Sound-Letter Relationships

 

 

Skills associated with sound-letter knowledge:

• the awareness of how spoken sound and written letters relate to each other in the English language
• the names of letters and the sounds associated with them
• the ability to recognize words previously seen
• the ability to apply knowledge of how sounds and letters are related to each other to figure out the pronunciation of words not seen before, this is known as decoding

Shedd, 2008b

 

Phonics- The method of teaching beginning reading by explicitly connecting the sounds of spoken language to written language.

Dow & Baer, 2007

 

Consonants

• The letters b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z
• These sounds are made by closing or restricting breath in speech
  • Most have their own specific sound, with the exception of c, q, and x
    • c can take the /s/ sound or the /k/ sound
    • q when accompanied by the vowel u takes the sound /k//w/ (quiet), or sometimes take the /k/ sound by itself (critique)
    • x can take the phoneme combinations /g//z/ (exist), /k//s/ (text), or /z/ (xylophone)
• consonant digraphs- letter combinations for a single sound represented by two letters
  • ch (chair), sh (sheet), th (thick), wh (what), ph (phone)
  • Also, ng (ring), TH (then), zh (leisure)
  • Notice that "th" can produce two different sounds
• consonant blends- two or three consonants appearing next to each other in words where individual sounds are blended together
  • ex: gr (grass), str (street), sl (sleep), lt (belt), ft (left), ck (black)

 

 Vowels

• The letters a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and w
• These sounds are made by opening the breath channel and allowing the vocal cords to vibrate
• Vowels are used to represent many different sounds, most a “short” or a “long” sound
  • Short vowel sounds:
    • a in nap
    • e in let
    • i in lip
    • o in pot
    • u in rut
  • Long vowel sounds
    • a in bake
    • e in meat
    • i in light
    • o in joke
    • u in mule
    • Long vowel sounds are usual spelled with two vowels next to each other or in the pattern long vowel-consonant-silent e
• Vowel digraphs- two vowels that represent a single sound
  • ex: ee (feet), ea (lead)

ai (wait), ay (clay)

oa (boat), ow (row)

oo (fool), oo (wood)

ou (about), ow (cow)

oi (oil), oy (toy)

au (auto), aw (awful)

• Vowel dipthong- two vowels together represent a glide from one sound to another
  • ex: ou (house), oi (boil)
• R-controlled vowels- when the letter r follows a vowel it produces a sound that is neither long nor short
  • ex: jar, first, more, ear, air, fort, learns
• Schwa- a short, unstressed vowel sound that can be represented by many different spelling patterns
  • ex: a in around, o in oven, ai in captain, u in ruckus

Shedd, 2008d

Dow & Baer, 2007

 

 Sight Reading

• Definition: The ability to connect the letters that make up the spelling of a word to the phonemes that make up its pronunciation to a point where reading words becomes automatic, relies on a knowledge of sound-letter relationships
  • A mnemonic relationship is created between the written words and its pronunciation
  • Requires alphabetic knowledge of both phoneme pronunciation and letter shapes in memory

• Sight words are any words that can be read automatically. Not to be confused with high-frequency words which are the words that occur most often in text (ex: the, he, she, was, is, a, in, etc.)

 

 

Phases of Sight Word Learning

1.       Pre-alphabetic

• Reading words without alphabetic knowledge
• Words are read from memory based on their appearance, often words or names frequently seen in the environment (ex: McDonalds)
• Words are often guessed from context (ex: guessing a word based on illustrations that accompany the text)

  

2.    Partial-alphabetic

• Children begin to recognize distinct letters within words, partial alphabetic cues
• Guess words using a combination of letter recognition and context (ex: seeing a word that begins with the letter b and a picture of a farm together, guessing the word “barn”)
• Occasionally misread words by knowing some letter sounds but not others, or guessing incorrectly (Reading “horse” instead of “house,” or “book” instead of “block”)
• Don’t always know variable sounds of letters (ex: the hard c sound or varying sounds for w)
• Unfamiliar words are not decoded

  

3.      Full-alphabetic

• Match sounds to letters based on “orderly relationships” that they have learned
• Children are able to decode based on major grapheme to phoneme relationships
• Decoding is a slow and meticulous process, but it increases in speed and precision with practice
• With more practice and more words decoded children’s sight word “bank” increases significantly
• Evidence of combining strategies of figuring out words

  

4.    Consolidated-alphabetic

• Focus is on particular chunks of words
• Recognition of chunks of letters that frequently occur together and how they are pronounced – affixes, root words, onsets, rimes, syllables
• Growth of sight word bank continues
• Common letter combinations can be decoded as a whole without breaking them down into their individual graphemes
• Words are less likely to be confused
• Able to use hierarchical decoding and think about how certain letters influence a word, how adding or removing a letter might change the sound of the word and recognize the new word that is created (ex: cutter vs. cuter)

  

5.    Automatic-alphabetic

• Reading is highly proficient
• Automaticity and speed in identifying new words is well developed
• Very extensive sight word bank, most words read are in the sight word vocabulary now
• Several strategies can be employed to decode unfamiliar words

Ehri and McCormick, 2006

  

Strategies Commonly Used to Figure out Words

• Decoding: indentifying the sounds of letters, either individually or in groups, and blending the letters together
• Analogy: recognition of new words based on knowledge of a similar grapheme pattern in a known word
• Prediction: guessing words based on initial letters, or contextual clues in the surrounding text
• Sight: reading automatically because words have already been committed to memory

 

 

Cueing Systems

• Pragmatic System- knowledge of language based on social and cultural uses
• Semantic System- focuses on meaning and incorporates vocabulary knowledge
• Phonological System- spoken sounds that correspond to written symbols
• Syntactic System- knowledge of how words are organized in sentences

Shedd, 2008e

 

Stages of Spelling Development

1.     Prephonemic- Letters are strung together with no evidence of speech sounds represented by the letters in any systematic way

2.     Early phonemic- Letters begin to be used to represent sounds, but usually only one or two sounds are represented from each word

3.     Letter-name- Letters are used for their similarities between the intended phonemes and the sound of the letter's name. (ex: "see" written as

          just the letter "c")

4.     Transitional- Words written look like English words but are frequently spelled incorrectly, spelling is estimated

5.     Correct- The majority of words are spelled correctly as the sight word bank grows and there is more exposure to correctly spelled words.

Temple, Nathan, Temple, & Harris, 1993

 

Issues for SLLs

• Children learning English for the first time do not have the oral language foundation necessary to help them connect written words to their pronunciations.
• They are trying to build an oral vocabulary of English and learn to decode it at the same time. Native English speakers will have developed the oral vocabulary first and then learned to decode written language.
• The knowledge base that native English speakers have before they start learning to read aids them in connecting sounds to written symbols, while ELLs must learn both at once.

Pikulski & Chard, 2005

 

IRI Word Lists

These lists include a number of words that should be considered sight words for students at each grade level. The lists consist of words at the levels of preprimer, primer, and levels 1-12, which correspond generally to school grade levels.  These lists can be used to assess a student's sight word bank by scoring the number of words they are able to read accurately and quickly, along with which words they can read by applying decoding strategies.

Informal Reading Inventory, 1997

 

MLPP Sight Word/Decodable Word Lists Assessment

This is basically the same assessment as the one discussed above, except it only includes the sight word lists for preprimer through 3rd grade. The word lists are also included in a large type format so they are easy to read when given to a young child.

Michigan Department of Education Early Literacy Committee, 2001

 

MLPP Letter/Sound Identification Assessment

In this assessment the student is presented with the letters of the alphabet in upper-case letters and asked to first identify the names of individual letters when the teacher points to them, and then the sound the letters make. The student is scored on how many letters they can identify in terms of name and sound. The same is done for the alphabet in lower-case letters.  The assessment is meant to test the student's ability to connect letter names and sounds to their written symbols.

Michigan Department of Education Early Literacy Committee, 2001

 

The Nonword Reading Test

In this assessment a list of nonsense words, all following conventions of common English spellings are provided and the student is asked to read the words. The assessment tests their ability to decode common English letter combinations, placing them out of the context of real words, which removes the potential sight word bias.

Snowling, Stackhouse, & Rack, 1986

 

The Regularity Test

This assessment tests a child's ability to correctly read words that follow either regular rules for sound-letter relationships or have irregular sound-letter relationships. The child is scored based on the number of words he/she is able to decode correctly.

Snowling, Stackhouse, & Rack, 1986

 

The Names Test

This assessment for students in 3-5 grade tests  decoding ability by asking them to read a list of  names that follow characteristic English grapheme-phoneme relationships. This test is considered a good way to assess decoding skills because of the fact that all names on the list are relatively uncommon, which takes away some sight word bias, are fully decodable according to conventions of English, represent many different English spelling patterns, and give a balance of long and short names to give practice in decoding both single and multiple syllable words. The presentation of names also provides a more authentic task than tests that use nonsense words to measure decoding skills. In administering the test, the teacher notates the number of errors in the child's reading, and also uses a matrix to determine the categories of sound letter relationships that the child made errors in. These include initial consonants, initial consonant blends, consonant digraphs, short vowels, long vowels/VC-final e, vowel digraphs, r-controlled vowels, and schwas. The most recent ordering of the 35 names for the Names Test is given here, along with the Early Names Test, an adaptation with easier names for 1st and 2nd grade students. Names Test

Duffelmeyer, Kruse, Merkley, & Fyfe, 1994

Mather, Sammons, & Schwartz, 2006

 

Resources

Dow, R.S., & Baer, G.T. (2007). Self-paced phonics: A text for educators.Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

 

Duffelmeyer, F.A., Kruse, A.E., Merkley, D.J., & Fyfe, S.A. (1994). Further validation and enhancement of the Names Test. The Reading Teacher, 48(2), 118-128

 

Ehri, L.C., & McCormick, S. (2006) Phases of word learning: Implications for instruction with delayed and disabled readers. In R.B. Ruddell and N.J. Unrau (Eds). Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (pp. 365-389). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

 

Informal Reading Inventory. (1997). New York. Houghton Mifflin Company.

 

Mather, N., Sammons, J., & Schwartz, J. (2006). Adaptations of the Names Test: Easy-to-use phonics assessments. The Reading Teacher, 60(2), 114-122

 

Michigan Department of Education Early Literacy Committee. (2001). Michigan Literacy Progress Profile. Lansing, MI: Department of Education.

 

Pikulski, J.J., & Chard, D.J. (2005). Fluency: Bridge between decoding and reading comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 58 (6), 510-519.

 

Shedd, M. (2008). Letter-sound knowledge continued. Presentation for TE 301 (d), East Lansing, Michigan.

 

Shedd, M. (2008). More letter-sound knowledge, vocabulary, and morphology. Presentation for TE 301 (e), East Lansing, Michigan.

 

Shedd, M. (2008). Phonological awareness and letter sound knowledge. Presentation for TE 301 (b), East Lansing, Michigan.

 

Snowling, M. J., Stackhouse, J. & Rack, J. P. (1986). Phonological dyslexia and dysgraphia: A developmental analysis. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 3, 309-339.

 

Temple, C., Nathan, R., Temple, F., & Burris, N.A. (1993). The beginnings of writing. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.