Monday, October 7, 2024

The root cause of children being unable to read (Part 6)

 


Ethan Lynn, PhD

Luqman Michel, I noticed you’ve mentioned diagnosing reading issues by having children sound out consonants. Doesn't that rely on phonemic awareness as a key skill? I'm curious because this seems to contradict a previous post where you downplayed phonemic awareness deficiency as a cause for reading struggles. Could you clarify your thoughts on this?

Luqman Michel

No! Educators are barking up the wrong tree when they talk about teaching kids phonemic awareness.

Were you taught phonemic awareness when you went to school?

What I am saying is kids have phonemic awareness. However, teachers teach them letters with extraneous sounds and then blame kids for being unable to blend.

No one knows how to blend duhahguh to read the word dog. You should ask Sally Shaywitz how kids figure that out.

The following, by Sally Shaywitz,  is added now.

    People with dyslexia have trouble separating words into phonemes, the sounds that correspond with each part of a word. For example, the word “dog” is broken down into the phonemes “duh,” “aah” and “guh.”

    Hearing these discrete sounds is a vital part of learning to read. But people with dyslexia hear the word only in its entirety: “dog.” LINK


Stop blaming phonemic awareness when the problem is asking kids to blend buh ah tuh instead of /b/ /a/ /t/.

 

My question to you: Where does the phonemic awareness deficit disappear after a 'dyslexic' kid is taught the correct sounds of consonants and is able to read?

 

NOTE: Kids with phonemic awareness problems could be kids with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD).

We don’t have to teach kids phonemic awareness. I was not taught this when I went to school and I believe Ethan would not have learned that either.

Someone says something and others jump on the bandwagon and repeat without thinking. This was the case with the Phonological Awareness Deficit being the cause of ‘dyslexia’. For more than 40 years more than 100 educators/researchers repeated this until it was debunked by me.

 

What prompted me to challenge that theory was that all my students could read in Malay and those who went to vernacular schools could read in Pinyin but not in English. How could they read in the two languages if they had an APD? You may read articles written by me by googling phonological awareness Luqman Michel. LINK.


Teachers teach the basic foundation of reading – sounds of letters – wrongly and blame and say kids can’t blend because of phonemic awareness deficit.

Those who speak only one language don’t appreciate this important reason for kids shutting down/disengaging from learning to read.

These educators then say that teaching sounds is only one of the reasons why kids can’t read. They then point to kids who cannot comprehend and kids who are not fluent.

Someone, please tell me how a kid, who has not learned to blend letters and therefore can’t read’ is going to comprehend, improve vocabulary, or become a fluent reader.

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