John-- what were the criteria for inclusion in the Clackmannanshire 
study?  Were students screened for phonological processing skills 
before instruction, or were they merely beginnning readers?  If the 
latter, who is to say there were any at risk for being non-readers 
(which is a whole lot different from being an impaired reader) at all?  
  Why then would a 100% success rate mean the synthetic phonics prevents 
reading difficulties?  I'd like to know more about the base lines of 
the group you started with, please.

rclaims about rhyming contrast sharply with studies on reading 
difficulties in English learners and others where weakness in 
phonological awareness, which includes a significant awareness of rhyme 
structures, is seen as THE key factor in reading problems.    I 
certainly have seen a high correlation between difficulty rhyming and 
difficulty reading in reading impaired adults, both English language 
learners and native English speakers.  And I have seen the reading 
improve, sometimes dramatically,  where sensibility to rhyme was 
strengthened.

Have you tested your young readers before and after instruction with 
your system as to their sensitivity to rhyme and rhyme structures?   It 
would seem to me that if they have developed the blending skills you 
maintain, they would increase their sensitivity to onset-rime as well.  
   Robin Schwarz

-----Original Message-----
From: John Nissen <jn at cloudworld.co.uk>
To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-ld at literacy.nifl.gov>
Sent: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 13:31:32 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [NIFL-LD:4953] Re: LD and intensive phonics


Hello Robin, and everybody,

Further to my email last night, it has been pointed out that the major
barrier to reading for many people is in the "blending", and this is 
why
synthetic phonics is so important.  (The term 'synthetic' arises from
putting together the sounds.)  To quote:

"A reader does not need to be good at rhyme or have an awareness of 
onset
and
rime in order to be able to read. Decoding the words 
all-through-the-word is
a process of sounding out and blending and having a 'trained' ear to 
hear
the target word. Some children do not even need special training as 
they can
'hear' the target word straight away. The reading process goes from 
print to
sound and that is where the knowledge and skill is needed.

"Breaking up a word into various sized phonic units and an ability to 
be
able
to generate or hear rhymes is not a prerequisite for being taught to 
read or
for being able to read. This manipulation of sounds is more relevant for
future spelling and then beginners can be trained to hear the individual
sound units all-through-the-spoken-word even if they more naturally 
break up
a spoken word into larger units.

"The reader needs to be able to recognise the letter shapes and known
combinations of letters in order to translate them into the sounds they
represent followed by sounding out and blending for reading.

"The reader should be able to do this with real or nonsense words. It is
advantageous especially to a beginner when the word is within their oral
vocabulary.

"Research showing that children more readily break up spoken words into
onset
and rime or syllables (manipulation of sound) is nothing to do with the
processes of learning and being able to read!

[end quote]

Let us summarise our argument.

"Phonological awareness" can be divided into the analytic aspect and 
the
synthetic aspect.  Robin, you have concentrated on the analytic skill, 
for
breaking a spoken words into constituent sounds.  This can be a barrier 
for
writing, but not for reading, we argue.  On the other hand, the 
analytic or
"blending" skill, required to put the sounds of letters together to 
make the
sound of the whole word, is the major barrier for reading which has to 
be
surmounted.  There are of course other barriers that can hamper people, 
like
visual problems, memory problems, hearing problems and comprehension
problems.  But, we claim, it is a difficulty in blending which is the 
major
cause of poor reading.  The fact that in the Clackmannanshire study 
there
were no non-readers is testament to our claim.

Furthermore, we argue that anything which encourages the learner to 
adopt a
whole word recognition approach, is going to detract from the learning 
of
the blending skill.  So the fewer the sight words the better, during 
initial
learning.

Cheers from Chiswick,

John

John Nissen
Cloudworld Ltd - http://www.cloudworld.co.uk
maker of the assistive reader, WordAloud.
Tel: +44 208 742 3170  Fax: +44 208 742 0202
Email: info at cloudworld.co.uk



----- Original Message -----
From: "John Nissen" <jn at cloudworld.co.uk>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <nifl-ld at literacy.nifl.gov>
Sent: Friday, October 21, 2005 11:56 PM
Subject: [NIFL-LD:4952] Re: LD and intensive phonics



>

> Hello Robin,

>

> Thank you for an excellent contribution to the discussion.  You raise 

a

> number of issues.

>

> 1.  I agree with Tom that there are only around four hundred common

> graphemes.  I have got to a total around the 480 mark , though I am

> continuously adding to the list, with obscure spellings.  I have an 

Excel

> spreadsheet, if anybody is interested.

>

> 2.  It is interesting that the dyslexia 'rate' is about half in Italy

> compared to UK, and I agree with you that this can be put down to the

> language - the complexity of spelling/pronunciation rules in English

> versus

> Italian.

>

> 3.  However on the brain issue, I don't think there has been a study

> showing

> the effect of teaching on the brain patterns.  Can we be sure that the

> 'dyslexic' has lost some brain function - an anomaly as you call it?

> Perhaps, with a common approach to teaching, common brain patterns 

will

> emerge.  If so, that would support my thesis that poor reading is the

> result

> of inadequate teaching.  I'd like to see fMRI research on this.

>

> Note that in the Clackmannanshire study of around 300 children, 

taught by

> synthetic phonics, there were no non-readers!  So do we deduce there 

were

> no

> dyslexics?  No dyslexia?   What was going on?  I'd love to see fMRI 

on

> them.

>

> 4.  You need to have very few sight words, when you start teaching a 

child

> to read.  'I', 'the' and 'of' can get you a long way.  See my web 

page:

> http://www.cloudworld.co.uk/teaching-synthetic-phonics.htm

>

> 5.  The phonological awareness seems to be the biggest hurdle to get 

over

> for many children, not the complexity of the language: number of

> spelling/pronunciation rules, synonyms, multiple meanings, size of

> vocabulary, morphology, etc.  These complexities can be introduced

> gradually, after the initial hurdles have been overcome, and the 

children

> are reading simple stories, contrived to avoid those complexities 

(see my

> story example at the end of the page).

>

> Cheers from Chiswick,

>

> John Nissen

> Cloudworld Ltd - http://www.cloudworld.co.uk

> maker of the assistive reader, WordAloud.

> Tel: +44 208 742 3170  Fax: +44 208 742 0202

> Email: info at cloudworld.co.uk

>

>

>

> ----- Original Message -----

> From: <robinschwarz1 at aol.com>

> To: "Multiple recipients of list" <nifl-ld at literacy.nifl.gov>

> Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 9:48 PM

> Subject: [NIFL-LD:4943] Re: LD and intensive phonics

>

>

>

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Robinschwarz1

> To: nifl-ld at nifl.gov

> Sent: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 11:28:58 -0400

> Subject: Re: [NIFL-LD:4927] Re: LD and intensive phonics

>

> Sorry to be chiming in on this somewhat late-- I was traveling.

> Aaron's reference to Ken Pugh's work is great-- the point of

> Pugh's research, to my mind, is that the process of reading is the 

same

> in any language and occurs in the same part of the brain. When it can

> be observed that it does not, we can predict that that person will 

have

> more difficulty with "standard" teaching than the person whose brain

> does it in the more common, if you will, way.

>

> John has a point about "synthetic phonics"--the process of making

> English more predictable to decode. It has been observed by numerous

> researchers in the last decade that relatively few persons show up 

with

> reading problems (called dyslexia when reading is a very

> difficult skill to acquire) in languages which are more "transparent"

> or regular in their orthography--e.g. Italian, Hungarian, Finnish,

> Korean-. The effect of learning in those language is the same as with

> the synthetic phonics John is discussing-- the sound-symbol system is

> completely regular and easy to predict. I observed that in Italy, for

> example, children are able to spell almost every word in Italian by

> second grade because Italian is so regular.

>

> Because of this phenomenon, it was believed for a time that there was

> no dyslexia in these languages. But studies such as the one Ken Pugh

> and others have done show that the anomaly that causes difficulty

> in becoming a fluent reader is present in persons in all cultures and

> languages. It is only that their compensatory skills--provided either

> by the language they are learning in, or in the case of English, by

> extremely skilled teaching and hard work--have allowed them to 

overcome

> the anomaly. Recent attempts to find out if in fact dyslexia-- or

> that brain anomaly--could be detected have shown that readers in these

> transparent languages who have the anomaly still read more slowly

> relative to their non-impaired peers--though on an absolute scale

> comparing ALL readers, their slower reading is hard to detect.

>

> Many features of English contribute to its being such a difficult

> language for those persons with dyslexia--i.e. the well-documented

> brain anomaly causing the processing of the sound symbol association 

to

> occur in other places in the brain.

>

> First, of course, is the incredible range of sounds and symbols a

> skilled reader must deal with. The figure of 1,100 -- maybe more- of

> actual graphemes (That is, ways we represent sounds) in English has

> come across my radar screen recently. This requires amazing

> flexibility of the brain. .

>

> Second is the fact that up through second grade at least, more than

> half of the words needed to be a fluent reader are "sight 

words"--words

> that cannot be easily put into phonological categories. Thus an

> English reader must learn not just the phonics of English, but a body

> of sight words at the same time. It requires that a truly skilled

> reader have an excellent SIGHT, or visual memory, --as well as skill 

in

> sound symbol association

>

> Thirds, add to that the fact that English has, as we know, parallel

> vocabularies-- the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman, plus who knows how many

> others, which results in an incredibly large lexicon--or number of

> words that we use. ( the most recent OED has over 800,000 words in

> it, WAY more than any other language on the planet) This means a

> reader must be skilled at understanding and using synonyms and 

multiple

> meanings of words (some piece of literature I found pointed out that 

in

> one child's basal reader, the word "play" was used in 5 different ways

> in about three pages!!). English VALUES variation--which means that

> when learners learn to read, unless the text is highly controlled, 

they

> do NOT see the same words--and the same patterns of words-- over and

> over as does a reader in Italian, for example.

>

> Fourth, because of the size and multi-lingual nature of the language, 

a

> skilled reader must have a good understanding of and use of

> morphology--the pieces and parts that make up English. Otherwise, as

> those of us who have tutored hard core non-readers know, every word is

> a new word. This understanding of the word parts--roots and affixes--

> develops relatively late in the literacy process.

>

> and fifth, one of the fundamental skills required to be literate is

> phonological AWARENESS--that is, to put it simply, the understanding 

of

> the sound chunks of a language and that these chunks can be

> manipulated. Weakness in phonological awareness has been shown time

> and again to be strongly associated with dyslexia. So what synthetic

> phonics appears to be doing is addressing this fundamental weakness in

> beginning readers before the weakness interferes with their attempt to

> make sense of print.

>

> In English, one of the most fundamental constructs of sound--and

> requirements in phonological awareness-- is the rhyme scheme, made up

> of units known as onset-rhyme--that is, the beginning of the unit , 

/c/

> and the rime (spelled rime because it refers to the unit, not the

> function) -/at/. Nearly every English word is constructed this way,

> either simple words or in the syllables in longer words, and if a

> learner is not fundamentally skilled in hearing and constructing 

rhyme,

> then reading is VERY difficult, if not impossible. Try it-- ask a

> struggling reader you know to produce rhymes for simple words. I have

> repeatedly had amazing success with severely impaired readers by

> working at getting them to hear and produce rhyme--often a LONG

> process!

>

> But finally, I want to add my voice to those who caution that many

> things may be going on. Not all people who struggle to read have

> phonological problems or phonological awareness difficulties. There

> is a good body of research and plenty of evidence to show that many 

who

> have mastered the system but do not read well have visual difficulties

> that interfere with reading. Vision functions in poor readers need to

> be checked routinely--all vision functions, not just near and far 

point

> acuity, but binocularityand tracking-- how the eyes focus on one point

> and then move smoothly across print. I cannot even count the

> struggling readers I have assessed who have ONLY this difficulty-- and

> some who have both this and phonological problems. These visual

> problems can be addressed in young peobinocularity ple with vision

> therapy and in older readers with prisms that offset many of the

> problems.

>

> And finally, because I won't probably jump in again for a while, let 

me

> agree with some who have said that dyslexia, which is a real 

condition,

> does not affect just reading. It may be associated with a broader

> spectrum of learning disabilities, which are difficult to manage in

> real life. And my own concern is that if dyslexia exists, foreign

> language learning is often, if not usually, significantly impacted. A

> person who has had no difficulty reading in their first language,

> either because of good teaching or because the language was not

> difficult to master, but who has the brain anomaly referred to 

earlier,

> is very likely to have a lot of difficulty when encountering a foreign

> language.

>

> So let us not dismiss dyslexia as a result of poor teaching. It is

> true that most who end up with reading problems could have been helped

> early on to avoid these problems, but the difficulty is real and 

should

> not be swept aside in an effort to show the effectiveness of a good

> reading program.

>

> Robin Schwarz,

> Specialist in LD/ ESOL

> Partner, The TLP Group

> Columbus, OH

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Aaron Kohring <akohring at utk.edu>

> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-ld at literacy.nifl.gov>

> Sent: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:09:16 -0400 (EDT)

> Subject: [NIFL-LD:4927] Re: LD and intensive phonics

>

> John,

>

> Sorry I couldn't respond earlier- I have been out of town the past

> week. Kenneth Pugh at Yale Univ. has also done some recent brain

> research using MRIs and looking at what happens in the brain when

> someone is reading. There is a short write-up here on his research

> area: http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Haskins/STAFF/pugh.html

>

> I don't know if more has been published yet.

>

> Aaron

>

> At 11:04 AM 9/30/2005 -0400, you wrote:

>

>>Hello Aaron,

>>Thank you for the references. I had a good read of the article on

>>Neurobiology, and it is very informative and well written.

>>However I have some problems with it. From what I have seen, none of

> the

>>research on dyslexia has taken into account a key environmental factor

> - how

>>the subjects had been taught to read. Moreover none of the

> researchers, to

>>my knowledge, have looked at children who have been given intensive

> phonics

>>training at the start of primary school, by either explicit phonics or

>>synthetic phonics. Perhaps the patterns of brain activation would be

>>different, if the subjects had been taught in a different way. In the

>>Clackmannanshire study, all the children were taught to read

> successfully

>>using synthetic phonics, and there was little or no "dyslexia"

> apparent.

>>And I have heard of reseach suggesting that the left brain can indeed

> by

>>"activated" to help people overcome reading problems.

>>Therefore, I am suspicious when the article says that "dyslexia is a

>>persistent and chronic condition". It seems there might be effective

>>remediation that could activate the parts of the brain that are used

> by

>>normal readers. A key giveaway in the article is as follows:

>>[quote] The awareness that all words can be decomposed into these 

basic

> elements of

>>language (phonemes) allows the reader to decipher the reading code. In

> order

>>to read, a child has to develop the insight that spoken words can be

> pulled

>>apart into phonemes and that the letters in a written word represent

> these

>>sounds. This so-called phonemic awareness is largely missing in

> dyslexic

>>children and adults. Results from large and well-studied populations

> with

>>reading disability confirm that in young school-aged children, as well

> as in

>>adolescents, a deficit in phonology represents the most robust and

> specific

>>correlate of reading disability. [end quote]

>>The explicit phonics and synthetic phonics are designed to give this

>>phonemic awareness from the start. The other skill these methods

> impart is

>>"blending" - the ability to put the phonemes together to form (spoken)

>>words. This skill is not mentioned in the article but is a key skill

> for

>>reading.

>>There is a great danger of looking at the brain of a dyslexic person,

> and

>>saying the brain has been "disrupted" or "impaired", when in fact it

> may be

>>just the way the person was taught. Is there any evidence to the

> contrary?

>>

>>What I'd like to see is brain scans of the Clackmannanshire pupils

> reading,

>>to see which parts of the brain they are using, especially for those

> pupils

>>with dyslexic genes.

>>Cheers from Chiswick,

>>John

>>P.S. Ian, I'm copying this to you, because I read you'd done some fMRI

> with

>>researchers at Bristol.

>>

>>

>>----- Original Message -----

>>From: "Aaron Kohring" <akohring at utk.edu> To: "Multiple recipients of 

list"

>><nifl-ld at literacy.nifl.gov> Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 5:00 PM

>>Subject: [NIFL-LD:4893] Re: LD and intensive phonics

>>

>> > John, Yes, there is research into some of these areas you mention. 

I'd

>> > recommend taking a look at the Focus on Basics article: The

>> > Neurobiology

>> > of Reading and Dyslexia: http://www.ncsall.net/?id=278 Also, look 

at

>> > the

>> > resources under the section on Teaching/Learning

> related

>> > to instruction: http://ldlink.coe.utk.edu/research.htm Other good

>> > instructional guides are found here:

>> > http://ldlink.coe.utk.edu/ld_instruction.htm Aaron At 11:26 AM

>> > 9/29/2005 -0400, you wrote:

>> >>Hello everybody, It seems I was too late for Christopher, and a 

bit off

>> >>topic, since

> my

>> >>questions were not related to technology. But I'd be interested to

> have

>> >>answers to these questions. Concerning the first question I asked, 

what

>> >>kind of particular

> problems do

>> >>people with LD have with reading. Is there anything different from

> the

>> >>"specific" learning difficulty, which is dyslexia (or at least

> embraces

>> >>dyslexia)? Is the difficulty in phonological awareness, or in

> blending

>> >>skills, or in spelling/decoding rules, or in comprehension, or a

> mixture

>> >>of all these? If it is a mix, is there a characteristic mix? Has 

any

>> >>research been done on this? On the second question, I have heard of

>> >>people with LD being taught

> to

>> >>recognise whole words by associating them with symbols. This seems

> to be

>> >>a denial of the fact that letters represent sounds, and they should

> be

>> >>taught how to decode words, by sounding out the letters and 

blending

>> >>those

> sounds

>> >>together. But one person I asked said that "phonics was not

> suitable for

>> >>children with LD". I cannot believe this. Is there research

> evidence on

>> >>whether intensive phonics teaching is effective or not for people

> with LD,

>> >>regardless of age? The third question is about cause and effect. 

If

>> >>poor

>> >>readers are utilising their right brain when they should be using 

their

>> >>left brain, they

> could

>> >>end up with underdeveloped left brains, i.e. not as relatively 

large

> (compared

>> >>to right brain) as normal. That would be an _effect_ of lack of

> use.

>> >>Alternatively a left brain problem (e.g. damage) could be the

> _cause_ of

>> >>their poor reading, from a young age, and they would grow up with a

>> >>relatively small left brain. So is it cause or effect? What does

> the

>> >>research say? And is there anything that can be done for the older

> child

>> >>or adult person to help in left brain development? ----------

>> >> ----- Original Message -----

>> >>From: "John Nissen" <jn at cloudworld.co.uk> To: "Multiple recipients 

of

>> >>list" <nifl-ld at literacy.nifl.gov> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005

>> >>10:26

>> >>PM Subject: [NIFL-LD:4872] LD and intensive phonics

>> >> >

>> >> > Hello Christopher, I am sorry I coming into this session rather

>> >> > late.

>> >> > I hope I am

> not too

>> >> > late to join in with some questions. 1. Do people with LD have

>> >> > different teaching requirements? I am trying to find out whether

>> >> > there is any difference in the

> teaching

>> >> > requirements for teaching people with LD to read, and teaching

> people

>> >> > with dyslexia to read. I haven't found any factor to distinguish

> them, as

>> >> > regards their reading (dis)ability. 2. Is poor reading due to 

poor

>> >> > teaching? Also I want to find out to what extent the poor 

reading,

>> >> > or

>> >> > non-reading, is due to misguided teaching. I often see that 

there

>> >> > are

>> >> > attempts

> to

>> >> > teach whole word recognition rather than word decoding, 

especially

>> >> > for

> people

>> >> > with LD, who may be considered incapable of the necessary

> phonological

>> >> > awareness. In the Clackmannanshire study, it was shown that a

>> >> > 'phonics

> first and

>> >> > fast' approach worked marvels for all the children, and by the 

end

>> >> > of

> primary

>> >> > school they were three years ahead in reading age compared to

> their

>> >> > peers taught by the 'conventional' teaching of a mixture of 

methods

>> >> > (including an element of phonics, together with guessing 

strategies,

>> >> > etc.). I suspect that anybody who has learnt to speak is also

>> >> > capable

>> >> > of the phonological awareness required for reading and writing,

>> >> > given

>> >> > appropriate

> teaching.

>> >> >

>> >> > 3. Left brain development for rapid decoding Finally I wonder

>> >> > whether

>> >> > the right brain development in some

> poor

>> >> > readers is because they have developed skills for whole word

>> >> > recognition,

> and with

>> >> > the right teaching, their left brain would be developed to 

enable

> rapid

>> >> > decoding, even in older children.

>> >> BTW, I've written about the teaching of a brand of intensive

> phonics

>> >>called "synthetic phonics" here:

>> >>http://www.cloudworld.co.uk/teaching-synthetic-phonics.htm and I'd 

be

>> >>grateful for comments. Cheers from Chiswick, John John Nissen, 

director

>> >>Cloudworld Ltd maker of the WordAloud assistive reader

>> >>http://www.cloudworld.co.uk

>> >

>> > Aaron Kohring Coordinator, LINCS Literacy & Learning Disabilities

>> > Special

> Collection

>> >

>> > Center for Literacy Studies, University of Tennessee EFF Center for

>> > Training and Technical Assistance Phone:(865) 974-4109 main (865)

>> > 974-4258 direct Fax: (865) 974-3857 e-mail: akohring at utk.edu

>

> Aaron Kohring

> Coordinator, LINCS Literacy & Learning Disabilities Special Collection

>

> Center for Literacy Studies, University of Tennessee

> EFF Center for Training and Technical Assistance

> Phone:(865) 974-4109 main

> (865) 974-4258 direct

> Fax: (865) 974-3857

> e-mail: akohring at utk.edu

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>