Hi Jimmy,
In the lengthy thread further down you stated “most kids, even after proper intervention will not enjoy reading…” Of course, you were discussing kids in need of remediation. Yet, it is exactly that child, the one who doesn’t enjoy reading, that is most likely to be a vision therapy candidate.
But first, some more background. I’m in the real world. I’m working with 5 to 8 kids in any given week (I do this two days a week) and have worked with approximately 30 kids over the past year.
Here’s what I observe: Most (well over 50%) had a vision problem that needed addressing before they would ever enjoy reading. The vision therapists I work closely with address those issues. They are not visual perception issues, but rather the basic visual skills involving the development of proper eye movement, binocular vision and hand-eye coordination. (primarily, in my opinion, binocular vision, but that’s not really my area.)
Yes, many of these kids have phonemic awareness issues also, which I address. But, until I came across vision therapy, I was not turning out children who enjoyed reading. Together, we do.
Now, this is personal experience. You don’t have to accept it, but that’s why I contribute here, because others need to be aware of what I am consistently seeing in real kids.
For example, a comment from a kid to his mother…”I knew I would love reading!” Another comment from a kid to me (paraphrasing here) “Mom has to turn off my light at night and tell me to get to sleep because I take a book to bed.” The mothers of both these kids checked “No” to the question “Does your child read for pleasure?” only a couple of months earlier. These are not exceptions…..we are turning out pleasure readers. Yes, it will take time for them to build fluency and comprehension skills, but if they can now visually deal with print, and like to read, the “Matthew Effect” will likely be overcome eventually.
As for the request, I really would like you to cite the single most convincing piece of research that is known to either you, Reid Lyon, the NIH, or any of your experts and their well-replicated research which has convinced all of you that vision is not a significant issue underlying reading problems.
I realize this request is a pain, but if you do submit such a citation here, I promise to find it and read it, discuss it’s implications with the vision therapists I know, and then post back here with our observations. Others can then judge whether the research indeed supports your position……Rod
P.S. Someone mentioned the ulcer-bacteria story in the long thread below. I feel that I’m in a position similar to someone giving an antibiotic to cure an ulcer, against all the research, but the ulcers keep disappearing….so, do I trust the research, or my own observations? I started all this with exactly your perspective, but personal experience has changed my perspective on this.
Janis I was thinking about this question for the last day or
I was thinking about how one would go about teaching a deaf person to read. Using what we know about phonological processing and the concept that one must teach the sounds in words, I had a thought, A deaf person can’t process sound. Can they process a phoneme?
I was thinking about how it would be done. The person would carefully look at the teacher’s mouth as they pronounced each phoneme. Watch as the lips purse to form the sound ‘b’. Then look on the page and see how that phoneme is represented by our written language. Now watch my mouth as I make the phoneme ‘a’ and so on and so on on until you are reading the word bad. You are connecting the spoken word to the written word by teaching each phoneme. With knowledge of all 44 phonemes you could then begin segementing and blending.
I would think that one could not be a lip reader without knowledge of what each lip movement represented, each lip movement representing a phoneme.
The Mcguirk effect showed that what we see affects what we hear. Everyone keeps mistaking this to mean letters on the page but what they were really addressing were lip movements.
Alot of teaching strategies, further research and even legislation as been set forth with the presumption that phonological processing, by it’s definition is completely auditory. I just don’t think that has been proven.
An aside, I agree that pg is multisensory. I happen to believe all reading methods whether intending to be or not are multisensory. We, after all are multisensory human beings.
Victoria, I find myself in awe of your clarity of thought.
Truely, you are just a very clear thinker. That’s all I can say.
Re: Janis I was thinking about this question for the last da
Linda,
I forget the exact statistic, but only about a third of sounds can be lipread. That is why you can’t effectively teach a deaf child with no usable hearing to read by teaching phonemes visually or tactually (sp?). For example, p, b, and m look the same on the lips. That is why lipreading is not an answer for understanding language alone. Almost any child with a profound hearing loss can have access to sound with a cochlear implant. They are improving all the time and children under 12 months are now being implanted. With very intense therapy, these children can develop good speech and language and then learn to read normally. Children with severe losses can benefit from improved hearing aid technology which can sometimes bring their hearing into the speech range. However, this also takes very intensive therapy and cooperation on the part of the parents who must be the primary teachers of language.
Let me introduce a new thought to this discussion. I do think I understand what you are getting at, but I disagree that phonological processing should have meaning other than the obvious processing of sounds. Blind children learn to read using phonemic awareness and phonics with no visual cues whatsoever. They read tactually. So yes, reading involves another sense other than auditory (I think this is what you are meaning). But it is not necessarily visual (whether on the lips or letters). The units of a word are phonemes and these phonemes are blended to make words whether the input is in the form of print or dots. I hope this makes a little sense!
Janis
Re: Janis I was thinking about this question for the last da
Yes, it does. I think that is what I am getting at. Phonemes are processed beyond just the understood method of auditory input. I think we need more research in this area but we won’t get it because of the presumption that phonemes are processed only through our auditory system. I even want to seperate out the bigger picture which is reading in general and really speak to the very specific skill of developing an understanding of phonemes.
I just don’t think there is conclusive evidence that this skill is strictly acquired through auditory input.
I really don’t think my view on this issue will change any thinking on this subject but it has been interesting discussing it with you.
Re: Janis I was thinking about this question for the last da
A very few totally deaf people have had excellent teachers and have learned to speak and read. Linda’s thoughts are exactly on the right track. They are taught to form the lips and tongue properly and to make sounds. Then these sounds are shaped/corrected by practice. This is a long process and requires real teaching, so far too many deaf kids get shunted off to second- and third-best approaches, but yes, it can be done.
I read a wonderful article by a man who had been taught in this way, around a hundred years ago. He wrote in a lovely Victorian style (too difficult for many modern readers, hearing people included) and clearly had no language difficulties. His parents decided when he was very young that they simply would not stand for him to be deaf and dumb, so they started an intensive teaching program for him, starting with phonics, so that written English was actually his first language. I’m sorry I don’t have the reference — a book in a former school’s collection — but I’ll try to find it later if possible.
Re: Janis I was thinking about this question for the last da
Victoria, I agree that this is certainly true. Even today there is one location in this country that I know of that uses the Verbo-tonal method which involves pairing sound to a vibration device. Lindamood Bell has techniques very similar to what has been done with deaf children to feel and view the placement of the tongue, lips, etc. when producing sounds. Teaching speech, language, and reading with no usable hearing is possible, but a tiny percentage of children would receive the kind of services needed to make it work. Helen Keller was a good example…gifted herself and had a full-time, one-on-one teacher for many, many years. Most parents can’t afford that these days. Although, I do have one friend who was hired by a parent to teach his child fulltime. Amazing, but very, very rare. (And this child has a cochlear implant). Anyway, there are few children today that have no usable hearing unless it is by the choice of the parents (which I consider neglect). The technology is here to bring sound to deaf children. It still takes very intensive therapy for them to learn speech and language, however. But using the auditory sense is still the best way to go, obviously.
Janis
Re: Deafness and reading
Hearing impaired students have difficulty with reading because of the language deficit. I was trained in teachering hearing-impaired students and now have LD licence. Deaf students who are trained “orally” to use speech and lipreading, are actually very good at phoenetic skills since their speech skills are also developed through an understanding of phoenetic skills. Many students can “sound out” words, but they do not understand what the words mean. The strategies to teach hearing-impaired students reading are similar to the multisensory approaches to teaching students with learning disabilities.
Re: Deafness and reading
Robin,
Fascinating, thank you for this. I bet your knowledge of how to teach the deaf really helps you in teaching all children.
Re: Great Leaps, Rod Q
Rod, I’d be happy to talk with you or post an e-mail on the development of Great Leaps. I think there are those who would construe such a post an taking advantage of the board and I try diligently not to do that. I also jump the pyrmaid schemes (I like that typo and will leave it - sounds like a fire-starting housecleaner). Ken
victoria wrote:
>
> The interesting observation is that English-educated people
> naturally speak of sounds and letters together. You can’t
> discuss pronunciation with the average English-educated
> person for two minutes without someone either spelling
> something or writing an example or both. When my students
> give me their names, I naturally ask them to spell them for me.
> But my Chinese students don’t do that. When they speak of
> pronunciation, they try at first to do it all orally (a
> problem because of some sounds they do not pronounce). When
> giving their names, they don’t understand me when I ask for
> the spelling. They just don’t think that way.
>
Victoria, as an ELS person I can tell you that spelling was a new idea to me. My first language is phonetically regular language - almost one to one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes with a handful of digraphs. There are a few examples of two graphemes representing the same sound (although there are strict rules that would help you figure out which one to use). Nobody ever needs to spell anything- you are just using orthographic code (you will need spelling if you did not know orthography).