a adult with no phonemic awareness

Hi,
You might try this: Help your student take the words she knows well from the written spelling to the “sound spelling”, concretely and in a multisensory manner, using pencil and paper. In other words, teach her the Why for the words’ sounds. Building on what she already knows. Then help her learn the other words using the same strategy.
If you are interested in trying this, contact me at [email protected], and I will tell you more. Anita

[quote=”jac”]I am teaching an adult who can read from her sight vocabulary fairly well, but for words she has not previously encountered she has no ability to decode and not much for spelling new words. Even looking up a word in a dictionary is difficult if all you can access is the initial consonant.
She is 41.
Today word building with cv and cvc nonsense words. So difficult. Is this the right way to go or should I give up altogether on trying to teach her to decode?
I have never even had a child this tough before.[/quote]
try to start with 2letter words spell and show in the monitor ,after that try to make a mental image by cover and open i think u will be helpfull.

It is, of course, going to be very difficult at first. She has never (in 41 years!) sent the electricity down htese neuron paths. So… it being *very* hard at first … I wouldn’t give up… not right away. Have you stretched the sounds out? (aaaaaammmmmm…. with stopped phonemes like /t/ you can repeat them three times for emphasis, but my inclination is to stretch the stretchable ones snce repeating might confuse the matter.)

HOWEVER. Reason I signed on (just didn’t log in — this is Sue :-))) was to post that I FOUND the article i remember reading on the subway in 1998 that discussed the rather odd phenomenon that phonemic awareness *decreases* even with *good readers* after eighth grade or so. (The Fate of Phonemic Awareness Beyond the Elementary School Years. By: Scarborough, Hollis S.; Ehri, Linnea C.; Olson, Richard K.; Fowler, Anne E.. Scientific Studies of Reading, 1998, Vol. 2 Issue 2, p115, 28p; (AN 7433392)

The awareness of sounds is there, but has never been brought up front analytically before. She is in the same position as an adult trying to learn to skate or play the piano for the first time; it all feels very strange and she is unsure of herself.

The *worst* thing to do is to hurry. A lot of people figure this is an adult, we want to read adult books and the newspaper right away. Well, that is the approach that failed her before so why should it work any better now?

If you started with a child, you would be happy to spend a couple of hours a week for two or three years to get her up to speed on all of this stuff. So look at spending lots of time on this and letting her work up to the new things gradually.

Try the classic system of concentrating on one sound per day. Say the target sound and stress and overstress it. Think up all the words you know that start with that sound and make a list:
mmmmmm - man, money, mike, milk, meet, …
Then if she can (harder, can wait ‘til later) think up words that end with the sound and make a list:
mmmmmmmm - ham, him, gym, bum, come, arm, …
And if she’s good, words with the sound in the middle and list:
mmmmmm - hammer, dumber, comma, famous

Write the target letter/digraph in large red marker on top of the list and go over all the same letters in the words with red, and post it on the wall. Find a sample picture for each position - man, gym, hammer — and post it with the list too.

Then do a page or two in a good phonics workbook (or more in two or three workbooks) with exercises on identifying the sound, differentiating it from similar sounds, writing the letter, spelling simple words with the letter, and so on.

Usually after the first ten or so sounds, the light starts to flash in the brain and you can go a little faster, maybe two sounds a day.
After you have a reasonable number of consonants and a short vowel or two, you can start to spell CVC words. Look inthe back of “Why Johnny Can’t Read” for some good lists to start with. At first the student may be very fearful and not want to put things on paper, but do completely unpunitive correcting until she feels OK about it.
After you get a little farther on, you may find AVKO spelling useful. I have just started using adult book 1 with two very different students and it seems to be a good system.

Thanks for tips. I have got AVKO spelling but it is not possible to use it. The student spelt ‘batter’ correctly but could not spell ‘batters’ or ”fatter’ for example.
It is a challenge. I shall try and read the article mentioned by Sue.
Also the maths is about the same. She cannot check her change when shopping. Thank goodness for tills she said, as she checks that way.
JAC

Yes, it sounds like you need to get the base stuff first and then *work up* to AVKO. Don’t give up the ship! The fact that she can’t do things like spelling “fatter” tells you just how badly she needs this help.

I, too, have an adult student with poor phonemic awareness. She is in her early twenties, grew up in a foreign English speaking country and didn’t get a lot of education. She sight reads. Her native accent makes it hard to distinguish the various short vowel sounds as well.

I think I have already had at least 22 sessions with her and she can still get stuck on ccvc words. But she is making great progress. I am a PG trained tutor and do lots of mapping and phoneme manipulation work with her. I found a perfect exercise for her in the ABeCeDarian student workbook (developed by Michael Bend, also PG trained). He has an exercise which he calls “flex” practice. The student has a list of words parts such as bo, do, fo, ho, plo, spo, dro, swo, etc. The student reads the list twice. The first time, she pronounces “bo” as in “box” and the second time she pronounces “bo” as in “bone.” This is very hard for her but I see great improvement.

I’m sure it is very difficult to retrain a mature adult but it can and should be done. If she is committed, both of you will succeed.