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Phonics training for English-speaking poor readers

The reading skills of 16% of children fall below the mean range for their age, and 5% of children...
The reading skills of 16% of children fall below the mean range for their age, and 5% of children have significant and severe reading problems. Phonics training is one of the most common reading treatments used with poor readers,...
The reading skills of 16% of children fall below the mean range for their age, and 5% of children have significant and severe reading problems. Phonics training is one of the most common reading treatments used with poor readers, particularly children. Objectives: To measure the effect of phonics training and explore the impact of various factors, such as training duration and training group size, that might moderate the effect of phonics training on literacy-related skills in English-speaking poor readers. Search methods: We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, 12 other databases, and three trials registers up to May 2018. We also searched reference lists of included studies and contacted experts in the field to identify additional studies.
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Reference:

McArthur, G., Eve, P. M., Jones, K., Banales, E., Kohnen, S., Anandakumar, T., Larsen, L., Marinus, E., Wang, H. C., & Castles, A. (2012). Phonics training for English-speaking poor readers. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews, 12, CD009115. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD009115.pub2

Acquired and developmental disorders of reading and spelling

Two cases of acquired spelling dyslexia and one case of developmental spelling dyslexia are described along with accounts of...
Two cases of acquired spelling dyslexia and one case of developmental spelling dyslexia are described along with accounts of their performance on various psycholinguistic tasks. It is argued that there is some evidence that spelling dyslexia may exist in...
Two cases of acquired spelling dyslexia and one case of developmental spelling dyslexia are described along with accounts of their performance on various psycholinguistic tasks. It is argued that there is some evidence that spelling dyslexia may exist in developmental form but that parallels are difficult to draw because of the very different histories of child and adult cases. It is also suggested that features of surface dyslexia exist in at least a proportion of spelling dyslexic cases and that this may be influenced by level of premorbid reading skill.
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Reference:

Coltheart, M., & Kohnen, S. (2012). Acquired and Developmental Disorders of Reading and Spelling. In The Handbook of the Neuropsychology of Language (pp. 892–920). Wiley‐Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118432501.ch43

Improving literacy in developing countries using speech recognition-supported games on mobile devices

Learning to read in a second language is challenging, but highly rewarding. synthesis of research findings suggests that practicing...
Learning to read in a second language is challenging, but highly rewarding. synthesis of research findings suggests that practicing recalling and vocalizing words for expressing an intended meaning could improve word reading skills - including reading in a second...
Learning to read in a second language is challenging, but highly rewarding. synthesis of research findings suggests that practicing recalling and vocalizing words for expressing an intended meaning could improve word reading skills - including reading in a second language - more than silent recognition of what the given words mean. Many language learning software do not support this instructional approach, owing to the technical challenges of incorporating speech recognition support to check that the learner is vocalizing the correct word. In this paper, we present results from a usability test and two subsequent experiments that explore the use of two speech recognition-enabled mobile games to help rural children in India read words with understanding. Through a working speech recognition prototype, we discuss two major contributions of this work: first, we give empirical evidence that shows the extent to which productive training (i.e. vocalizing words) is superior to receptive vocabulary training, and discuss the use of scaffolding hints to ""unpack"" factors in the learner's linguistic knowledge that may impact reading. Second, we discuss what our results suggest for future research in HCI.
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Reference:

Kumar, A., Reddy, P., Tewari, A., Agrawal, R., & Kam, M. (2012). Improving literacy in developing countries using speech recognition-supported games on mobile devices. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1149–1158. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208564

Highly accurate children’s speech recognition for interactive reading tutors using subword units

Speech technology offers great promise in the field of automated literacy and reading tutors for children. In such applications...
Speech technology offers great promise in the field of automated literacy and reading tutors for children. In such applications speech recognition can be used to track the reading position of the child, detect oral reading miscues, assessing comprehension of...
Speech technology offers great promise in the field of automated literacy and reading tutors for children. In such applications speech recognition can be used to track the reading position of the child, detect oral reading miscues, assessing comprehension of the text being read by estimating if the prosodic structure of the speech is appropriate to the discourse structure of the story, or by engaging the child in interactive dialogs to assess and train comprehension. Despite such promises, speech recognition systems exhibit higher error rates for children due to variabilities in vocal tract length, formant frequency, pronunciation, and grammar. In the context of recognizing speech while children are reading out loud, these problems are compounded by speech production behaviors affected by difficulties in recognizing printed words that cause pauses, repeated syllables and other phenomena. To overcome these challenges, we present advances in speech recognition that improve accuracy and modeling capability in the context of an interactive literacy tutor for children. Specifically, this paper focuses on a novel set of speech recognition techniques which can be applied to improve oral reading recognition. The proposed subword unit based speech recognition framework is shown to provide equivalent accuracy to a whole-word based speech recognizer while enabling detection of oral reading events and finer grained speech analysis during recognition. The efficacy of the approach is demonstrated using data collected from children in grades 3–5.
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Reference:

Andreas Hagan, Byron Pellom and Ronald Cole

Critical thinking – Why is it so hard to teach?

Directions in Cognitive Science His research focuses on the role of consciousness in learning. Critical thinking is not a set...
Directions in Cognitive Science His research focuses on the role of consciousness in learning. Critical thinking is not a set of skills that can be deployed at any time, in any context. It is a type of thought that even...
Directions in Cognitive Science His research focuses on the role of consciousness in learning. Critical thinking is not a set of skills that can be deployed at any time, in any context. It is a type of thought that even 3-year-olds can engage in - and even trained scientists can fail in.
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Reference:

Willingham, D. T. (2008). Critical thinking: Why is it so hard to teach? Arts Education Policy Review, 109(4), 21–32. https://doi.org/10.3200/AEPR.109.4.21-32

Reading comprehension requires knowledge – of words and the world

While educators have made good progress in teaching children to decode (that is, turn print into speech sounds), it...
While educators have made good progress in teaching children to decode (that is, turn print into speech sounds), it is disheartening that we still have not overcome the fourth-grade slump in reading comprehension. We are finding that even though...
While educators have made good progress in teaching children to decode (that is, turn print into speech sounds), it is disheartening that we still have not overcome the fourth-grade slump in reading comprehension. We are finding that even though the vast majority of our youngest readers can manage simple texts, many students - particularly those from low-income families - struggle when it comes time in grade four to tackle more advanced academic texts.
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Reference:

E. D. Hirsch, Jr., (2003). Reading comprehension requires knowledge of words and the world. American Educator, 27(1), 10-13.

Auditory processing deficits in children with reading and language impairments: can they (and should they) be treated?

Sixty-five children with specific reading disability (SRD), 25 children with specific language impairment (SLI), and 37 age-matched controls were...
Sixty-five children with specific reading disability (SRD), 25 children with specific language impairment (SLI), and 37 age-matched controls were tested for their frequency discrimination, rapid auditory processing,vowel discrimination, and consonant-vowel discrimination. Subgroups of children with SRD or SLI produced...
Sixty-five children with specific reading disability (SRD), 25 children with specific language impairment (SLI), and 37 age-matched controls were tested for their frequency discrimination, rapid auditory processing,vowel discrimination, and consonant-vowel discrimination. Subgroups of children with SRD or SLI produced abnormal frequency discrimination(42%), rapid auditory processing (12%), vowel discrimination (23%), or consonant-vowel discrimination (18%) thresholds for their age.Twenty-eight of these children trained on a programme that targeted their specific auditory processing deficit for 6 weeks. Twenty-five of these 28 trainees produced normal thresholds for their targeted processing skill after training. These gains were not explained by gains in auditory attention, in the ability to do psychophysical tasks in general, or by test-retest effects. The 25 successful trainees also produced significantly higher scores on spoken language and spelling tests after training. However, an untrained control group showed test-retest effects on the same tests. These results suggest that auditory processing deficits can be treated successfully in children with SRD and SLI but that this does not help them acquire new reading, spelling, or spoken language skills.
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Reference:

McArthur, G. ., Ellis, D., Atkinson, C. ., & Coltheart, M. (2008). Auditory processing deficits in children with reading and language impairments: Can they (and should they) be treated? Cognition, 107(3), 946–977. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2007.12.005

‘No to Failure’ Final Report

The Dyslexia-SpLD Trust has published the 'No to Failure' project Final Report. This follows a 2-year campaign to demonstrate...
The Dyslexia-SpLD Trust has published the 'No to Failure' project Final Report. This follows a 2-year campaign to demonstrate and communicate the impact of specialist teaching support for children and young people with Dyslexia or specific learning difficulties (SpLD)...The...
The Dyslexia-SpLD Trust has published the 'No to Failure' project Final Report. This follows a 2-year campaign to demonstrate and communicate the impact of specialist teaching support for children and young people with Dyslexia or specific learning difficulties (SpLD)...The 'No to Failure' project was also a catalyst, instrumental in the Government commissioning of Sir Jim Rose's Review of Dyslexia Provision. This review is welcomed by The Dyslexia-SpLD Trust as an important step towards understanding and improving national provision for pupils with Dyslexia-SpLD.
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Reference:

(2009). No to failure report. Dyslexia-SpLD Trust

Why children fail to read

This article was written in relation to the Dyslexia Debate - “Labelling children to place them into fixed categories...
This article was written in relation to the Dyslexia Debate - “Labelling children to place them into fixed categories is always risky and calls for a separate discussion. Meanwhile, this debate has at least highlighted the question of how,...
This article was written in relation to the Dyslexia Debate - “Labelling children to place them into fixed categories is always risky and calls for a separate discussion. Meanwhile, this debate has at least highlighted the question of how, so-called, ‘within the child’, inherited characteristics associated with dyslexia might be disentangled from reading difficulties associated with environmental factors ‘outside the child’, such as, poor quality teaching, weaknesses in parenting, disadvantageous socio-economic circumstances, or a sticky mix of all these conditions that obstruct learning to read.”
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Reference:

Sir Jim Rose, 01.06.15

“Just try harder and you will shine”: A Study of 20 Lazy Children – 2009

Attributions of laziness, reflected in teacher comments such as “just try harder and you will shine” may mask specific...
Attributions of laziness, reflected in teacher comments such as “just try harder and you will shine” may mask specific cognitive, learning, attentional or emotional problems that could explain low motivation in some children. This paper reports findings from an...
Attributions of laziness, reflected in teacher comments such as “just try harder and you will shine” may mask specific cognitive, learning, attentional or emotional problems that could explain low motivation in some children. This paper reports findings from an investigation of 20 children, aged 7 to 10 years, who were regarded as lazy by their parents and teachers. Questionnaire measures provided evidence of low levels of motivation and classroom engagement. Psychometric assessments revealed the presence of a range of difficulties including phonologically-based learning disabilities and significant problems with attention in 17 of the 20 children. The paper concludes that the special needs of an unknown number of children may be overlooked because they are simply presumed to be lazy.
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Reference:

Gilmore, Linda and Boulton-Lewis, Gillian M. (2009). Just try harder and you will shine: a Study of 20 lazy children. Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 19(2). pp. 95-103.