Language and Literacy Disorders

Name: Sriram M

Topic:

I. Concepts related to reading and its acquisition– Decoding, reading accuracy,

reading fluency, reading comprehension;
II. Differences among writing systems for languages; Importance of phoneme-
grapheme correspondence for reading
III. Foundations for development of reading in languages with different writing
systems (Phonological processing, phonological awareness, orthographic skills,
visual processing skills, oral language skills)

What is Literacy?

Literacy is the use of visual modes of communication, specifically reading and writing. But
literacy is much more than just letters and sounds. Literacy encompasses language, which
includes academic and cognitive processes, including thinking, memory, problem solving,
planning, and execution—and is related to other forms of communication.

The process of developing literacy skills begins very early in life, typically within the first
year as children begin to learn language and are first exposed to print materials (e.g., simple
books). These early years of literacy development, prior to the learning of conventional
literacy skills, are referred to as the stage of emergent literacy.

Emergent literacy experiences are those in which children begin to develop ideas about how
written language works and what it is used for before they actually begin decoding print.
Emergent literacy skills develop primarily out of “literacy socialization” (Roberts et al., 2005;
Snow & Dickinson, 1991) experiences, in which the child listens to books read by adults. In
these interactions, children learn a lot about books and their literate language style.

During this stage, children acquire the knowledge and skills that form the bases for the
development of later reading and writing skills. They build language skills (i.e., they learn the
semantic, syntactic, morphological, and narrative skills that they will require later to
understand and produce written texts); they begin to make connections between spoken and
written language (i.e., they learn that print carries meaning and that it represents spoken
language); and they learn the basic conventions of print (e.g., how to hold a book, where to
start reading, how to move from left to right in the text).

A variety of studies (e.g., Justice et al., 2009; Roberts et al., 2005; and reviewed by Bus et al.,
1995; Goldfield & Snow, 1984) have shown that children who are read to as pre-schoolers
have an easier time learning to read than those who were not.

The Process of Reading:

Reading is a language-based skill. As such, it requires the processing of language that is
decontextualized from any ongoing event. Decontextualized language is characterized by the
fact that the speaker and listener do not directly share the experience being communicated.
The speaker must create the context through language, as in narration. It is not surprising,
therefore, that poor readers also exhibit poor narrative skills. The narratives of poor readers
tend to be shorter and less well developed than those of better readers.
Reading is the synthesis of a complex network of perceptual and cognitive acts from word
recognition and decoding skills to comprehension and integration. Beyond the printed page, a
skilled reader draws conclusions and inferences from what he or she reads.
Various concepts related to acquisition of reading:
1. Decoding:
The first step is decoding the print, which consists of breaking a word into its component
sounds and then blending them together to form a recognizable word. Words are then
interpreted based on grammar, word meanings, and context. There is an interaction between
the print on the page and linguistic and conceptual information brought to the task by a child
(Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2001). While phonological skills are essential for decoding, other
areas of language such as syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics—are needed for
comprehension (Nation & Norbury, 2005).
Decoding requires understanding the following concepts. Two important aspects of reading
are phonological awareness and reading comprehension.
A. Phonological awareness:
Necessary for decoding, phonological awareness is knowledge of sounds and syllables and of
the sound structure of words. As such, phonological awareness includes phonemic awareness,
the specific ability to manipulate sounds, such as blending sounds to create new words or
segmenting words into sounds. Simply stated, better phonological awareness is related to
better reading (Cupples & Iacono, 2000; Hogan & Catts, 2004).
Phonological awareness skills also are the best predictors of spelling ability in elementary
school (Nation & Hulme, 1997). Phonological awareness consists of many skill areas
including:
 syllabication and phoneme identification,
 alliteration,
 rhyming,
 segmentation, and
 blending.
Not all of these skills are required for reading. Particularly, the important skills for the
development of reading are the phonemic skills of segmentation, or dividing a word into its
parts, and blending, or creating a word from individual sounds and syllables.

These phonological abilities refer to the skills that involve on processing and manipulating
speech sounds. It is generally believed that the development of phonological awareness
proceeds from large to small units. English has a complex syllable structure. All syllables
contain the following units:
1. A vowel: simple consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) syllables (e.g., hat)
2. Comprises an onset (the consonant before the vowel –h-)
3. A rime (the technical term used to describe the unit comprising the vowel and the
final consonant or coda - at).
In turn, rime units can be segmented into phoneme units, namely the vowel (a) and the coda
(t). In more complex syllables, both the onset and the coda may include consonant clusters
(crisp).
The figure below provides an example of how a word in English can be split into units of
different sizes:
Another example of phonological awareness is for the word ‘dog’. ‘Dog’ can be broken down
into smaller units, such as:
 syllables (kit + ty = kitty),
 onset-rime units (d [onset] +awareness “og” [rime] = dog), and
 phonemes (/d/ + /a/ + /g/ = dog)
 The ability to blend, segment, and manipulate sounds within words.

Phonological representation, or speech sound information in a child’s memory, forms the

basis for phonological awareness. When children first hear words, they most likely store them
holistically in their long-term memory. As a child’s vocabulary grows, word memory
becomes crowded, and similar-sounding words become confused.

In response, a child’s brain begins to break words into syllables and phonemes, the basis for
phonological awareness. As a result, words become more distinct, and a child is better able to
differentiate between them.

Phonological awareness is comprised of the ability to break words down into component
sounds, to realize that these units of sound can be represented by letters, to learn letter-sound
correspondence rules, to analyse words into component sounds (for spelling), and to
synthesize sounds represented by letters into words (for reading). Phonological awareness is
not necessarily part of normal language development.

Various studies have shown the relationship between phonological awareness and reading:
 There is a significant relationship between phonological awareness and reading.
Children who exhibit phonological awareness skills have been shown to learn to read
more easily than children who do not.
 Performance on phonological awareness tasks in kindergarten and first grade is a
strong predictor of later reading achievement.
 Direct teaching of phonological awareness and letter-sound correspondences to
children who are not yet reading improves their reading and spelling development
more than other forms of reading readiness instruction.
  Moreover, the effects of this training persist in giving children an advantage in
reading even 4 years later (Bradley, 1988), and these benefits are strongest for
children whose phonological awareness skills start out lowest.
 Phonological awareness teaching works best when combined with explicit instruction
in letter-sound correspondences, especially when the two are taught in separate
activities.

B. Print concepts:
Understanding that letters and print make up words and represent ideas. The ability to talk
about units of language, such as words and concepts letters. Understanding the structure of
books such as left-to-right progression, orientation of pages, etc., and understanding that print
is read the same way on each repetition.

C. Alphabet knowledge:
Alphabet knowledge consists of students’ familiarity with letter forms, names, and associated
sounds (Goldberg & Lederberg, 2015; Piasta & Wagner, 2010). It is the process of knowing
names and sounds of letters in upper and lower case; understanding that letters stand for
sounds and can be grouped to represent words; understanding that words can be read by
decoding the sounds of the individual letters within them.

D. Literate language:
Ability to understand decontextualized language; familiarity with conventional language used
in narrative genres (For example: “once upon a time”); access to the more formal register of
language typically used in print.
The relationship between phonological awareness and reading is dynamic. This relationship
is presented above. Although phonological awareness is the best predictor of reading ability
from preschool through kindergarten, after that, the best predictor is reading itself (Hogan,
Catts, & Little, 2005). Word reading, in turn, influences phonological awareness.

4. Reading Comprehension:

Reading comprehension requires the active reader to be concerned with self-monitoring,

semantic organization, summarization, interpretation, mental imagery, connection with prior
knowledge, and metacognition or knowledge about knowledge, to name some of the skills
involved. It is the ability to understand draw inferences and conclusions, recall, summarize,
paraphrase, and acquire new information from comprehension.

Meaning is actively constructed by the interaction of words and sentences with personal
meanings and experiences. Several levels of text comprehension exist. At the basic level, a
reader is primarily concerned with decoding. Above this level is critical literacy where a
reader actively interprets, analyses, and synthesizes information and is able to explain the
content.
A reader actively bridges the gaps between what is written and what is meant (Caccamise &
Snyder, 2005). At the highest level of dynamic literacy, a reader is able to relate content to
other knowledge. Dynamic literacy is relating information across multiple texts, comparing
and contrasting, integrating and using ideas for problem raising and solving (Westby, 2005).

A reader’s meaning is composed of the text and the mental model the reader creates through
the comprehension process. Comprehension occurs as a reader builds models based on the
text and his or her knowledge and experience (Kintsch, 1998; Sanford & Garrod, 1998).

5. Reading Fluency:

The ability to read connected text rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly, and automatically with little
conscious attention to the mechanics of reading (Meyer and Felton, 1999). Fluency is
commonly defined as the ability to read text with speed, accuracy, and proper expression
(NICHD, 2000). Reading fluency is the product of both practice of basic skills, such as
decoding and graphomotor as well as an awareness the connection between “style” (tone of
voice and prosody in reading, for example) and the intended meaning.

Reutzel (2009) defines reading fluency as accurate and effortless decoding at grade-
appropriate reading rates using appropriate prosody and phrasing.

Bashir and Hook (2009) discussed the fact that fluent reading, one of the key goals of
reading instruction identified by the National Reading Panel (2000), requires rapid word
identification which, in turn, enables reading comprehension. In fact, they identify fluency as
a crucial link between decoding and comprehension.

Various evidence based methods which promote reading fluency which include the
following:

 Echo reading: The adult reads a short passage to the student(s)/ the student rereads
the same passage aloud
 Choral reading: Groups of children read passages together, so that weaker readers
are supported by stronger ones
 Guided oral reading: Students reread passages 3 to 5 times with feedback and
guidance from the adult.
 Partner reading: Two students read the same text aloud in unison, or alternate turns
reading while the partner listens and provides feedback
  Assisted reading: Students listen to a pre-recorded reading, such as an audiobook,
while reading along out loud
 Performance reading, or Readers’ Theatre: Students reread passages multiple
times as “rehearsal” for a performance of the reading for friends and/or family, which
may utilize costumes and props

Writing systems:

Three kinds of distinct writing systems for languages have been developed in human societies
which are as follows:

1. The earliest was like that used in contemporary Chinese, sometimes called
pictographic, logographic, or ideographic. In this type of writing system, each
symbol stands for a whole word. Learning to read in this writing system requires no
ability to break words down into smaller units such as sounds, but does require a great
deal of memory since a separate symbol has to be associated with each word in the
language. Also, it is hard to develop a typewriter for an ideographic system.

2. A second writing system is the syllabary, such as that used in the kana form of
Japanese writing. In this system, each symbol represents a syllable, and syllables are
combined to form words.
This requires some awareness of the sound structure of words and places somewhat
less load on the memory than an ideographic system. But, a relatively large number of
symbols must be learned, and it is hard to design a typewriter keyboard for a syllabary
writing system.

3. English uses the third type of writing system, an alphabetic cipher. In this system,
each symbol represents a phoneme (more or less). An alphabetic writing system is
extremely economical in terms of the load it exerts on the memory, since there are a
relatively small number of symbols to learn.
But, it requires a great deal of phonological awareness, the ability to break words
down into component sounds. The efficiency of an alphabetic system is important
while designing a typewriter. But the concept of an alphabetic cipher is relatively
unnatural.
 It developed later than either of the other writing systems and was invented essentially
only once in history, by the ancient Egyptians about 4000 years ago. All the
alphabetic systems in use today derive from that initial alphabet.

Writing systems are referred to as “orthographies” and all aspects of learning about the
structure and mechanics of the writing system contribute to the development of competence
in the orthographic domain. Writing systems differ in the phonological unit that their symbols
represent and thus we can expect that the orthographic domain is shaped by the nature of the
writing system that a child is learning to use (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005).

The cognitive representation of the symbols in a writing system is called the orthographic
representation while the representation of the segmented sound units is called phonological
representation. If the initial stages of learning to read and spell are largely concerned with
making connections between written symbols and spoken sounds, then we could say that a
fundamental aspect of reading and spelling involves the efficient use of these orthographic
and phonological representations, in order to forge efficient connections between them.

Current evidence indicates that irrespective of whether it is the matching of phonemes to

letters (as in alphabetic orthographies like English and Spanish) or the linking of morphemes
to characters (as in logographic orthographies like Chinese), reading acquisition depends on
becoming skilled with sound and symbol mapping.
Alpha-syllabary writing system:

The alpha-syllabary is a writing system that simultaneously represents sound at the level of
the syllable as well as the phoneme. Alphasyllabic languages are found in three areas of the
world: spread across South and South East Asia, in Ethiopia and neighbouring Eretria in
Northern Africa and in pockets across the northern regions of North America. Salmon (2000)
said The Indic scripts are often considered a prototype of the alphasyllabaries (Nag,
Carovolas, 2010).

Examples of this family of alphasyllabaries are many:

 The South Asian scripts of Bengali, Hindi, Kannada and Tamil,

 The Central Asian Tibetan script
 The Thai and Javanese scripts of South East Asia.

The symbol units of many writing systems of South Asia are called the akshara. While the
akshara in languages like Bengali, Hindi, Kannada and Tamil may look very different from
each other, they all share core characteristics because of a common ancestry which links them
to the ancient Brahmi script.
The akshara represent sounds at the level of both the phoneme and the syllable
simultaneously giving the writing system its name - alphasyllabary. The connections
between written symbols and spoken sounds have been called orthography-to phonology and
phonology-to-orthography mappings.
Features of the various Alphasyllabic scripts:

Salomon (2000) described alpha-syllabaries as classes of characters that are neither strictly
alphabetic, in that they do not represent a single sound unit or phoneme, nor strictly syllabic,
in that they do not stand for a single and indivisible syllabic unit. He further describes the
features of alphasyllabic scripts as follows:

1. The physical graphic unit is the syllable, typically of the types V, CV, CCV, etc.
2. An unmarked consonantal graph is understood to have an automatic or ‘inherent’
vowel (in the Indian scripts, the so-called ‘short a’) following it, unless an explicit
mark for another vowel overrules the implied neutral vowel (e.g. in Tamil, a ‘pulli’ or
an overdot diacritic mutes the inherent vowel).
3. Vowels other than the inherent vowel, when following a consonant, are indicated by
the addition of an extra ‘diacritic’ sign, which is typically attached directly to the
consonantal character.
4. Vowels that do not follow a consonant (i.e. word-initial vowels or the second vowel in
a V–V sequence) are represented by separate graphs, namely ‘full’, ‘initial’, or
‘independent’ vowel signs.

Linguistic features of the alphasyllabaries suggest that sound-to-symbol mapping may be

subtly different when compared with the alphabetic and logographic orthographies. The
alphasyllabaries are a group of orthographies that represent sounds at the level of the syllable
but have distinctive features to indicate sub-syllabic information (Bright, 1996).

It is well-established that learning to read draws upon oral language skills. The phonological
domain of language which is related to its sounds structure is a key dimension for literacy
learning. The stream of spoken language can be artificially segmented into individual sounds
called phonological units. The syllable and the phoneme are examples of phonological units
as mentioned earlier.

Pace of learning of the extensive symbol set of akshara is longer. Knowledge of low
frequency akshara and akshara taught later however remained poor at the end of primary
school even among good readers. Effects of diglossia are seen in children’s spelling
development in Kannada (Nag, Treiman & Snowling, 2010). Mapping of syllable to akshara
and phoneme to sub-akshara features has an influence on phonological development with the
orthography pre-dominantly supporting syllabic awareness, with phonemic awareness
emerging more slowly (Nag 2007; Prakash, Rekha, Nigam & Karanth 1993).

Orthographic knowledge:

Current evidence indicates that orthographic knowledge is a minimum skill for learning to
read in all languages that have been studied. Letter knowledge is a predictor of reading
success in alphabetic scripts. However, that there are crucial differences in the construct of
letter knowledge and akshara knowledge. Letters have a name quite different from the sound
they stand for. Thus letter knowledge has been operationalised as knowledge of name and/or
sound (Seymour et al., 2003).

Development of reading in different writing systems:

The first aspect of writing systems is that they differ in the number of symbols they carry
with implications of diversity in orthography-specific aspects of symbol learning. A second
aspect of orthography is the nature of the visuo-spatial complexity of the symbol system. It is
as yet unclear what might be the foundational processing skills for the learning of visually
more complex symbol sets.

What is common between the systems?

The alphasyllabaries are similar to logographies in that they are visually complex and have
relatively large symbol sets which tend to be organized into phonological units larger than the
phoneme. The alphasyllabaries also share features with alphabetic orthographies in that the
symbols primarily convey the phonology of words.

Indeed, given the dual representation of syllable and phoneme level sounds, the
alphasyllabaries have sometimes been conceptualised as semi-alphabetic orthographies with
syllabically organized symbols.

Let us know see about reading in Tamil.

Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the family of Dravidian languages, a family
consisting of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent. Tamil is spoken by
around 65 million people worldwide (Asher & Annamalai, 2002). It is primarily spoken in
Tamil Nadu, a southeastern state of India, and in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka.
Tamil is also spoken by migrant communities in Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, Fiji, the
United Kingdom and the United States, among other countries.

Tamil is diglossic (Ferguson, 1959), with a marked difference between the forms used in
writing and formal speaking, and in informal conversations. Tamil script is akshara-based,
which typically represents language at the (orthographic) syllable level. It is a relatively
opaque system with a distinctly different visuospatial organization (Nag, 2007), as all the
elements of akshara are written as in-line characters in contrast to other akshara-based
orthographies. Tamil has fewer graphemes compared to other Brahmi-derived scripts.

A proficient reader makes use of conventions as well as sentence context and prior lexical
knowledge while decoding Tamil.

The Tamil script:

The Tamil script is believed to have been derived from the Brahmi script. Asokan Brahmi of
the third century BCE is the common source from which all Indian scripts, both Indo-Aryan
and Dravidian, evolved. It was an alpha-syllabic script with diacritics used for vowels
occurring in post-consonantal position. The writing system was based on the concept called
akshara or ‘graphic syllable’, which has a vowel as the final constituent (Krishnamurthi,
2003).

As we saw earlier, according to Bright (1996), alphasyllabaries are a group of orthographies

that represent sounds at the level of the syllable but have distinctive features to indicate sub-
syllabic information. He defines alpha-syllabic scripts as those scripts in which ‘each
consonant-vowel sequence is a unit, called an akshara.

Phonological structure of Tamil:

Tamil has 10 vowels including 5 short and 5 long vowels and 2 diphthongs. The consonants
of the language are classified into three types which are:

 |vallinam| meaning hard consonants,

 |mellinam| meaning soft consonants and
 |idaiyinam| meaning middle-level consonants)

All the three types have 6 letters each thus making a total of 18 consonants.
The consonants can also be classified as: hard consonants, soft consonants and the medial
consonants.

Hard consonants: These consonants include க (k, g), ச (ch), ட (T, D), த (t, d), ப (p, b), ற (r).

Soft consonants: Include ங (ng), ஞ (nj), ண (N), ந (n), ம (m), ன (n).

Medial consonants: The medial consonants include ய (y), ர (r), ல (l), வ (v), ழ (zh), ள (L).

The 12 vowels (including diphthongs) and 18 consonants combine to produce 216

consonant–vowel alphasyllabographs. All consonants have an inherent vowel; diacritic
markers or secondary vowels in the form of ligatures on the sides of consonants are used to
lengthen this inherent vowel or add other vowels to the consonant. The inherent vowel can be
nullified by using an over-dot diacritic called ‘pulli’. Apart from the 12 vowels, there is a
special character called ‘aytham’ – represented as three dots (ஃ) as in a shield (and hence the
name). It is neither a pure vowel nor a pure consonant. It is mostly used to modify Tamil
syllabographs to represent foreign sounds such as /f/, (e.g. an ‘aytham’ followed by ‘p’ would
represent ‘f’, as in ‘fees’, which is written as ‘aytham followed by |pi:s|’ ஃபீஸ்).

Distinctive features of Tamil from other languages:

 Tamil does not differentiate between voiced and unvoiced consonants (e.g. |p| and |b|
are represented by the same letter ‘ப’).
 Voicing of these sounds is governed by specific rules. Plosives are unvoiced if they
occur in the initial position of the word or if they are doubled (geminated) in medial
positions. They are voiced when they occur in medial position.
 Since the word final position always contains a vowel, there is no question of plosives
occurring at the final position. If they do occur as pure consonants between phrases
(at word ends), they are unvoiced. Eg: Consider the word பட° |padagu|; the plosive in
the initial position is unvoiced and the plosives in the medial position are voiced.
 The voiced and the unvoiced plosives in Tamil seem to be in a complementary
distribution when analysed phonologically (Asher & Keane, 2005).
 Another notable feature is that consonant clusters are restricted in native words. There
are no clusters in the word initial or final positions.

Tamil morphology and syntax:

Tamil has an ‘agglutinating’ (many morphemes) or ‘concatenating’ (formation of new
lexical items by putting at least two distinct morphemes together.) morphology. Words are
formed by concatenating morphemes one after the other. Nouns and verbs inflect for tense,
person, number, gender, etc.

The resultant words formed by concatenating morphemes are functionally different. Case
suffix markers and post-positions added to word stems result in changes in grammatical
categories thereby bringing about meaning changes.

Tamil sentences generally follow a subject–object–verb pattern. However, Tamil is a

relatively free word-order language, and the constituents of the sentence can be shifted to
provide emphasis, without affecting the semantics.

Reading and spelling in Tamil:

Reading in Tamil is influenced by several factors:

 One of the factors is related to the large number of visual symbols that need to be
mastered. As the grain size of akshara is relatively large, the number of symbols in the
orthography is also correspondingly large.
 These include syllabographs representing pure vowels, their diacritic forms,
consonants with inherent “shwa”, consonants with vowel diacritics, etc. Further, letter
knowledge in English would include learning letter names as well as letter-name–
sound associations (the sound that each letter stands for).
 However, children learning to read Indian alphasyllabaries do not need to learn letter-
name–sound associations as letter names and sounds are the same. Even though Tamil
has fewer alphasyllabographs compared to other Brahmi scripts, learning the
correspondence between letters and sounds is challenging, as Tamil orthography has
one-to-many correspondences.
 There are instances where the graphemic sequence is not congruent to the phonemic
sequence, and cases of non-linearity. In Tamil, non-linearity is present in certain
consonant–vowel sequences.
 While the phonemic sequence of some consonant vowel combinations is consonant
plus vowel, the graphemic sequence is vowel plus consonant, that is, the diacritic
marker vowel is placed before the consonant.
 For example, |ke| is written as ெக, which has the vowel diacritic appearing before
the consonant. This kind of non-linearity causes additional cost in processing time as
evidenced by Blessy (2007).
 Dialectal variation is another factor that can influence reading, particularly the way
in which voiced/unvoiced and fricative/affricate distinctions are made. Tamil is
diglossic, and has various dialects. There are significant differences between the
forms that are used in writing and speaking.
References:

1. Owens, R. E. (2011). Language Development: An Introduction. Boston: Pearson.

2. Paul, R., & Norbury, C. (2011). Language Disorders from Infancy through

Adolescence assessment and intervention. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.

3. Carroll, J. M., Bowyer-Crane, C. A., Duff, F. J., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M.
(2012). Developing Language and Literacy: Effective Intervention in the Early Years.
Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

4. Nag, S., Caravolas, M., & Snowling, M. J. (2010). Beyond alphabetic processes:
Literacy and its acquisition in the alphasyllabic languages. Reading and
Writing, 24(6), 615-622. doi:10.1007/s11145-010-9259-6

5. Bhuvaneshwari, B., & Padakannaya, P. (n.d.). Reading in Tamil: A more alphabetic

and less syllabic akshara-based orthography. South and Southeast Asian
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