There are two major recognitions that get developed in the language acquisition: sound recognition and written word recognition. In order to practice sound recognition, we may ask students questions such as: What word would I end up with if I say 'feet' without /f/? What word would I get if instead of /s/ in 'sun' I say /r/? What rhymes with walk? These are purely phonetic exercises, not meant to reflect the spelling. They can be brought to a higher level and we can use nonsense words, in order to sensitize the students that it is the sounds that are the elements of speech. We do not have the resources to teach our students about phonology, different kinds of syllables, etc., but we can spark their language creativity with this simple and fun Q&A. I found it useful to show similarities of English sounds to the Arabic ones, especially when it comes to 'th' and 'sh'. If you get a chance to tutor someone who is struggling with English, you can create a colourful chart of sounds that are the same, and those that are different - between English and Arabic. Write the sound and the word next to it, like this: At one point we need the students to understand that there are, in a way, two alphabets in English: the written one (graphemes) and the spoken one (phonemes). Most of our young learners already know the English (or French) alphabet before they start their course. This makes them somehow contaminated with the idea that 'B' is /bi:/ and not /b/. Some letters, especially vowels, are at a great disadvantage because of it, and the students will struggle to grasp why 'I' is sometimes /i/, and 'E' is sometimes /e/, but most of the time nowhere to be heard. I have discovered that it is useful to resort to an analogy of names and sounds of letters to names and sounds of animals. 'DOG' is the name of an animal that sometimes makes the sound /wuf/; it doesn't say /dog/ while walking around. Sometimes, this same 'DOG' will make other sounds, like whining, howling, growling and even the barking can be angry or happy. So, the sound that the 'DOG' makes will depend on the circumstances. Likewise, the sounds that the letters make will depend on the context it appears in. There are many possibilities, so it will take some time until we get used to them. Fun Fact: Cats can make about 100 distinctive vocal sounds, while dogs only 10! When it comes to written language, the simplest multi-sensory activity we can do is the 'blind reading'. One variety is in pairs, where one student writes the letters/words on the other student's back (this can be turned into a 'broken phone' chain!); and the other is to actually give students cut-out letters/words they can feel and guess them with their eyes closed.
Word search is a game that will be very frustrating to dyslexic students, but it is a good gauge to see their progress. Free generators are available online. One of the measurement tests for dyslexic children is the so called Bell test. It is a object-search activity. The speed and the eye-tracking shows the severity of the disorder. We can create a similar one, but with words. This will enforce the direct access path as well as encourage the student to follow a left-to-right sequence. To make it harder, we can change the direction of words.
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AuthorMartina Matejaš is a teacher of English and Yoga. She is keen on understanding the mind-body connection as well as cracking the 'code' of thoughts-emotions-behaviour matrix. Archives
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