Semantics

To understand language, a child must understand the meaning of word parts (a.k.a. morphology) and individual words within the language (a.k.a. vocabulary), but more than that, a child must understand that words are arranged in phrases, sentences, and discourse in meaningful ways. The child must understand how to use language to communicate complete and meaningful ideas.




Semantics is a general term that just refers to "meaning." Vocabulary specifically refers to the meaning of isolated words, and morphology specifically refers to the meaning of word parts, but semantics can generally be applied to the meaning of word parts, whole words, sentences and discourse.

There are several ways to assess semantics at each of these levels, but one common thread involves the question of whether the items on the test are presented in written form. If the child is expected to read the items, the test becomes more of a decoding test than a test of semantics.
Although the items should not involve printed text, it is very common to use pictures in semantics assessments (teachers should, of course, consider the cultural relevance and sensitivity of the pictures they use). A child might be asked to provide a name for pictures as a test of expressive vocabulary, or to match spoken words with pictures as a test of receptive vocabulary. A test of semantics at the larger-than-word level may involve asking a child to arrange a series of pictures to reflect a logical sequence of events.

Another common assessment involves asking a child to provide a word that best matches a definition presented (orally) by the teacher as a test of expressive vocabulary, or to ask a child to provide a definition of a word as a test of receptive vocabulary. Similarly, a test of vocabulary knowledge could require that the child be familiar with several words in order to answer each item correctly. For example, the child could be asked to select a word which does not belong in a group of words (e.g. THREAD, STRING, ROPE, KNOT). In this sort of assessment, the child must know the meaning of most if not all of the words in each item in order to be successful.

Similarly, a child might be asked to provide a synonym or an antonym for words, which is a test of both receptive and expressive vocabulary. Again, in this case, more than one vocabulary word is being tested at a time - the child must know the meaning of the test item, and must know another word which either has the same meaning or an opposite meaning.

Morphology assessments often involve asking a child to describe how a word's meaning changes as parts of the words are changed. For example, a child could be asked to break compound words into their component parts and to describe the meaning of those component parts (e.g. DAY-BREAK, BASE-BALL, HEAD-ACHE). Or, a child could be asked to describe what happens when affixes are added to words (as in SKIP versus SKIPPED) and to explain those affixes (What do UNWRAP and UNTIE have in common?). Similarly, a child's appreciation of morphology can be assessed by asking the child to describe how words with similar parts are related (e.g. EARACHE, EARRING, EARDRUM).

Semantics assessments at the larger-than-word level usually depend on identifying words or sentences that do not make sense in the context (e.g. "Billy had a dog. He loved his dog. His fish was orange. His dog could fetch a ball."), or they depend on the child identifying logical inconsistencies (e.g. "Billy's dog could fetch and he could roll over. He was a good dog, but he didn't know any tricks.").

http://www.sedl.org/

Phonology

Speech is the most typical form of language, and in order to understand speech, a child must be able to clearly hear, distinguish, and categorize the phonemes within the speech. A child who is unable to distinguish between similar phonemes may develop difficulties with language comprehension. A child who has difficulty with English phonology may not be able to hear the difference between words like THIN and FIN or HERE and HAIR, and those words may confuse the child when they come up in conversation.




The most common assessment for phonology involves discriminating between two words that sound similar. In this assessment, the child is asked to listen to the teacher say pairs of words and decide if they are the same word repeated twice (which sometimes, they should be), or if they are different words. When pairs of different words are presented, they should only differ by one phoneme (and they should be similar phonemes, such as /sh/ and /s/ or /d/ and /g/). Also, when pairs of different words are presented, the location of the difference within the words should be varied (Sometimes the difference should be at the beginning, as in RHYME-LIME sometimes in the middle, as in MUD-MADE and sometimes at the end of the word, as in RIP-RIB). Also, attention should be paid to both vowels and consonants.

In a phonology test, the pairs of words do not have to be real words the child is familiar with. If a teacher wishes to make up a phonology test, she might find it easier to use made-up words. There is some merit to this approach because the child's attention is focused on the words themselves, and not on the meanings of the words.

Phonology is quite language specific, and children who speak languages other than English may be more "tuned" to the phonology of their native language. Similarly, teachers should be sensitive to the influence that dialect can play on a child's perceptions -- children who are raised immersed in one dialect of English may not be very sensitive to all of the distinct phonemes of other dialects of English.

from : www.sedl.org

Linguistic Knowledge

Most of the problem of understanding language hinges on the knowledge of the mechanics of that language. All languages have structure, and an implicit knowledge of that structure is essential to language comprehension.




Linguistic Knowledge is the synthesis of three more basic cognitive elements -- phonology, semantics, and syntax. Linguistic knowledge is more than the sum of its parts, but it does not lend itself to explicit assessment. A child may have a grasp on the more basic cognitive elements, but still have trouble blending these elements together into a stable linguistic structure. For example, if a child appears to have a grasp of the more basic cognitive elements, but is still having difficulty expressing herself or understanding others, it is likely that the child has not yet managed to synthesize those elements. Similarly, children who have limited appreciation for genre or different voices in stories may be having difficulty synthesizing the more basic linguistic elements together. Or, children who communicate well informally, but who have difficulty with more formal linguistic structures (which are often found in classroom settings) may be having difficulty applying linguistic knowledge. An assessment of linguistic knowledge is less straightforward than other cognitive elements, and is often revealed through elimination of other possibilities.

Teachers should be careful not to confuse dialect differences with a lack of linguistic knowledge. Teachers should also know that, especially when considering a child's appreciation of genre, voice, and formal linguistic forms, children who primarily speak languages other than English may have more advanced linguistic knowledge in their native language than in English.

Elements Supporting Language Comprehension

Background Knowledge

In order to understand language, the child must have some background knowledge to use as a reference for interpreting new information. Moreover, if the child is expected to understand something specific, her background knowledge must be relevant to what she is expected to understand.




There are many assessments on the market that measure a child's general knowledge of facts about the world. Usually some estimation is made of what one could reasonably expect children in the first grade to know (e.g. birds build nests in trees, or bicycles have two wheels), and the child is asked to answer these simple "fact" questions (similar to what would be found on the old intelligence tests). However, the most informative assessment is a measure of the child's relevant background knowledge -- specifically, knowledge that is related to the task at hand.

For example, if a child is expected to listen to and understand the story Charlotte's Web, the child should have some background knowledge about farm animals and spiders. Children know a great many things; children raised in the city, for example, know about public transit, taxis, traffic jams, shopping malls, and sky scrapers.

Children raised in other settings know about other things. But any particular child may not know much about a particular topic. It is always worthwhile to assess a child's relevant background knowledge before expecting a child to be able to accomplish a task.

Decoding

Good readers are able to correctly pronounce familiar words, whether they are regular or irregular words, and are able to pronounce unfamiliar words in a way consistent with the conventions of written English. For skilled readers, decoding is so automatic that it requires virtually no conscious effort, so the reader can devote full attention to the task of comprehending the text.




As mentioned earlier, oral reading accuracy (a.k.a. "running record") is one form of decoding assessment, but it is not a very "clean" assessment. Teachers need to be aware that, in their early attempts to acquire reading skills, children apply many different strategies, some of which are hard to detect. Children often attempt to guess words based on the context or on clues provided by pictures - most of the time, a child's guesses are inaccurate, and their difficulties with decoding are revealed, but sometimes the child guesses correctly, making the teacher believe that the child accurately decoded the word. Teachers who use oral reading as a decoding assessment need to pay careful attention to the child as she reads - teachers should be aware that the child may appear to decode some words because those words are in the child's sight-vocabulary, and the child may appear to know other words when she is really just guessing.
A cleaner test of decoding skill is to determine the child's ability to read words out of context. Isolated words can be presented to the child one at a time, and the child can be asked to say the words aloud (this is not a vocabulary test, so children should not be expected to provide meanings for the words). The words selected for a decoding test should be words that are within the child's spoken vocabulary, and should contain a mix of phonetically regular and irregular words.

Similarly, children can be asked to match a spoken word with a written word -- the teacher can say a word or a word part orally to the child, and the child can identify the written form that matches the spoken word or word part.

Children can be tested on their accuracy (Is each word pronounced correctly?), their fluency (How much does the child struggle with word naming?), or their "level" - leveled lists of words are provided by many publishers, and the child can be assessed as to his or her ability to decode words that are of varying difficulties.

Sometimes teachers test children's ability to "recognize" sight words as a test of decoding skill, but "recognizing" words is not the same as decoding them. Decoding is a strategy that readers can use on all words, even words they've never seen before. Sight-word reading has to do with memorizing the "image" of a word or a specific feature of a word, and with this strategy, only a select few words are learned. All children go through a stage as they learn to read where they memorize a few sight words, and sometimes they are even encouraged by teachers who use Dolch word lists and frequency indexes to focus the child's attention on the most useful sight words. However, memorizing sight words does not help a child to learn how to decode words, and testing the child's knowledge of specific, well-practiced sight words does not provide a measure of his or her decoding skill.

from: http://www.sedl.org/

Decoding

Good readers are able to correctly pronounce familiar words, whether they are regular or irregular words, and are able to pronounce unfamiliar words in a way consistent with the conventions of written English. For skilled readers, decoding is so automatic that it requires virtually no conscious effort, so the reader can devote full attention to the task of comprehending the text.




As mentioned earlier, oral reading accuracy (a.k.a. "running record") is one form of decoding assessment, but it is not a very "clean" assessment. Teachers need to be aware that, in their early attempts to acquire reading skills, children apply many different strategies, some of which are hard to detect. Children often attempt to guess words based on the context or on clues provided by pictures - most of the time, a child's guesses are inaccurate, and their difficulties with decoding are revealed, but sometimes the child guesses correctly, making the teacher believe that the child accurately decoded the word. Teachers who use oral reading as a decoding assessment need to pay careful attention to the child as she reads - teachers should be aware that the child may appear to decode some words because those words are in the child's sight-vocabulary, and the child may appear to know other words when she is really just guessing.
A cleaner test of decoding skill is to determine the child's ability to read words out of context. Isolated words can be presented to the child one at a time, and the child can be asked to say the words aloud (this is not a vocabulary test, so children should not be expected to provide meanings for the words). The words selected for a decoding test should be words that are within the child's spoken vocabulary, and should contain a mix of phonetically regular and irregular words.

Similarly, children can be asked to match a spoken word with a written word -- the teacher can say a word or a word part orally to the child, and the child can identify the written form that matches the spoken word or word part.

Children can be tested on their accuracy (Is each word pronounced correctly?), their fluency (How much does the child struggle with word naming?), or their "level" - leveled lists of words are provided by many publishers, and the child can be assessed as to his or her ability to decode words that are of varying difficulties.

Sometimes teachers test children's ability to "recognize" sight words as a test of decoding skill, but "recognizing" words is not the same as decoding them. Decoding is a strategy that readers can use on all words, even words they've never seen before. Sight-word reading has to do with memorizing the "image" of a word or a specific feature of a word, and with this strategy, only a select few words are learned. All children go through a stage as they learn to read where they memorize a few sight words, and sometimes they are even encouraged by teachers who use Dolch word lists and frequency indexes to focus the child's attention on the most useful sight words. However, memorizing sight words does not help a child to learn how to decode words, and testing the child's knowledge of specific, well-practiced sight words does not provide a measure of his or her decoding skill.

Language Comprehension

To read and understand text, a child needs to be able to understand language. Before expecting a child to be able to read and understand a story, the question should be asked, "Could the child understand this story if it was read TO her?" An essential aspect of language comprehension hinges on the ability to draw inferences and appreciate implications-it is important to understand both the explicit and implicit messages contained in language.





Language comprehension can be assessed in basically the same way reading comprehension is assessed. With language comprehension assessment, however, the child should not be expected to read any text. Everything from the instructions to the comprehension questions should be presented orally to the child.

It is also worth noting that a child's language comprehension "level" is usually considerably higher than her reading comprehension "level." A child that is not able to read and understand a passage of leveled, grade-appropriate text usually has no difficulty understanding that same text if somebody else reads it to her. For most young children learning to read, their ability to read and understand text is limited by their decoding skills, not by their language comprehension skills. (That is not to say that most children have "good" language comprehension skills or that language comprehension skills are not a reading teacher's concern. The point here is that decoding skills are usually the greater problem for young readers.) However, sometimes teachers find that a child who can not read and understand a passage of text also does not understand it when the teacher reads it to the child. It is always worthwhile to compare a child's language comprehension with her reading comprehension to be sure that her ability to understand text is not being limited by her ability to understand language.

When assessing the language comprehension skills of children with limited English proficiency, every attempt should be made to assess the child's language comprehension skills in both English and her primary language. A child's proficiency with a language, any language, is a strength that teachers should make every effort to build upon.

Reading Comprehension and the elements that support it

Reading comprehension is composed of two equally important components. Decoding, or the ability to translate text into speech, is only part of the process of reading comprehension. The other part is language comprehension, or the ability to understand spoken language. All struggling readers have difficulty with either language comprehension or decoding or both.

Reading comprehension assessments are the most common type of published reading test that is available. And the most typical type of reading comprehension assessment involves asking a child to read a passage of text that is leveled appropriately for the child's age or grade, and then asking some explicit, detailed questions about the content of the text (often these are called Informal Reading Inventories, or IRIs). While there are very many published IRIs, often teachers construct their own and use them to determine the appropriate instructional level for each child.





There are some variations on the basic reading comprehension assessment. For example, instead of explicit questions about facts directly presented in the text, the child could be asked to answer inferential questions about information which was implied by the text, or the child might be asked to retell the story in the child's own words or to summarize the main idea or the moral of the story. Another common reading comprehension assessment is called a "cloze" task - words are omitted from the passage, and the child is asked to fill in the blanks with appropriate words. Also, young children's reading comprehension can be assessed by asking them to read and follow simple instructions, such as, "Stand up" or, "Go look out the window."

Reading comprehension should not be confused with reading accuracy, another very common form of early reading assessment. In a reading accuracy assessment, a child is asked to read a passage of text clearly, without making any mistakes. The mistakes that the child does make are analyzed to find clues about the child's decoding strategies (not reading comprehension strategies). Very often, teachers attempt to assess a child's reading comprehension with a combination decoding/reading comprehension task - the child reads a passage out loud while the teacher makes note of errors the child makes (sometimes called a "running record"), and then the child is asked some comprehension questions about the passage.

This assessment strategy has some problems; children's reading comprehension often suffers when they are asked to read a passage of text out loud. When children read orally, they usually concentrate on reading accurately, and do not pay as much attention to comprehension of the content. Oral reading accuracy does give insights into decoding skills and strategies, but that is a separate test. A reading comprehension test is most accurate if the child is not reading aloud for an audience.

Reading comprehension assessments in this country are almost always written in English. The rare assessments that do exist for second language learners are almost always in Spanish. Because it is very important that children's reading comprehension skills be assessed in both English and in the child's primary language, whatever that language may be, teachers must be creative and resourceful to find or create assessments that they can use with all of their children. Many children who are not proficient speakers of English have substantial literacy skills in their primary language, and teachers should endeavor to assess those skills and build upon them.

Methods of Assessing Cognitive Aspects of Early Reading Development

If all children are to become successful readers, teachers need to become extremely sophisticated and diagnostic in their approach to reading instruction. To help teachers develop a sophisticated understanding of the cognitive development that takes place as children learn to read, SEDL has created The Cognitive Foundations of Learning to Read: A Framework (www.sedl.org/reading/). This framework describes in some detail the various cognitive domains that research has shown to be necessary for reading acquisition, and it also illustrates the interrelationships that exist among these various cognitive domains.




In addition to understanding what is important for all children learning to read, it is also very important that teachers understand how to assess individual children's development in each of the cognitive domains described in the framework. Assessment should always inform instruction. Individual children come with such diverse backgrounds and skills that it is necessary to cater their instruction to their individual strengths. Ongoing assessment is necessary to discover each child's reading instruction needs.

There are a variety of approaches that can be used to assess early reading skills, and teachers should be familiar with the different approaches commonly used to assess early reading skill development. To assist teachers in their assessment of the reading development of their students, common approaches for assessment for each of the cognitive domains outlined in SEDL's framework of reading acquisition are described in this paper. This description of the various assessment techniques can be used to help teachers to design their own classroom assessments, and may help teachers to better understand the district or campus assessments that are already being used with their students.





Certainly "reading assessments" should not be strictly restricted to the cognitive development of each child -- it is important to also assess other, more affective aspects (such as motivation, enjoyment, interest and habit), as well as situational aspects (such as availability of appropriate literature and home support). The assessment approaches described in this paper focus on the cognitive development that research has shown to be important for developing early reading skills, but teachers are advised to use a broader sample of assessments to inform their instruction.

Before examining these assessment descriptions, it may be useful to take some time to familiarize yourself with SEDL's framework of reading acquisition (www.sedl.org/reading/framework). Because the framework provides a useful guide to inform both instruction and assessment, it makes sense to use it to inform the current discussion of assessment approaches. Referring to the framework, we will begin with the "top three" elements on the framework, reading comprehension, decoding, and language comprehension. Then we will move to a description of assessments that are commonly used for the various cognitive domains that support language comprehension (background knowledge, linguistic knowledge, phonology, semantics, and syntax). And last we will discuss assessment approaches commonly used for the cognitive domains that support decoding (cipher knowledge, lexical knowledge, phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, knowledge of the alphabetic principle, and concepts about print).

from : http://www.sedl.org/reading/

Reading skills acquisition

Learning skills acquisition is a description of the different abilities necessary for learning to read. Reading difficulties have a common source -- problems processing spoken words hinder a student’s ability to translate written words into speech. Regardless of age, subtle auditory or phonological (speech sound) processing issues hinder reading.

We can read written words because humans have an incredible ability -- the gift of speech. The fact that we can process strings of sounds into meaningful spoken words allows humans to translate random symbols into oral language. Phonics is only a small part of the reading process.





According to the National Reading Panel, the ability to read requires that students are proficient in a number of language domains. The research that went into the NRP report is now a bit outdated and the legislation it inspired, No Child Left Behind, is proving to be not very effective in closing the gap between proficient readers and students that struggle. So let's look at all the pieces that go into learning to read well.

1. Auditory skills -- students with auditory processing difficulties often have problems learning to read. It takes a lot of auditory attention and memory to read.
2. Phoneme discrimination-- is almost as important to learning to read as phonemic awareness. Almost all the reasons that students have problems learning phonics are related to phoneme discrimination. Think about how hard the "short" vowel sounds for the letters a, e, i, o and u are to discriminate or how close the /m/, /n/ and /ng/ sound are and you will understand how discrimination issues impact reading.
3. Phonemic awareness -- regardless of age, students with reading difficulties have difficulties processing (hearing) all the sounds in words. ALL students with reading difficulties should be tested for phonemic awareness issues, using the C-TOPP (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing. These tests reveal that students with reading problems don't hear and pronounce words accurately. Common phonemic awareness problems are the inability to accurately hear middle vowel sounds (related to the discrimination issue) so they hear bit for bat and pure for poor, or they don't hear all the sounds in consonant blends (yes, this is a phonemic problem not a phonics problem) so they hear bat instead of brat and coat for coast. Phonemic awareness in English requires much more than the simple segment and blend exercises used in some phonics programs. Phoneme manipulation is used in Sound Reading (www.SoundReading.com) and Reading Reflex (http://www.readamerica.net/)
4. Phonics -- is essential for reading an alphabetic language like English but shouldn't be a primary reading intervention. The National Reading Panel clearly states that phonemic awareness is essential for learning phonics. Why do some students learn phonics in a few months in first grade while others take years to learn phonics? Simply a lack of phoneme discrimination and phonemic awareness. Letters don't stick until the sound structure of a language is in place. The NRP didn't find any difference between phonics programs. Phonics programs that require massive amounts of training and years of instruction, such as Wilson Language (www.WilsonLanguage.com) are no more effective than brief, intensive programs like Sonday (http://www.sondaysystem.com/).
5. Phonological Recoding is an advance on phonics, or decoding, programs. Many noted researchers, including Bruce McCandliss, Donald Shankweiler, DL Share, GB Thompson, CM Fletcher-Flinn and Howlett (in press) are crafting powerful alternatives to systematic phonics. Skilled readers use a lot more information to decode words than just sounds and symbols. We have phonological and semantic information about the word from speech. And English has many homophones and words that are similar in sound, so "contextual checking" is essential. Think about these sentences -- He wound the cloth around the wound. Do you produce produce? Polish men don't polish. Recoding uses all the information we have about a word, or knowledge source, to recode a written word into a meaningful spoken word. McCandliss' Word Building and Sound Reading Solutions are example of recoding instruction. If a student is taking a long time to learn phonics and it is not translating into reading power recoding may be the answer.
6. Fluency -- recent research by Good (creator of DIBELS) and Torgesen have found that about 95% of students that read at greater than 110 words a minute pass fourth grade state assessments and about 80% who read at less than 80 words per minute fail to meet state reading standards. Teaching decoding without teaching fluency is of little value. Fluency instruction includes two important parts -- rapid naming practice so students become fluent in the reading of sounds, syllables and words, followed by timed repeated reading of short, easy-to-read passages. Fluency Foundation uses both and Read Naturally is a good program using timed, repeated reading.
7. Comprehension is also a two-level system. Most comprehension instruction focuses on higher-level language comprehension and strategies, which are very important. Most of these skills and strategies are taught in elementary school, so older students who were struggling to read will need basic comprehension instruction. They must learn to think about the meaning of print, from predicting to inferring. But many students who struggle with comprehension have overlooked input, or receptive language, comprehension issues. They struggle with accurately reading words, do it too slowly to keep words in memory, with word and sentence meaning. This is often the result of auditory and phonological issues.
8. Read, read some more, then read -- This works best when students are reading accurately and fluently. Most students who resist reading are labored readers who struggle with decoding and fluency. Have your child or student read out loud. If the reading is labored at all then reading more may not help. If the student is reading well then encourage reading, even if it is Captain Underpants!
   

What causes dyslexia and reading problems?

The main reasons for reading problems are:

1. Ineffective reading instruction
2. Auditory perception difficulties
   
3. Visual perception difficulties
   
4. Language processing difficulties
   

Over 180 research studies to date have proven that phonics is the BEST WAY to teach reading to all students. They also have shown that phonics is the ONLY WAY to teach reading to students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities.

Unfortunately, 80% of our nations schools do not use an intensified phonics approach for reading instruction. They either use the whole word (see & say) approach or a cursory use of phonics along with the whole word method.

While most people can learn to read using the whole word approach, it is not the best way to learn. It teaches through memorization of word pictures and guessing. Unlike Chinese or Japanese which are picture languages, the English language is a phonetic language. With the exception of the United States which dropped phonics in the 1930's, all other countries that have a phonetic language, teach reading through phonics.

There are only 44 sounds while there are about 1 million words in English. These facts readily explain why having to memorize 44 sounds as opposed to memorizing hundreds of thousands of words is the most efficient way to learn to read.

Reading and writing is simply "talking on paper." Children learn to talk by imitating sounds and then combining the sounds to form words. The brain is programmed to learn language in this fashion. Therefore, the most efficient way to learn to read is through phonics because it teaches children to read the same way they learned to talk. [Click Here For Latest Brain Research Related To Learning To Read]

Children and adults who do not learn to read through an intensive phonics program often have one or more of the following symptoms:

• Below grade level reading achievement
• Slow reading
• Poor comprehension
• Fatigue after reading only for a short while
• Poor spelling skills
• Lack of enjoyment from reading

Some children have auditory discrimination problems. This may have been the result of having chronic ear infections when they were young. Others may be born with this learning disability. Correction involves educational exercises to train the brain in discrimination and to over teach the formation of the sounds used in speaking and reading.

Another group of children have visual perception problems. They may actually reverse letters or words. They have difficulty matching the word image on the page with a previously stored image in their brain. Exercises that train the brain to "see" more accurately may help but instruction with phonics is the best approach to overcome this problem.

Language development problems can contribute to poor reading and listening comprehension along with difficulty in verbal and written expression. Learning appropriate word attack skills through phonics along with special help in receptive and/or expressive language skills improves this type of learning disability.

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