Dr. Sandy Laing, assistant professor of communicative disorders, and her research partners wanted to determine if speech and language-impaired preschoolers would have a less difficult time learning to read if they developed phonemic awareness skills.
Prior research suggested preschoolers who had severe speech problems would have a difficult time learning to read because they would not understand the association between the sounds and the symbols.
In conducting her research, Laing used children enrolled in the preschool language class at UA’s Speech and Hearing Center. This class provides services to preschoolers with speech or language disorders.
To improve these preschoolers’ ability to read, the UA researchers taught them how to manipulate sounds to change words.
Wendy Espeland, Laing’s graduate assistant, conducted 15-minute phonemic awareness activities twice a week for eight weeks with the students. Each week, Espeland worked on different sounds using two or three activities, like rhyming and sound/letter correspondence exercises, interchangeably.
These six students were compared to six students who were developing normally and who had not received phonemic awareness training. Laing’s recent study showed that children who receive phonemic awareness training prior to learning to read will have a better chance at reading. Even though there was a small sample size, they still found statistically significant differences in their study.
“They improved to the point where I couldn’t tell them apart from the typically developing kids,” Laing said.
Pat Tulloss, clinical supervisor for the preschool class, said the UA Speech Center was very impressed with the study’s results. “The very kids we thought wouldn’t get it, did. We were so pleased after that first semester that it has now been incorporated into our preschool every semester,” she said.