Alison Holm

The effect of first written language on the acquisition of English literacy

The relationship between first and second language literacy was examined by identifying the skills and processes developed in the first language that were transferred to the second language. The performance of 40 university students from The Peoples Republic of China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Australia were compared on a series of tasks that assessed phonological awareness and reading and spelling skills in English. The results indicated that the Hong Kong students (with non-alphabetic first language literacy) had limited phonological awareness compared to those students with alphabetic first language literacy. The reading and spelling tasks showed no differences between the groups on real word processing. However, the students from Hong Kong had difficulty processing nonwords because of their poor phonological awareness. The results supported the hypothesis that people learning English as a second language (ESL) transfer their literacy processing skills from their first language to English. When the phonological awareness required in English had not been developed in the first language, ESL students were limited to a whole-word, visual strategy. The findings indicate that students from non-alphabetic written language backgrounds might have difficulties with new, or unfamiliar words when attending universities where English is the medium of instruction.

Intervention for Children with Severe Speech Disorder: A Comparison of Two Approaches.

BACKGROUND Children with speech disorder are a heterogeneous group (e.g. in terms of severity, types of errors and underlying causal factors). Much research has ignored this heterogeneity, giving rise to contradictory intervention study findings. This situation provides clinical motivation to identify the deficits in the speech-processing chain that underlie different subgroups of developmental speech disorder. Intervention targeting different deficits should result in a differential response to intervention across these subgroups. AIMS To evaluate the effect of two different types of therapy on speech accuracy and consistency of word production of children with consistent and inconsistent speech disorder. METHODS & PROCEDURES Eighteen children (aged 4;08-6;05 years) with severe speech disorder participated in an intervention study comparing phonological contrast and core vocabulary therapy. All children received two 8-week blocks of each intervention. Changes in consistency of production and accuracy (per cent consonants correct) were used to measure the effect of each intervention. OUTCOMES & RESULTS All of the children increased their consonant accuracy during intervention. Core vocabulary therapy resulted in greater change in children with inconsistent speech disorder and phonological contrast therapy resulted in greater change in children with consistent speech disorder. CONCLUSIONS The results provide evidence that treatment targeting the speech-processing deficit underlying a childs speech disorder will result in efficient system-wide change. Differential response to intervention across subgroups provides evidence supporting theoretical perspectives regarding the nature of speech disorders: it reinforces the concept of different underlying deficits resulting in different types of speech disorder.

Phonological awareness skills of 4-year-old British children: an assessment and developmental data.

This study reports developmental data for the phonological awareness and processing skills of 57 normally developing Tyneside preschool children, aged between 46 and 58 months. The children were assessed on eight tasks: consistency of word production, phonological variability according to speech production task, non-word imitation, syllable segmentation, rhyme awareness, alliteration awareness, phoneme isolation and phoneme segmentation. The results indicated that girls and boys performed similarly; socio-economic status significantly affected performance on six of the tasks; and age was significantly correlated with performance on tasks targeting alliteration, non-word imitation, phonological variability, and phoneme isolation and segmentation. The older children were more phonologically aware than the younger children.

A longitudinal study of the phonological development of two Cantonese–English bilingual children

Longitudinal case studies of the successive phonological acquisition of two Cantonese-English bilingual children, aged 2;3 to 3;1 years and 2;9 to 3;5 years, are presented. The children were assessed at 4-week intervals. The first assessment of their phonology occurred when they had been exposed to English for three months. Phoneme acquisition and phonological process data revealed that both children had separate phonological systems for the two languages. The two phonological systems for each child developed in similar ways to monolingual children acquiring Cantonese and English. However, a number of error patterns, indicative of disorder in monolingual children, were evident in the childrens phonological systems in English and in Cantonese. These patterns have been documented as normal error patterns for successive bilingual Cantonese-English speaking children. The difference between normal successive bilingual phonological development and normal monolingual development is addressed.

Phonological awareness, reading accuracy and spelling ability of children with inconsistent phonological disorder

BACKGROUND Although children with speech disorder are at increased risk of literacy impairments, many learn to read and spell without difficulty. They are also a heterogeneous population in terms of the number and type of speech errors and their identified speech processing deficits. One problem lies in determining which preschool children with speech disorder will have difficulties acquiring literacy skills. AIMS Two studies are presented that investigate the relationship between speech disorders and literacy. The first examined the phonological awareness abilities of children with different types of speech difficulties. The second study investigated the literacy skills of children with a history of inconsistent speech disorder. METHODS & PROCEDURES Experiment 1 measured the syllable segmentation, rhyme awareness and alliteration awareness of 61 preschool children: 46 with speech disorder (14 with delayed development, 17 who made consistent non-developmental errors, and 15 who made inconsistent errors) and 15 typically developing controls. Experiment 2 assessed the reading accuracy, spelling and phonological awareness abilities of nine 7-year-old children with a history of inconsistent phonological errors. OUTCOMES & RESULTS The first study indicated unexpected patterns of performance. While the Delayed group performed less well than controls on all tasks, the Consistent group showed poor performance on rhyme and alliteration but appropriate performance on syllable segmentation. The Inconsistent group performed most poorly on syllable segmentation but no differently from controls on the other two tasks. The second study indicated that children with a history of inconsistent phonological disorder performed no differently from controls on measures of phonological awareness and reading, but less well on measures of spelling ability. CONCLUSIONS The results support classification of speech disorders and show a differentiation of phonological awareness skills across groups. Children with consistent atypical speech errors have poor phonological awareness and are most at risk for literacy difficulties. Those with inconsistent phonological disorder are at increased risk of spelling difficulties. The findings indicate that phonological awareness and spelling skill are distinct processing systems and highlight the role of phonological assembly skills (i.e. storing and/or retrieving phonological output plans) in spelling output. The interactive processes between reading and spelling are discussed.

Differentiating normal variability from inconsistency in children's speech: normative data

BACKGROUND In young, typically developing children, some word production variability is expected, but highly inconsistent speech is considered a clinical marker for disorder. Speech-language pathologists need to identify variability versus inconsistency, yet these terms are not clearly differentiated. Not only is it important to identify inconsistency, but also it needs to be defined and measured so that clinical decisions are evidence based. In order to understand inconsistent speech production, typical variability must be described. AIMS This paper differentiates between variability and inconsistent productions. Variability is defined as productions that differ, but can be attributed to factors described in normal acquisition and use of speech. Inconsistency is speech characterized by a high proportion of differing repeated productions with multiple error types, both segmental (phoneme) and structural errors (consonant-vowel sequence within a syllable). The study describes and quantifies the consistency of word production in typically developing children aged between 3;0 and 6;11 years. METHODS AND PROCEDURES This paper reports a large cross-sectional study (n = 409) of the consistency of childrens production of words within the same linguistic context. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS The study found that the speech of typically developing children is highly consistent. Children in the youngest age group demonstrated the highest levels of variability, but it remained below 13% with 10% reflecting maturational influences. CONCLUSIONS Inconsistent production cannot be considered a typical feature of speech development. The results inform differential diagnosis of speech disorder.

Enhancing the phonological awareness and language skills of socially disadvantaged preschoolers: An interdisciplinary programme:

The research reported investigated the efficacy of intervention, developed by a speech-language therapist and implemented by a teacher, for the language and phonological awareness (PA) abilities of pre-school, socially disadvantaged children. One study established that children from low socio-economic (SES) backgrounds had poorer skills on both measures compared to children of average SES. Half of the low SES group received language and PA intervention programmes and their progress was compared to untreated SES matched controls. Both programmes were highly effective with post-intervention performance not only exceeding that of SES controls but also equalling the performance of controls of average SES.

Identification and differential diagnosis of phonological disorder in bilingual children.

Diagnosis of speech disorder in children acquiring two languages is problematic. There are few norms for bilingual language acquisition, and speech-language path-ologists are unlikely to speak both languages of the bilingual populations they serve. Further, knowledge concerning the phonological structure of many languages is limited. This article describes the development of a phonological assessment for bilingual children. The assessment was administered to normally developing bilingual children as well as children suspected of speech disorder. The children with speech disorder were referred to the Rochdale Healthcare NHS Trust Speech and Language Therapy Department for assessment of their speech. All of the children spoke either Mirpuri, Punjabi or Urdu at home but were exposed to English at nursery or school. The phonological development of bilingual children in each language is described. The normally developing children showed phonological error patterns in English that would be considered atypical of normal monolingual development in English. The error patterns of two children with speech disorder are also described. The error patterns are consistent with research evidence concerning subgroups of speech disorder in monolingual and bilingual children. The findings provide further support for the hypothesis that symptoms (surface error patterns) of speech disorder are language independent, (i.e., that a single deficit underlies the speech disorder across both languages). The clinical implications for assessment and treatment of speech disorder in children exposed to more than one language are discussed.

An intervention case study of a bilingual child with phonological disorder

A bilingual Punjabi-English-speaking child, whose speech was characterized by inconsistent errors in both languages, participated in an intervention programme. A core vocabulary therapy approach was used targeting consistency of production. The accuracy and intelligibility of the child’s speech improved in both languages, even though therapy had only been provided in English. The results of the study contrast with a previous study targeting consistent phonological errors in a bilingual child. While the results of single case studies should be interpreted with caution, the findings suggest that phonological therapy targeting the deficit underlying speech disorder is effective in remediating the errors in both of the child’s languages. However, therapy simply correcting specific surface speech patterns is only effective in the language targeted in therapy. These data have theoretical implications regarding the nature of phonological disorders, and the separateness of bilingual children’s phonological systems. There are also clinical implications regarding intervention for bilingual children with disordered speech.

Efficacy of intervention for a bilingual child making articulation and phonological errors

This treatment case study presents a five-year-old bilingual Cantonese/English speaking boy with articulation and phonological errors. It reports two treatment phases: articulation therapy and phonological therapy. The articulation therapy was given in English and targeted the distorted production of /s/. The result was a perceptually acceptable pronunciation of /s/ in both English and Cantonese. The phonological therapy, also given in English, targeted cluster reduction, but it was only effective in treating English errors. The reduction of consonant clusters in Cantonese remained unchanged. These data have implications for two issues: the separateness of bilingual childrens two phonological systems, and the differences between articulation and phonological errors.