Written Language

• Written language is built on oral language
• Written language is not universal
• Written language must be directly taught
• Orthography: Set of conventions for writing a language, includes the norms of spelling, punctuation..
• Direct route is also called lexical route
• Direct route decoding:

  Sight reading

  Access lexical terms directly from orthography

  Requires frequent exposures to words
• Indirect route is also called the sublexical route
• Indirect route decoding

  • Unfamiliar words
  • Translation of graphemes to phonemes
  • Requires learning phonics
  • Sound out no words
• Decoding: The use of print information to arrive at word meaning and word pronunciation, activating a word representation in your mind
• High familiarity: Direct decoding
• Low familiarity: Indirect decoding
• Simple view of reading: Word recognition and language comprehension combine for skilled reading
• Language comprehension: The ability to understand language
• Word recognition: Recognizing words in text and sounding them out phonemically
• Skilled reading: The ability to read and obtain meaning from what was read
• Grapheme phoneme correspondence: Phonics are important for decoding, associating letters with corresponding sounds in order to sound out unfamiliar words
• Phonological awareness: The ability to identify and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken language, key precursor to learning to read
• Metalinguistics: Awareness of language, ability to think about language as the object of thought, distinct from word meaning
• Phonemic awareness: Awareness at the level of individual sounds and phonemes (syllables, rhymes)
• Phonemic awareness can be taught
• Phonemic awareness helps children learn to read and spell
• Phonemic awareness is most effective when it focuses on one or two types of phonemic information and children are eventually taught to manipulate phonemes with alphabet letters
• Segmenting and blending are likely the most critical skills for phonemic awareness
• Phonological awareness is soley with oral spoken language
• Language comprehension includes

  • Background knowledge
  • Vocabulary
  • Language structures
  • Verbal reasoning
  • Literacy knowledge
• Word recognition includes

  • Phonological awareness
  • Decoding
• Lexical Restructuring Model: Learning words that are phonologically similar causes greater specificity in phonological representations of words
• Small vocabulary may lead to poorer phonological awareness
• Phonological awareness intervention leads to improved phonological awareness, not vocabulary
• Vocabulary intervention leads to improved vocabulary and phonological awareness
• Matthew effect: Those who start off with stronger reading skills continue to get stronger. Kids with weaker skills do not grow as well because they do not have the foundational skills
• Whole Language - Exposure in a naturalistic context, devalues phonology
• Phonics - Phonics-based instruction emphasizes the systematic teaching of letter-sound relationships and decoding skills