Can Reading Be "Easier" than Speaking for Children with Language Disabilities?
I was recently speaking to the principal of a school for children with learning disabilities. She was talking about a seven year old girl who had been a student in her school since she was about four years of age. During that time, the director said their focus had been on developing the child's spoken language and holding off on literacy since "there was no way to expect her to read until her spoken language skills improved."
The concern that the principal showed for the child is laudatory. And her thinking was totally in line with accepted practices. For most children, speaking precedes reading. Further, the skills of spoken language seem to be prerequisites for being able to master reading. That seems to be why children with problems in speaking have high rates of failure in learning to read. This dependency relationship is sometimes expressed as "written language is parasitic on spoken language."
But is the situation as straightforward as we have been led to believe? Significantly the answer is NO. If we are willing to delve a bit deeper into the situation, then we find that the relationships are far different, more interesting and more optimistic than is generally thought to be the case.
At this point, you are likely and rightly to be thinking -- What is the basis for this counter-intuitive assertion?
In trying to understand the alternative view, it is useful to start by looking at dominant methods of reading instruction. Those methods, as parents and teachers well know, are structured to require precisely the language skills which trouble the children most. For example, the sound analysis emphasis in traditional phonics can be deadly for children with articulation problems. Similarly, traditional phonics instruction requires the memorization of hundreds of different verbally-based rules. For children with problems in verbal expression, that verbal memory load can be overwhelming. With demands such as these serving as the basic units of instruction, the tight link between spoken and written language is only to be expected.
However, despite their dominance, there is no need to restrict reading instruction to these methods. Reading, at its heart, is LANGUAGE THAT IS SEEN (as opposed to speaking which is LANGUAGE THAT IS HEARD). Many children with language problems have considerable strength in the visual realm. If reading instruction is organized to emphasize its critical visual elements, these children can suddenly find themselves in comfortable secure terrain where they can make steady progress.
As but one example, let's consider how we might get children with language problems to read words that may not be familiar with. Any number of words might be used, but for our purposes here, we'll illustrate via the word house.
After writing a model of the word on a card, you show it to the child and then cover it. Following that, you show sets of incomplete words such as
h _ b _ y ; _ _ u _ e; _ h _ _ s; _ _ c k _ t ; h _ _ s e ; h _ _ r s
The child has to identify the words that can become house and then fill each one in to make it complete. The sequence is repeated with several additional rows of incomplete words.
This single activity offers several advantages--all of which are unique to the visual world.
-First, it requires analysis of all the constituent letters in a word. Once this type of analysis takes hold, accurate perception of all words follows. Children with language problems can then literally see fine differences among words that totally elude them when the same words are spoken.
-Second, to show whether an answer is correct or not, the adult can simply place the model next to the word. No such comparison can be carried out with spoken words since two pieces of auditory information can never be simultaneously compared.
When a host of activities is offered which share these features, the reading experience of children with language problems is transformed. In place of endless failure, there is steady success. And as has happened with many "accepted truths" that have hamstrung us, it is time to move ahead and no longer allow ourselves to be governed by the idea that spoken language problems must inevitably curtail the attainment of literacy.
