1. What is it?
What skills do students need to “crack “ it?
What phonological processing abilities are
necessary to gain the needed skills?

2. English Language is Alphabetic
 Letters “make” sounds.
 Sounds are blended to decode words (if the
words are decodable, and not irregular ).
 Words are segmented into individual
sounds when encoding.
 The term phonological derives from the
Greek word phone, which means “voice” or
“sound.”

3. Skills Needed to Read/Spell Words in an
Alphabetic Language
 PHONICS
 Letter(s)/Sounds Associations
 Grapheme/Phoneme
 PHONEMIC AWARENESS – the ability to access and
manipulate the individual sounds in words.
 ACCESS – to be aware of (e.g.,“map” is “made up of” the
sounds /m/ /a/ /p/.)
 MANIPULATE – (1) Segment and (2) Blend
 To spell words you must be able to Segment them into
individual phonemes (sounds).
 To read, .... Blend sounds to pronounce words.

4. Phonological Processing Abilities
 English language is alphabetic – composed of sounds.
 To navigate an alphabetic language, one has to process
the sounds of the language. (Phonological
Processing is NOT the same as Language Processing.)
 PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING
 Refers to the use of phonological information,
especially the sound structure of one’s
language, in processing written language
(reading & writing) and oral language
(listening/speaking).

5. Reading Disabilities
 The critical problem for the majority of cases of reading
disability is at the level of decoding individual words.
 A deficit in some aspect of phonological processing ability
is viewed as a cause of the most common form of reading
disability.
 Deficits in phonological awareness, phonological memory
and rapid naming are common in children with reading
disabilities.
 These deficits appear to be the root of many of the
decoding difficulties faced by individuals with reading
difficulties.

6. 3 Kinds of Phonological Processing Abilities
 Phonological Awareness – an individual’s awareness of
and access to the sound structure of his or her oral
language.
 Phonological Memory – the coding of information
phonologically for temporary storage in working or
short-term memory.
 When you attempt to remember a phone number, you store the
number temporarily in working memory.
 You probably do so not by storing a visual representation of the
sequence of digits (although you may be able to do this if you try,
but rather by storing a phonological representation of the sounds of
the digit names.

7. Phonological Memory
 Phonological Loop provides a brief, verbatim storage
of auditory information. It consists of two parts.
 Phonological Store – tape recording loop that retains the
most recent 2 seconds worth of auditory information.
 Articulatory Control Process – provides input to the
phonological loop initially and also can refresh
information already in the loop so it can be stored for
longer than 2 seconds.

8. A Deficient Phonological Memory
 Does not appear to impair either reading or listening
to a noticeable extent, providing the words involved
are already in the individual’s vocabulary.
 Phonological memory impairments can constrain the
ability to learn new written and spoken vocabulary.
 The origin of the memory deficit is a specific deficit in
phonological coding of familiar verbal materials such
as digits and words.
 Individuals are not impaired in short-term memory for
nonverbal material, long-term memory, or listening
comprehension.

9. Rapid Naming
 Rapid naming of objects, colors, digits, or letters requires
efficient retrieval of phonological information from long-
term or permanent memory.
 Individuals who show poor performance on rapid naming
tasks (AIMS – 1 min tests of Letter and Number Naming)
are expected to have difficulty reading fluently.
 If a student’s score on Rapid Letter or Rapid Number
Fluency indicates he/she is “at risk”, administer an
alternate probe without timing.
 If the student can identify letters and/or numbers slowly,
there is the possibility that he/she does not have difficulties
with letter or number identification . It could be that this
student has rapid naming difficulties.

10. Young readers retrieve:
Phonemes associated with letters or
letter pairs;
Pronunciations of common word
segments;
Pronunciations of whole words

11. AIMS Reading Measures
 Phoneme Segmentation Fluency – if a student scores
poorly on this measure, chances are that he/she is not
accessing individual phonemes within words – (e.g., weak
phonemic awareness). If the total sounds per minute score
is low, look at the test itself to examine the information
qualitatively. (It is possible that the student is segmenting
words into onsets and rimes. That may be an indication
that he/she is 1.“unaware” of medial phonemes, OR it could
be that the student is 2. already a fairly good reader and is
just segmenting quickly. If the student is segmenting words
into onsets/rimes (rather than individual phonemes) double
check to see which of the above two are applicable.

12. Good News re P.A.
 Of the three Phonological Processing Abilities –
Phonological Awareness is amenable to
instruction (in other words, it can be improved
with instruction).
 It is the only one of the 3 Phonological
Processing Abilities that has been shown to be
affected by instruction. However, good
instruction can help students compensate for
weakness in the other 2 processing abilities -
Phonological Memory or Rapid Naming.

13. Nonsense Word Fluency
 NWF measures both Phonics and the ability to Blend. If a
student scores poorly on this measure, explicit phonics
instruction is a good place to start – including
(1)letter/sound association and (2)direct instruction in
blending.
 If a student’s score is “emerging”, but you are concerned by
his/her reading performance, then take a look at the test
itself. It may be that the student is naming individual
sounds quickly, but he/she may not be blending sounds
together to pronounce nonsense words.
 If test looks like this k o c , rather than k o c, re-administer
using a different NWF probe - for second testing, change
protocol ---

14. Qualitative Analysis of NWF
 If student “says” k o c, rather than k o c, explain to the
student that he/she can pronounce the individual
sounds, but the best way to read a word is to blend the
sounds together. You can model for the child (since
this is just for analysis – not to score). Then ask
him/her if he/she can read the nonsense word quickly.
 For k o c student – direct blending instruction.
 For a student who “says” sounds slowly or incorrectly –
he/she may need is more instruction in letter/sound
associations, along with instruction in blending.

15. Phonological Processing Abilities – Possible
Explanations for low scores on NWF
 The student may not have had adequate phonemic
awareness and phonics instruction.
 However, if he/she does not respond to instruction, it
may be that this student has (1) deficits in his/her
Phonological Awareness.
 A second explanation may be that the student has
deficits in his/her ability to retrieve auditory
information from long-term memory – Rapid Naming.
This student has difficulty retrieving the letter sound.

16. Double Deficits
 Individuals who have deficits in BOTH rapid naming
and phonological awareness appear to have a greater
difficulty learning to read than do individuals with
deficits in EITHER rapid naming or phonological
awareness alone.

17. Oral Reading Fluency
 Tests of Early Literacy (PSF and NWF) are
administered in K (beginning in spring) and 1st grade.
 The NWF is also administered during the first
trimester of 2nd grade. However, --
 If a student in 2nd or 3rd grade scores very poorly on the
ORF, administer the NWF to get an idea of Phonics
skills and his/her ability to Blend.
 If you are concerned about deficits in one or more of
the student’s phonological processing abilities, let me
know. I can administer the CTOPP (Comprehensive
Test of Phonological Processing.