Reading and writing are amazing. Our brains are capable of creating complex ideas, images, and emotions that we then turn into verbal symbols (words), that we break down further into tiny squiggles (letters). And then other people- separated by hundreds of miles of distance or hundreds of years of time- can read those little symbols and turn them back into the ideas, images and emotions we started with. Basically magic- and for many of us it comes so easily. But what about when reading doesn't feel so easy?
When you that your child isn’t reading as fluently as their peers they start to worry. Where is the breakdown? How do we practice? How do I ensure my child gets one on one reading instruction?
When the methods that work for other kids don’t work for your child it can be scary. So you look for a specialist. And there are many specialists- teachers, tutors, reading experts, etc. One person you may not have considered is a speech therapist. Whether your child is already in speech or has never been evaluated an SLP (speech language pathologist) has unique skills and experience that make them excellent resources for children learning to read or who just need some support to get up to grade level.
Many students with a reading disability are already in speech. One study found that over half of children with dyslexia also qualify as having a developmental language disorder (McArthur et al., 2000). But there are other reasons your child might be struggling to read that aren’t dyslexia that an SLP can help with.
To thoroughly explain why SLPs are crucial to literacy support you have to learn more about the ins and outs of literacy. Letters and sight words are just a tiny piece of an intricate process.
Scarborough’s reading rope is one of the greatest visualizations of literacy that exists. For those of us who learned t read without much struggle it can be hard to think separately about each process involved in reading fluently. That is where the Reading Rope comes in. Just as a strong rope is made of many tiny strands, a strong reader has developed many skills that work in tandem to turn symbols into meaning.
There are two main processes: Word Recognition and Language Comprehension. Those names seem pretty straight forward but within those two processes are several other, more highly specialized processes.
Print Awareness
Print awareness isn’t actually a part of Scarborough’s Reading Rope but it’s an important skill for emergent readers. This is the knowledge that a book has a front and back cover, a title, that pictures relate to words, words represent ideas, and words are made of letters that represent sounds. Print awareness is the beginning of literacy and is easy to support at home by simply reading with your child as often as you can.
Word Recognition
Let’s start with word recognition. This is probably what you think of when you think of traditional literacy instruction. Letters and their sounds, sight words, and rhyming all fall under word recognition and are important skills to developing fluent reading.
Sight Words
The first skill in word recognition is using sight words. These are words that you have memorized. For a child these are words like “a”, “and”, “the”, “cat”. There are many books written with only sight words to give young readers some independence and confidence. As you grow, your list of sight words becomes longer and includes more complex words. Many sight words are taught in school because they don’t follow conventional spelling rules which makes them hard to sound out. This process is all about memorization so children that are struggling to recognize their sight words or have trouble with memory will have difficulty reading.
SLPs don’t teach sight words exclusively but incorporate them into literacy instruction while they focus on the other parts of reading.
Decoding (and Encoding)
The next process is called decoding (and its opposite, encoding). This is the process of recognizing letters, associating them with their sounds, then stringing those sounds together to create words. Decoding is not to be confused with reading! Decoding is just the process of recognizing letters and deciphering the word they make. Reading requires language comprehension, which we’ll talk about next.
In fact many children are hyperlexic (these kids are often, but not always, autistic). They are excellent decoders and often have a strong interest in letters and their sounds but they don’t necessarily have the language comprehension to understand what they are decoding. So they can read the sentence “Under the sea there are many dangerous creatures.” but couldn’t match it to an image of a shark. If this sounds like your child an SLP can assess to see if their comprehension skills are age appropriate and provide support if they aren’t.
Encoding is the opposite, the process by which you turn the idea you want to express into a verbal symbol (word) and that word into sounds, which are represented by letters. This process is where writing and spelling come in.
SLPs teach decoding by supporting all areas of word recognition, especially letter-sound correspondence and phonological and phonemic skills.
Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
Phonological awareness is the skill that encompasses the recognition and manipulation of sounds in spoken language. It involves awareness of the larger sound structures of words, such as syllables and rhymes. A child with strong phonological awareness can identify and manipulate these sound units.
Phonemic awareness is a part of phonological awareness. This is awareness of letter sounds, or phonemes. It involves the ability to identify, manipulate, and blend individual phonemes within words. For instance, recognizing that the word 'cat' can be segmented into the individual sounds /k/, /a/, and /t/.
These two skills are crucial to the development of decoding and spelling. They help children learn to sound out words quickly and accurately. SLPs have training in teaching phonemic and phonological awareness that they apply to literacy instruction.
SLPs support the development of this skill by teaching rhyming, blending sounds, and segmenting words into sounds using multisensory techniques. SLPs have special training in the development of phonemic awareness and teaching phoneme production and recognition.
Language Comprehension
Being able to decode fluently does not make you a fluent reader if you aren't able to apply meaning to the things you read. Reading comprehension is based on your child’s language skills which SLPs are experts in supporting.
Background Knowledge
This is your knowledge of the world. Facts about history and science, your understanding of concepts like school and restaurants, etc. all fall under background knowledge. The Princess and the Frog won't make any sense without understanding of what a princess is and what a frog is. This knowledge usually develops naturally with age and experience and will have a significant impact on your child’s ability to comprehend what they read.
Vocabulary
Our understanding and use of vocabulary goes much deeper than just how many words we can define. When we read we also think about how words relate to each other, the subtle differences in meaning between synonyms, multiple meaning words, prefixes, suffixes, and context clues. These vocabulary skills may not come naturally to someone with a developmental language disorder and can make comprehension difficult. SLPs support vocabulary skills by teaching students to recognize non-literal language, use context clues and strategies to find the meaning of unfamiliar words.
Language Structures
Our understanding of language structures is all of our understanding of grammar and word order. Someone with a developmental language disorder or reading disability may have trouble distinguishing “This ball is red.” and “Is this ball red?”. A simple change of word order completely changes the meaning of the sentence. For kids with reading difficulties or a developmental language disorder this distinction can be very confusing. SLPs support understanding of language structures and the subtle but important changes word order and punctuation can make in written language.
Verbal Reasoning
Verbal reasoning is a broad topic that covers your ability to make inferences, make predictions, understand cause and effect, and understand figurative language. Any or all of these skills might be a struggle for someone with a language disorder. As students grow grade level texts rely increasingly on their ability to fill in the blanks and make predictions or inferences. If this is a challenge for the student they may miss the true meaning behind the words they read. SLPs support verbal reasoning skills in a variety of ways including play based learning.
Literacy Knowledge
Literacy knowledge encompasses your understanding of the genre you are reading and how you use print concepts (glossary, images, author’s notes, etc.) to support your understanding of a text. For example if you don’t understand the difference between fiction and non fiction you will be very confused when reading a fantasy book. If you don’t know how to use a glossary in a text book you must rely on other clues to help you find the definition of vocabulary words.
The Other End of the Rope
The other side of reading is writing. Every process we’ve discussed so far to comprehend what you read must work in reverse to express one’s self in writing. Reading and writing develop together naturally so if your child has difficulty reading they will likely have difficulty writing as well. While SLPs don’t do handwriting (that’s an occupational therapist) they can address the language and phonological components that go into turning thoughts into words, into writing.
The Process
The first thing your SLP will do is conduct a thorough assessment. They will assess your child’s spoken language skills, their listening and reading comprehension skills and their phonological and phonemic awareness, and sound- letter correspondence skills. They will use this to determine what factors are contributing to your child’s reading difficulty. It could be any or several of the strands in the reading rope that we have discussed.
The SLP will then create goals and a treatment plan based on their skills and weaknesses. They will support your child’s weak areas using their knowledge of word recognition, language recognition and language development and might choose to use an accredited program such as Orton-Gillingham or Heggerty.
It's important to remember that your SLP can diagnose a language disorder or delay but can not diagnose a learning or reading disability.
SLPs aren’t the only option for reading support for your child but they do have unique strength in supporting phonemic awareness, vocabulary skills, language development, and verbal reasoning that make them a great option for many children.
Works Cited:
McArthur, G. M., Hogben, J. H., Edwards, V. T., Heath, S. M., & Mengler, E. D. (2000). On the “specifics” of specific reading disability and specific language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 41(7), 869–874. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021963099006186
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