of interest to them. Sometimes children who are not interested in a range of children’s books intended for their age-group will be motivated to listen to stories about movie and TV characters (e.g., Power Rangers, Thomas the Tank Engine, Batman, Teletubbies), or books related to their interests (e.g., books about Barbie dolls and fairies, books about trains and trucks).
 
2. Activities to foster phonetic awareness
 There is ample experimental evidence that problems in phonological awareness are a significant contributing factor to early reading disabilities (Bird, Bishop & Freeman, 1995; Bishop & Adams, 1990; Bowen, 1996; Fey, Catts & Larrivee, 1995). The following suggestions are adapted from Catts (1991)
  1. Use nursery rhymes, songs and finger plays to introduce the early stages of awareness of speech sounds.
  2. Engage in ‘sound play’ activities such as creating sequences of rhyming or alliterative words.
  3. Perform rhyme, alliteration and sound-judgement tasks (e.g., Which words start with the same sounds?).
  4. Do sound segmentation and blending tasks (e.g., ‘Which sound does ball start with?’; ‘What does C-A-T say?’).
  5. Have fun with sound manipulation games (e.g., word-games such as creating new words by substituting sounds or syllables such as tall, Paul, fall; low-slow; inside-outside).
 
3. Activities to develop phonological awareness

Sound effect - picture associations
The aim is to teach your child to associate speech sounds (e.g., ‘ss’, ‘sh’, ‘zz’, ‘ch’) with named picture cues. For example, the speech sound ‘sh’ might be associated with a picture of a person with their finger to their lips, and the name ‘be-quiet sound’. The materials needed are pictures representing sound-effects (e.g., a picture of a train to associate with the sound ‘ch’, representing a "choo-choo" sound-effect; a picture of someone with a finger to their lips to associate with the sound ‘shh’).

  1. Teach your child to point to the picture associated with the sound you say (e.g., you say ‘ss’ and the child points to a picture of a snake).
  2. Teach your child to say the sound associated with the picture you display (e.g., you show them a picture of a buzzy bee, and they say ‘zz’).
  3. Play games involving listening to the sounds in words (e.g., "Listen to me say these words...’in’ did you hear a train noise? Listen to the next word...’chin’...did you hear a train noise?")

Phoneme segmentation
The aim is to teach your child to sort words by initial speech sound (i.e., by the initial phoneme in the word). For example, the initial phoneme in the word ‘ball’ is ‘b’. The initial phoneme in the word 'knife' is 'n'. The initial phoneme in the word 'ship' is 'sh'. The initial phoneme in the word 'quiet' is 'k'. The initial phoneme in the word 'sugar' is 'sh'. The materials needed are picture cards, toys representing familiar characters.

Develop a range of activities along the following lines. Present your child with the name of a familiar book, TV or movie character, such as Spot, Thomas, Gordon, or Big Bird, or the name of a real person that they know (e.g., daddy, Mary), and a range of In the following example a child has to perform a phoneme segmentation and onset matching task for the sound ‘g’.

To introduce the task you might present your child with a toy train (Gordon) and say something like "Here is Gordon. Gordon’s name starts with ‘guh’. Listen. Guh...Gordon. Gordon is looking for some pets whose names start with the same sound as his name. Can you help him?" Then present a range of pictures (e.g., guinea pig, goldfish, goanna, snake, fox, horse), and help the child to choose the ones that start with ‘g’.

Awareness of rhymes and sound patterns
The aim is to help your child to recognise rhymes (e.g., lap - clap, coat - goat, pin - fin) and other sound patterns (e.g., moo - moon - moo - move - moo - moose; coot - cart - court - coat - kite - Kate - quoit) involving minimally contrasted word pairs, using minimal contrast activities (see below). The materials needed are minimally contrasted word pairs pictured on cards, nursery rhyme books, rhyming books.
 
Training sets of cards, or pictures, can range in number from three pairs to nine pairs. All the activities must be modelled for the children first, until they understand what to do. For example, the child might have to sort the cards into two piles, with vs. without final consonants. Some typical examples of minimal contrasts activities, which all included pictures accompanied by spoken words throughout, are:
  1. 'Point to the one I say': in which the child points to the pictures of the words, spoken in random order (e.g., glow, black, low, steam, back, team, glow), or rhyming order (e.g., low, glow, back, black, team, steam) by an adult helper. 
  2. 'Put the rhyming words with these words': in which the adult sets out three to nine cards (e.g., pat, peel, pill, pull) and the child places rhyming cards beside them (fat, feel, fill, full).
  3. 'Say the word that rhymes with the one I say': in which the adult says words containing the target phoneme, and the child says the rhyming non-target word ( e.g., the adult would say fill and the child would say pill).
 
4. Activities to develop metalinguistic skills
 When a child asks, 'What does that WORD mean?', or says, 'I can’t say that BIG word', or comments, 'That’s a funny NAME', they are using their metalinguistic skills. They are using language to talk about language.

Some examples of the metalinguistic skills necessary for children to become proficient readers are listed below.

  1. Understanding of the word 'sound' meaning 'speech sound'.
  2. Understanding of the word 'word' meaning 'spoken word'.
  3. Understanding that words have meanings - and that they can 'make sense' or not.
  4. Making a connection between spoken sounds and words and written sounds and words.
  5. Understanding that you have to say the 'right' word to make sense (knowledge of communicative adequacy or communicative effectiveness).
  6. Understanding that you have to say the word the 'right' way to make sense.
  7. Awareness of and the ability to perform revisions and repairs ('self corrections'), and metalinguistic knowledge of when or why we make revisions and repairs.
  8. Judging when a word sounds 'right' and when it sounds 'wrong'. 
  9. Metaphonological knowledge of phoneme-grapheme (word-to-letter) correspondences or sound symbol relationships (e.g., recognising that the letter 's' corresponds with the speech sound /s/).

Sample minimal contrast word lists more here

  1. Final consonants contrasted with no final consonant
     light-lie
    boat-bow
    moon-moo
    couch-cow
    bean-bee
    calf-car

  2. Initial clusters contrasted with no initial cluster
     glow - low
    black - back
    steam - team
    clip - lip
    ski - key
    spit - pit

  3. Initial /k/ contrasted with initial /t/
    car - tar
    cap - tap
    corn - torn
    kite - tight
    call - tall
    key - tea

  4. Initial ‘ch’ sounds contrasted with initial ‘sh’ sounds
    chip - ship
    chew - shoe
    chop - shop
    cheep - sheep
    chain - Shane
    choose - shoes

  5. Initial voiced consonants contrasted with initial voiceless consonants
    bowl - pole
    buy - pie
    big - pig
    beep - peep
    gum - come
    Sue - zoo

  6. Initial ‘sh’ sounds contrasted with initial /s/
     ship - sip
    sheet - seat
    shoe - Sue
    shell - sell
    show - sew
    short - sort

  7. Final voiced consonants contrasted final voiceless consonants
     weed - wheat
    wag - whack
    pig - pick
    cub - cup
    Marge - march
    feed - feet

  8. Initial /l/ contrasted with initial /w/
    lead- weed
    line- wine
    lock- wok
    lick- wick
    lip- whip
    lake - wake

References
Anderson, R.C., Hiebert, E.H., Scott, J.A., & Wilkinson, I.A.G. (1985). Becoming a nation of readers: The report of the commission on reading. Washington DC: National Institute of Education (p. 23).

Bird, J., Bishop, D.V.M., & Freeman, N.H. (1995). Phonological awareness and literacy development in children with expressive phonological impairments. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 38, 446-462.

Bishop, D.V.M., & Adams, C. (1990). A prospective study of the relationship between specific language impairment, phonological disorders and reading retardation. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 31, 1027-1050.

Bowen, C. (1998). Developmental phonological disorders. A practical guide for families and teachers. Melbourne: ACER Press.

Catts, H.W. (1991). Facilitating phonological awareness: role of speech-language pathologists. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 22, 196-203.

Fey, M.E., Catts, H.W. & Larrivee, L.S. (1995). Preparing preschoolers for the academic and social challenges of school. M.E. Fey, J. Windsor & S.F. Warren (Eds). Language intervention: preschool through the elementary years. Baltimore: Paul Brookes Publishing Co.
 
 

Page updated 04 Feb 2010

 
 

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