Reading Development and Difficulties - Chapter 1
While reading this chapter I came across a poem I have never read before, but must post in my classroom next year. The poem is called "Is English a Dreadful Language?" I feel as I must share it as well as the youtube link of people singing this poem.
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you.
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear;
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go an thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd learned to speak it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how'till the day I die.
Now for chapter definitions from pages 22-24:
Ability match or reading-age match design
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Research
design in which the performance of a group of kids, such as poor readers, is
compared with that of group of children (typically younger) who are at the
same level of reading ability
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Alphabetic writing system
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A writing
system that represents the phonemes of a language
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Clause
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A group of
words comprising a subject and a predicate, which must contain a verb “The
cake (subject) was very tasty (predict with verb).”
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Content words
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Words that
convey meaning such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
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Cross-sectional design
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A research
design in which the performance of different groups is compared.
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Decode
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The ability to
translate letters and letter strings into pronunciations.
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Developmental dyslexia
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A condition in
which the development of word reading and spelling abilities is impaired.
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Function words
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Words with a
grammatical role, such as preposiions (at), determiners (the) and pronouns
(it)
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Grapheme
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A letter or
group of letters that represents a phoneme i.e. “sh” in the word shop
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Homophones
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Words with
different meanings that sound the same i.e. bark of a dog and bark of the
tree
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Inference
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The process of
going beyond the explicit information in a text to make links between
different parts of the text or between the text and general knowledge
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Lexicon
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The mental
store or dictionary of words. Also
referred to as the mental lexicon.
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Logographic writing system
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A writing
system that represents the meaning (words or morphemes) of the language.
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Longitudinal study
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A research
design in which measures are taken for the same individuals at different time
points and analyzed to assess whether some variables predict later ability
and/or growth ability
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Morpheme
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The smallest
linguistic unit in a word that carries meaning. There are 3 morphemes in unreadable
(un-read-able)
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Nonword
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A letter
string that does not form a form a word.
Can also be referred to as a pseudo-word.
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Orthography
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§
The writing system
of a language.
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Phoneme
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The smallest
unit of speech sound, which can
change the meaning of a word.
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Phonemic awareness
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A type of
phonological awareness, specifically
the ability to reflect on and manipulate the phonemes in the spoken language
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Phonological awareness
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The ability to
reflect on and manipulate the spoken sounds in the language.
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Priming
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Occurs when 1
stimulus influences a person’s response to a later stimulus
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Sematic priming
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Involves the
presentation of 2 stimuli related in meaning.
i.e. “prime” dog would lead to a faster response to the subsequent
target word bone.
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Sentence
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§
A grammatical
unit made up of one or more clauses.
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Syllabic writing system
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A writing
system that represents the spoken
syllables of language
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Syllable
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A unit of a
word that can be spoken without interruption comprising a vowel or a vowel
plus consonants.
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Syntax
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The aspect of
grammar that specifies word and phrase order in language.
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Training and intervention studies
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§
A research
design in which at least 1 group of individuals receive tuition in a type of
knowledge, skill or strategy, thought to be casually implicated in the
development of the skills of interest such as reading
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Vowel
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A letter of
the alphabet that stands for a spoken vowel, which is a speech sound made
with the vocal tract open.
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Word recognition
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The ability to
derive a representation of a printed word that enables access to its meaning.
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(Cain, K. (2010). Reading development and difficulties / Kate Cain. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. : BPS Blackwell/John Wiley, 2010.)
