Phonological Awareness
Is Phonological Awareness Deficit the cause of kids being unable to read?
Phonological awareness is the foundation for learning to read.
It’s the ability to recognize and work with sounds in spoken language.
Here is a YouTube video on exactly what is Phonological awareness.
I had a discussion with Dr. Michael Paff (@DrMPaff, School Psychologist. NYS Licensed Psychologist. @nyasp E-Board. #scienceofreading. Psychology professor) on Monday 13.9.21 and abruptly ended on 18.9.21 with him blocking me on Twitter.
As I have mentioned, many of the Anglo Sphere people block me as soon as they are unable to respond to direct questions.
My question to Michael was if kids who cannot read in English have a phonological awareness deficit then how is it that they can read in Malay and Han Yu Pin Yin (Romanised Mandarin).
His response was:
Well, my initial thought is that yes, it absolutely can be, if the phonemes in Malay and Han Yu Pin Yin are substantially different from English. And for Han Yu Pin Yin the alphabet is different as well.
There are many sound differences between languages.
Also, letter-sound correspondences are often different between languages.
Luqman Michel:
Of course, I know of sound differences between languages. I speak 4 languages.
If you have a phonological awareness deficit you will not be able to read in any language and not just in English. If my understanding here is wrong, please correct me.
My comment now: The letters in Malay have exactly the same sounds as represented by letters in the English language except for the letter C.
Michael Paff:
You are confusing auditory processing and phonological processing.
There are also different levels of PA, some more complex than others, and the development of each depends on exposure and practice, and instruction...
Finally, different languages have different levels of agreement between sounds and letters/symbols. English has a moderately shallow orthography. It is mostly regular/predictable.
So your premise is wrong.
As a neuropsychologist, I can assure you that dyslexia being due to a fundamental phonological awareness deficit is a very robust and well-supported finding. It's demonstrable on fMRI, as are intervention effects from PA interventions that generalize to reading ability. I would refer you to the work of Jack Fletcher (fMRI studies), Sally Shaywitz, Mark Seidenberg, David Kilpatrick, Louisa Cook Moats. What I say here is true for English, a regular, alphabetic language with a moderately shallow orthography.
The phonological processing deficits among poor readers have been argued to arise from underlying auditory processing deficits, and various theories have been proposed to explain how auditory processing deficits can lead to phonological processing deficits.
Luqman Michel:
Deep orthographies are writing systems that do not have a one-to-one correspondence between sounds (phonemes) and letters (graphemes). English has a deep orthography. If we can agree on this, then we can continue with this discussion.
You listed ' I would refer you to the work of Jack Fletcher (fMRI studies), Sally Shaywitz, Mark Seidenberg, David Kilpatrick, Louisa Cook Moats.'
Jack Fletcher is the only person on that list I had not written to. I have written several articles on Sally Shaywitz - she is the one who wrote in New York Times that Duh Aah Guh is how the word dog is sounded out. This is the basic problem in kids learning to read.
My comment now: It was on the Yale website where Sally Shaywitz had said that phonological awareness deficit is the cause of dyslexia. I wrote a long comment stating why I disagreed with that statement. She did not respond and later the whole of her post was deleted.
Luqman Michel:
Mike, it is orthography that is a problem and not a phonological awareness deficit. I had several email exchanges with Dr. Joe Torgeson and Dr. Richard Selznick on this.
Michael Paff:
I really fail to see the problem with segmenting DOG .... that's literally how the word is segmented. I may be missing your point there. Are you proposing that we shouldn't teach kids to segment and blend phonemes?
Luqman Michel:
Kids should be taught to segment and blend phonemes. However, about 20 % of kids shut down when sounds represented by letters (phonemes) are taught with an extraneous sound. Dog is /d/o/g/ and not duh aah guh.
My comment now: This guy does not know phonics and yet argues with Londonjohn as if he is an expert on Phonics. Michael has also blocked LondonJohn as he is unable to answer a direct question on how he learned to pronounce there, here, and were using phonics.
Michael Paff:
But if your contention is that, somehow, despite decades of research establishing that the fundamental deficit in dyslexia is phonological and that it supports the development of orthographic mapping, I don't know what to say. I am no more interested in a discussion on that as I am in a debate about whether the earth is round.
My comment now: Michael believes everything he reads. The theory that Phonological Awareness Deficit is the cause of dyslexia has been debunked many years ago.
If Sally Shaywitz’s brain imaging means anything at all, why has there been no change in the percentage of kids classified as dyslexic? Her study on fMRI was done more than 20 years ago.
Here is one of several posts on Sally Shaywitz.
https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2020/06/dog-is-broken-down-into-phonemes-duh.html
Mark Seidenberg is another guru who does not understand what phonics is and writes about phonics as if he is the expert on that subject. Read a post of him by me at:
https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2020/08/mark-seidenberg-on-how-brain-learns-to.html
Here is a comment on LinkedIn by Dr. Richard Selznick, my mentor.
Richard Selznick, Ph.D. ("Dr. Selz") 1st-degree connection 1st Psychologist/Author: "The Shut-Down Learner," "Dyslexia Screening," "School Struggles"
1d
Hey Luq....just saw this thread come up in my email. Hope you are doing well. I agree that there has been an industry behind the whole phonological awareness thing.
However, I go to your question. In my experience - and I've probably assessed thousands of kids at this point - there never is "the reason" why kids struggle with reading, spelling and writing.
As I explain to parents, there almost always is a "pie chart" of variables, not just one reason why kids don't read well.
Frankly, I find the biggest predictor above all is whether one or the other parent (I usually find it to be the male line) struggled with reading.
If I knew that a parent struggled with reading as a kid, that is a strong predictor that one of their children will also struggle. That is a much more powerful predictor of reading difficulty in reading than "phonological awareness," IMHO. Take care and be well.
My response:
Dr.Richard Selznick, Ph.D. ("Dr. Selz"), thinking a little further on your comment here is my response:
I am sure you know the varied reasons why kids struggle with reading. However, in my limited experience in having taught, observed, and interviewed kids over 15 years I have learned that the main cause of them shutting down from learning to read is due to confusion.
The confusion is caused by three main factors:
1. Teachers teaching them consonants with extraneous sounds.
2. Teachers not telling them on the on-set that almost all letters in the English language represent more than one sound.
3. Some schools not teaching letter names. (Many words are sounded out using letter names).
All my students were able to read after their confusion was cleared. Getting them to unlearn what they had been taught wrongly was the most difficult part of teaching them.
I am pretty sure you had observed this in the parents of your patients. My only concern was to get the kids to read. As you know, I am not a trained teacher and perhaps that has worked to my advantage over teachers. I questioned myself using the training I had received in the audit field. Questions such as:
i. why are these kids able to read in Malay but not in English when both languages use the same letters?
ii. how were the scientists who did research at the University of Florida able to bring kids who were unable to read to grade level and maintain them at grade level with a short period of intervention? Etc.
The question I would ask myself is why does the kid, as well as the father, has this problem in reading. I know next to nothing about genes, DNA to delve into this aspect.
What makes this father and son different from the others are what I would ask myself if I was a researcher, which I am not.
Richard Selznick, Ph.D. ("Dr. Selz") 1st-degree connection 1st Psychologist/Author: "The Shut-Down Learner," "Dyslexia Screening," "School Struggles"
16h
Luq: I think you are spot on. Much of it came about in the late 1970s when the "Whole Language" movement took hold. We're still feeling the effects.
Note: Dr. Selz, has recently published an e-book which you may find at:
https://www.amazon.com/Helping-Dyslexic-Struggling-Reader-Guidebook-ebook/dp/B097Z2SCB6/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1628520947&refinements=p_27%3ARichard+Selznick+PhD&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
Here are comments I have copied from the article above posted on LinkedIn:
Graeme Wadlow 1st degree connection 1st Volunteer
In light of international research regarding auditory processing, and visual processing skills and abilities, phonological awareness is more of a dyslexia industry marketing terminology
My response:
I have believed this since my research on why many kids can read in languages other than English. You are one of a few experts in this field to confirm this. Thank you.