Sound Linkage

Peter J. Hatcher was, until his retirement, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of York. He also worked as a Senior Educational Psychologist with the Cumbria Education Authority. His work in the area of understanding and helping children with reading difficulties master the skills of reading, with Charles Hulme and Andrew Ellis, culminated in their groundbreaking research (1994) that supported the Sound Linkage Hypothesis. Prior to working as an Educational Psychologist, he taught primary, secondary and tertiary-age students in special and mainstream settings in Australia, the Bahamas, Sierra Leone and the UK.Fiona J. Duff is a Research Associate at the University of Oxford. She was previously a research fellow at the University of York, where she also completed her PhD. During her studies, she was awarded the British Psychological Society Postgraduate Award and was seconded to the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, where she authored a briefing note for parliamentarians on teaching children to read.Charles Hulme is Professor of Psychology at University College London. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Scientific Studies of Reading and is currently a Senior Editor of the Association of Psychological Science's flagship journal, Psychological Science. His publications include five authored and four edited books, over 190 journal articles, as well as several psychometric tests, including the United Kingdom's new standard test of reading comprehension, the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension.

• Acknowledgements xForeword xiAbout the companion website xiiIntroduction 1Test of phonological awareness 3Programme administration 10Phonological training activities 10Phonological linkage activities 12Section 1: Identification of words as units within sentences 15Activity 1: Introduction to the concepts of 'beginning', 'middle' and 'end' 16Activity 2: Comprehension of the concepts of 'beginning', 'middle' and 'end' in sentences 16Activity 3: Transferring the concepts of 'beginning', 'middle' and 'end' to an aural activity 17Activity 4: Production of initial, final and medial words in sentences of two to four words 18Activity 5: Matching counters to words in sentences of two to five words 19Section 2: Identification and manipulation of syllables 21Activity 1: Introduction to syllabic rhythm in poems (A) 22Activity 2: Introduction to syllabic rhythm in poems (B) 23Activity 3: Syllable blending (two to four syllables) 24Activity 4: Introduction to syllable segmentation 25Activity 5: Segmentation of words into syllables (two to four) 26Activity 6: Syllable counting in words of two to four syllables 27Activity 7: Syllable deletion 28Section 3: Identification and supply of rhyming words 29Activity 1: Introduction to rhyme 30Activity 2: Discrimination of pairs of rhyming and non-rhyming words 31Activity 3: Supplying rhymes (A) 31Activity 4: Supplying rhymes (B) 32Activity 5: Supplying rhymes (C) 33Activity 6: Rhyme supply (riddles) 35Activity 7: Discrimination of one of three words that rhymes with a target word 36Section 4: Identification and discrimination of phonemes 37Activity 1: Introduction to 'saying a word slowly' 38Activity 2: Picture sound association (initial sounds of words) 38Activity 3: Word pair discrimination 39Activity 4: Identification of initial sounds in words 40Activity 5: Identification of final sounds in words 42Activity 6: Identification of medial sounds in words 44Activity 7: Discrimination of two of three words with the same initial sound 46Activity 8: Introduction to the concept of 'same end' sound 47Activity 9: Discrimination of two of three words with the same final sound 48Activity 10: Discrimination of two of three words with the same medial sound 48Activity 11: Discrimination of word pairs with the same initial sound 49Activity 12: Discrimination of word pairs with the same final sound 50Activity 13: Discrimination of word pairs with the same medial sound 51Activity 14: Discrimination of one of three words with the same initial sound as a target word 51Activity 15: Discrimination of one of four words with a different initial sound 52Activity 16: Discrimination of one of three words with the same final sound as a target word 54Activity 17: Discrimination of one of four words with a different final sound 55Section 5: Phoneme blending 57Activity 1: Production of words from two to four sounds 58Activity 2: Production of words from two sounds 59Activity 3: Production of words from three sounds 59Activity 4: Production of words from four sounds 60Activity 5: Production of words from five sounds 61Activity 6: Sound linkage: Blending of two sounds 62Activity 7: Sound linkage: Blending of three sounds 63Activity 8: Sound linkage: Blending of four sounds (initial blends) 64Activity 9: Sound linkage: Blending of four sounds (final blends) 66Section 6: Phoneme segmentation 69Activity 1: Production of the initial sound of target words 70Activity 2: Production of the final sound of target words 70Activity 3: Production of the medial sound of target words 71Activity 4: Introduction to the concept of breaking up a word into sounds 72Activity 5: Introduction to segmenting a word while pushing counters into boxes 73Activity 6: Phoneme counting with two to four counters (A) 74Activity 7: Phoneme counting with two to four counters (B) 75Activity 8: Segmenting words into sounds 75Activity 9: Sound linkage: Discrimination of two of three words with the same initial 'sound' 76Activity 10: Sound linkage: Discrimination of two of three words with the same final 'sound' 77Activity 11: Sound linkage: Discrimination of two of three words with the same medial 'sound' 79Section 7: Phoneme deletion 81Activity 1: Introduction to the concepts of 'missing from' and 'without' 82Activity 2: Introduction to the concepts of 'taken away' and 'left' in relation to sounds in words 83Activity 3: Specification of the initial sound deleted from a word 85Activity 4: Specification of the final sound deleted from a word 85Activity 5: Specification of a medial sound that has been deleted from a word 86Activity 6: Deletion of the initial sound of a word to produce another word (A) 87Activity 7: Deletion of the initial sound of a word to produce another word (B) 88Activity 8: Deletion of the final sound of a word to produce another word 89Activity 9: Deletion of the medial sound of a word to produce another word 89Activity 10: Sound linkage: Discrimination of a word produced by deleting the initial sound from a stimulus word 90Activity 11: Sound linkage: Discrimination of a word produced by deleting the final sound from a stimulus word 92Section 8: Phoneme substitution 95Activity 1: Introduction to the concept of changing the beginning item of a sequence 96Activity 2: Revision of the concept of 'first sound in a word' 96Activity 3: Changing the initial sound of a word 97Activity 4: Phoneme substitution (initial sound) 98Activity 5: Phoneme substitution (final sound) 98Activity 6: Phoneme substitution (medial sound) 99Activity 7: Sound linkage: Substitution of initial letters/phonemes in words 100Activity 8: Sound linkage: Substitution of final letters/phonemes in words 102Activity 9: Sound linkage: Substitution of medial letters/phonemes in words 103Section 9: Phoneme transposition 105Activity 1: Defining the concept of backwards (using pictures) 106Activity 2: Defining the concept of backwards (in relation to words) 106Activity 3: Defining the concept of backwards (in relation to sounds in words) 107Activity 4: Reversing the sequence of sounds in a word 108Activity 5: Introduction to spoonerisms 109Activity 6: Spoonerisms 110Activity 7: Sound linkage: Reversing the sequence of sounds in a word 111Activity 8: Sound linkage: Spoonerisms 112Section 10: Phonological linkage activities 115Instructions 116Establishing a link between sounds and the written form of words 116Using letters as clues in text reading 117Multisyllabic words and words with suffixes and prefixes 118Playing with words 118Sound Linkage: Theoretical background to the programme 120Phonological awareness and learning to read 120The Hatcher, Hulme and Ellis study 121Evidence from subsequent studies for the effectiveness of 'reading with phonology' programmes 126Using sound linkage as one component of an integrated approach to teaching reading 128Grading children's early reading books 132Summary 132Test development and standardisation 133Appendix 1: Additional activities 142Section 2: Identification and manipulation of syllables 142Section 3: Identification and supply of rhyming words 142Section 4: Identification and discrimination of phonemes 143Section 5: Phoneme blending 144Section 6: Phoneme segmentation 145Section 7: Phoneme deletion 146Section 8: Phoneme substitution 146Section 9: Phoneme transposition 146Appendix 2: Table of percentages (observed score / possible score) × 100 148Appendix 3: Grading children's early reading books 149Sound linkage training programme: Record Sheets 156Record Sheet A: Test of phonological awareness 156Record Sheet B: Identification of words as units within sentences 158Record Sheet C: Identification and manipulation of syllables 160Record Sheet D: Identification and supply of rhyming words 162Record Sheet E: Identification and discrimination of phonemes 164Record Sheet F: Phoneme blending 171Record Sheet G: Phoneme segmentation 174Record Sheet H: Phoneme deletion 177Record Sheet I: Phoneme substitution 180Record Sheet J: Phoneme transposition 183References and Bibliography 185