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Language and Literacy March 2006
CRACKING THE LITERACY PUZZLE IN SOUTH AFRICA
Jacqui Wright
SLTs are in a key position to help
improve pupils' literacy skills. Jacqui Wright describes her
experience in South Africa
www.rcslt.org March 2006 bulletin 19 of speech and language therapy
so that the
children received remediation holistically in
Literacy was barely mentioned 20 years ago during my BSc speech and
language therapy training at the logopaedics department, University
of Cape Town's medical school. Later on, while living in the US for
five-anda-half years, I home-schooled my five children for four
years and during that time developed my literacy awareness.
As SLTs we know the importance of the
normal development of phonological awareness, speech sounds,
language
structures and auditory processing skills as the foundation or
pre-literacy skills for the normal development of reading, spelling
and writing skills. Children who are delayed or deviate from the
norm in the former are at risk for the latter.
For example, children with weak sound
structure and segmenting ability have
difficulty learning the correct interactions
between letters and speech sounds for
reading. If they have speech sound errors in their own spontaneous
speech, this adversely affects reading correctly even further. And
so this snowballs on into spelling and expressive writing.
Sadly, from general clinical
experience, we
also know that children who are at-risk for
reading, spelling and writing difficulties also tend towards school
failure and leaving school early, loss of self-esteem, behavioural
problems, eventual low socio-economic status and possibly even
crime.
On returning to South Africa, I
combined
this knowledge with my speech and language therapy work in the South
African education system. In 1999, I took up the challenge of
independent speech and language therapy work in South African
schools and developed a clinical reading and spelling programme.
Most therapists in South Africa work
privately in specific schools by arrangement with school principals
(head teachers). There are few government posts and parents usually
pay fees directly to the therapist.
Based on the many American speech
pathologists' recommendations, they assess reading and spelling
using South African standardised tests and do remediation for these
skills as well as expressive writing.
As I am also trained as an
audiologist, I did speech and hearing screenings in pre-schools
(ages one to five years) and primary schools (ages six to 13 years),
as well as full diagnostic speech and language assessments that
included assessing auditory perceptual skills, reading, spelling and
writing, followed by
therapy as needed.
I worked in private pre-schools and
primary schools as well as government primary schools in Pretoria
and Johannesburg. The needs of at-risk children in private and
government schools were the same, but the children in the government
schools had more obstacles to overcome.
In the government schools, teachers
faced particular challenges. These were:
1) Large numbers of children in a class (40
plus)
2) Pupils speaking one of the 11 African
languages, English and/or Afrikaans.
Many children, therefore, were being
taught in a second or third language, eg
their 'mother tongue' might be an African
language, their second language Afrikaans
and they attended an English school,
when they barely spoke English. Englishspeaking teachers were trying
to teach literacy skills in English to children who did not have
adequate pre-literacy skills in that language. In a parallel medium
school, where classes are taught separately in Afrikaans and
English, some
Afrikaans-speaking teachers were required to teach English literacy
skills to English-speaking children without the knowledge to do this
3) There were no learning support assistants, or time to help the
children who were failing, and limited literacy resources. These
children soon developed behavioural problems and disrupted the
classroom.
Many of the children had problems because they were learning in
English when this was their second or even third language. Others
were not progressing because of the poor teaching of basic literacy.
I worked closely with the teachers on developing literacy strategies
for the school.
In one primary English-speaking school
(age six to 12), I met voluntarily with the teachers, occupational
therapist and psychologist on a regular basis, as part of government
strategy to try to help the failing children whose parents could not
afford therapy.
From 1999 to 2002, all the children I
saw for regular weekly speech and language therapy, including
pre-literacy and literacy skills, made progress in all areas and
many caught up their reading and spelling ages.
I usually saw children either
individually or
in groups of three. The type of work I did initially in the area of
literacy was to use memory techniques for recall and contrast of
short vowel sounds and then long vowel sounds.
This was carried over into reading
books designed for the specific vowel sound eg, 'e' and phonic
worksheets for spelling, grammar and writing involving that vowel
sound. The children enjoyed being able to master simple reading
books and the fun activity worksheets. Although I used a positive
reward system for achievement in the sessions and for homework, the
children were motivated by their own success with the programme. I
also incorporated other aspects of speech and language therapy so
that the children received remediation holistically in all areas of
difficulties.
The best part for me was the newfound
confidence of the children and the smiles on their faces. Those who
once hated school now enjoyed it as the puzzle of literacy was
cracked and this opened up the world of learning. Teachers and
parents were also thrilled. One parent commented, "You have saved my
child's life."
The most crucial stages of literacy
learning are in the early school years (ages five to nine). After
that learning is more about the content of subjects using
established literacy skills. I have learned from experience that the
role of the SLT goes hand-in-hand with that of the teachers, and
that we both have knowledge and skills to bring to the learning of
literacy, especially in those early years.
For the children's sake, we need to
work together with those who are at risk. I have good experience of
this, and having returned to the UK, I refined my knowledge by
taking part in a Teaching Handwriting Reading and Spelling Skills
(THRASS) course with other teachers and SLTs in 2004.
THRASS is a whole-school phonics
programme for teaching learners, of any age, about the building
blocks of reading and spelling - the 44 phonemes (speech sounds)
feature LANGUAGE AND LITERACY
of spoken English and the graphemes (spelling choices) of written
English. The programme teaches learners that, basically, when
spelling we change phonemes to graphemes and when reading we change
graphemes to phonemes.
THRASS is an explicit phoneme-grapheme
awareness teaching method. It helps learners to understand the
building blocks of the English language. It is a logical,
linguistically sound, way to teach phonological awareness.
THRASS is a code-breaker, described by
many teachers as "the key that unlocks the door to our language". It
is also a practical, multisensory approach, addressing both
prevention and correction. It teaches metacognitive strategies
(thinking skills) to empower learners with lifelong word-solving
skills.
Over the years THRASS (UK) has built a
reputation for providing high quality professional development
courses in many countries. Testimony to this are the thousands of
very positive course evaluations, from hundreds of courses, on the
main website -
www.thrass.co.uk/courses.htm
As a consequence, teachers,
assistants,
parents, educational psychologists and SLTs in pre-schools, schools,
colleges and universities in many countries use the resources.
Alan Davies, co-author of THRASS, is
currently delivering his programme in southern African countries,
including Botswana and South Africa. Course evaluations indicate
that his training is being well received and with integration into
the education system will make a great difference there.
I am hoping for a better future for
the children of South Africa, in particular, and
also for the children here in the UK, as we
take up the challenge of integrating literacy development into our
role as SLTs.
Jacqui Wright
Highly Specialist Speech and
Language Therapist in Paediatric Learning Difficulties
Reading:
Hilton, E (2003) Review: THRASS whole-picture keyword phonics in
Communiphon Magazine. South African Speech Language Hearing
Association (SASLHA), November 2003.
Acknowledgement
THRASS information given with permission from Alan Davies, co-author
of THRASS.
Source: Bulletin, March 2006, The Official
Magazine of The Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists
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