Dyslexia and Phonological Awareness
Dyslexia and Phonological Awareness.
What is Phonological Awareness?
An individual or child with phonological awareness can recognise, identify, and manipulate each sound (phoneme) in a word. 'Blending' these sounds into words is part of this process. It is an important skill and building block for childhood development and is closely related to literacy.
Why are we discussing this today?
I have been working with children for over 15 years, who have Speech, Language, and Communication Needs (SLCN), and often include difficulty with Phonological Awareness, but it is also relevant to individuals with Dyslexia. Whilst a paediatric Speech and Language Therapist predominantly work with individuals who have Autism, ADHD, Speech, and Language difficulties, we can also tailor and focus our work on individuals with Dyslexia.
What is Dyslexia?
Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty, usually affecting an individual’s reading, writing, and spelling. Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty that doesn’t affect intelligence but can present different challenges on a day-to-day basis.
It is estimated in the UK 1 in 10 people has some degree of Dyslexia (NHS, 2022)
How can we help?
Looking back at the communication triangle we spoke about a couple of weeks ago, whilst some professionals suggest we learn each skill in developmental order, phonological awareness is developing from the age of 3-4, right through to the age of 9.
Difficulty with Phonological awareness can result in:
· Unclear speech
· Finding it difficult to understand what others are saying due to incorrectly discriminating sounds.
· Frustration.
· Low self-esteem
· Difficulty making and keeping friends.
· Miscommunication as some sounds and words may sound the same.
· Difficulty with literacy and reading.
· More processing time.
Here at Unlocking Communication, we can tailor, our therapy plans to suit the individual. Whether there is difficulty with speech or general Phonological Difficulties. We can help the individual to re-learn phonemes (each individual sound), and make the individual more aware of the sounds they are hearing, resulting in increased confidence and communication skills whilst learning how to use the correct phonemes.
What we need to remember from this is Dyslexia is a very common difficulty, one a lot of people have tried to live with and create their own coping strategies. Jay Blade from the repair shop created a TV documentary on his journey with Dyslexia – take a look here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013wcj
Equally, drop us a message at Unlocking Communication, to see how we can help.
References:
NHS, (2022) Dyslexia. Retrieved from - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/dyslexia/ Accessed: 6.12.2012
BBC ( 2022) Jay Blades: Learning to read at 51. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013wcj Accessed 8.12.2012