The Annual Newsletter of the International Reading Association's Phonics Special Interest Group
Confessions of
a Psycholinguist
by Janet C.
Richards
Professor of Literacy
University of Southern Mississippi
I never thought I would compose a short article for a newsletter entitled
The Phonics Bulletin. As my students and colleagues know, I am
a psycholinguist. My convictions are secure, firm, and air tight. Concepts
like multiple literacies, integrated instruction, and transmediation are
music to my ears. Not many of my peers have even heard me say the words
“skills” or “phonics.” In fact, a super-intendent
of a school district near my university recently said, “I know there
is a professor at USM who doesn’t teach phonics.” (He meant
me.)
So why am I writing this short piece? Well, for the past month, I have
been working with Noah, a nine-year old third grader who is a struggling
reader. I discovered that Noah has problems making inferences. For example
in the Creole folk tale, The Talking Eggs (San Souci, 1989), the author
explains that
Blanche had to iron the clothes each morning using an old iron filled
with hot coals. I asked Noah if he thought Blanche’s family had electricity
and he replied, “Well only a little because charcoal only makes a
little electricity.”
I also discovered that Noah’s vocabulary is not commensurate with his age or grade level. In a recent shared book experience, he could not figure out the meaning of such words as tiara, northland, and motionless. In addition, I have come to recognize that although Noah uses context clues in a reasonably expedient way, he has little knowledge of long and short vowels, or phonics generalizations. He cannot analyze polysyllabic words, and he lacks understanding about letter/sound relationships. Thus, he has little “ability to manipulate letters, sounds, and spellings to read words never seen before” (Gipe, 1998, p.191). Unless Noah develops a good understanding of these analysis skills, he will never become an independent reader.
Program of Instruction
Here is the program of instruction I have devised for Noah. Since reading
is first and foremost comprehension, we will continue to engage in pre-,
during-, and post-reading strategies. We also will connect reading and
writing as much as possible. For example, we will dialogue journal, complete
cloze passages, and write letters to favorite authors and story characters.
In addition, we will work together using a phonics program titled Multisensory
Phonics. I devised this program years ago as a first grade teacher and
I’d forgotten its effectiveness.
Multisensory Phonics supports students’ understanding of phonics (short and long vowels, consonants, and blends) through music, visual arts, and hand signals. For example, when students study the short /a/ sound, they learn a short song/chant: “a,a,a,a,a,a,apple, apple.” They see a drawing of an apple, and they use a hand signal that mimics someone eating an apple. In the few weeks I’ve been using this program with Noah, I’ve seen an improvement in his ability to analyze unknown polysyllabic words. Noah can now find the vowels in a word, blend the syllables, and verify the meaning of the word by using context clues.
Am I Still a Psycholinguist?
Am I still a psycholinguist? Yes! But, my work with Noah has shown me
that readers who are experiencing difficulties usually need to learn how
to analyze words and blend word parts. Effective phonics instruction allows
struggling students to become independent readers.
References
Gipe, J. (1989). Multiple paths to literacy: Corrective
reading techniques for classroom teachers. Upper Saddle River, NJ:Merril/Prentice
Hall.
San Souci, R. (1989). The talking eggs. New
York: Dial Books.