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La Théorie

Phonological Decoding

is the ability to decode the language visually by knowing the letter-sound relationships in order to successfully read, write and speak the language.

Orthographic Processing

refers to recognizing and remembering letters which includes noting sequences of letters in words and being able to distinguish among spelling patterns of words. Although smaller in population compared to those with phonological deficits, some children with reading and spelling problems have difficulty processing words orthographically (Stanovich & West, 1989).

Watermelonworks
methodology does just that. Explicit teaching of letter sequences associated with sound to improve phonological deficits alongside with improving spelling in FSL/LFS and FFL/LFP. #linguisticduality

Les sons, les lettres et le mots.

 

Les sons sont produits par l'expiration de l'air venant des poumons.  Il y a des voyelles et des consonnes.
 

  1. La phonétique étudie les sons du langage tels qu'ils sont produits.
  2. La phonologie étudie les sons du point de vue de leur function dans une langue : les sons qui permettent de distinguer les mots les uns des autres s'appellent les phonemes.*

      *  Grevisse Goose  Grammaire 1990 p13.

 

In other words...

1. Sound is produced by air passing through the lungs. There are vowels and consonants.

2. Phonetics is the study of speech sounds and their production.

3. Phonology studies sound from the point of view of their function in language : sounds that distinguish words from each other are called phonemes.*

​Watermelonworks™ French Sounds is just that.  A linguistically designed program that reinforces decoding skills for students to succeed in reading, writing and speaking French.  French sounds links the written to the oral for success!

 

Designed as a remediation tool for struggling learners but is effectively used for emerging readers! A prevention tool for effective learning.

 

​Take the risk out of reading!  Use the patented Watermelonworks™ methodology today!

 

​#laconsciencephonologique #frimm #fsl #fsl4all #frenchsounds #french4all #bilingualnation #canadianmade

Reading is acknowledged as critical to virtually every aspect of learning; yet as many as one in five children has difficulties learning to read (Lyon, 1995). Juel (1988).

 

It is through phonemic identification that children will obtain greater success and develop a love of reading.

 

Phonological Awareness for reading:

 

There are two main measures of phonological awareness:

​1.  Sound isolation

​2.  phoneme blending

 

​Watermelonworks™ French Sounds is just that. 

 

A)   The sound game is a series of cards that identifies a comprehensive list of sounds in isolation.  The sound game also consists of complex phonemic blends.

​The sound game engages the speed of lexical access when used as flash cards.

 

​B)  The consonant game is phonemic blending of CV sounds.

 

C) Word building engages lexical access.  Give the student a set of pre-sorted patented phonemic cards that spell certain words and ask the student to spell the word you have spoken.  Not only will the child be able to engage and perform, the child will be able to spell, speak and read the words during the process.  This process ensures lifelong retention.

​D)  Repeat after me audio  enhances the phonological working memory by being able to recite the identified phonemic blends contained  in the "sound game" using a sound chart list and a structured audio component.

Abstract:

Learning to read and spell words is a central part of becoming literate.

 

During text reading, most words are processed, and skilled readers are able to do this effortlessly. How they become skilled at processing graphic cues has been the focus of our research. Findings indicate that prereaders do not acquire graphic skill by learning to read signs and labels in their environment.

Rather, mastery of letters is required.

Whereas prereaders use visual or context cues to identify words, as soon as children move into reading they shift to letter-sound cues.  Initially, words are read by accessing remembered associations between a few letters in spellings and sounds in pronunciations. Later, when decoding skill matures, complete spellings are analyzed as phonemic symbols for pronunciations and are stored in memory.


Various studies indicate that having a visual picture of speech in memory is an important part of a person's information-processing equipment. Spellings may influence how words are pronounced, what sounds people think are in words, how quickly people judge spoken word rhymes, how rapidly pronunciations change over time. 

Ehri, Learning to read and spell, 1984

The Alphabetic Principle and Phonics

 

The National Research Council (1998) highlighted the importance of the alphabetic principle and phonics when they observed, "Visual word recognition can flourish only when children displace the belief that print is like pictures with the insight that written words are comprised of letters that, in turn, map to speech sounds." (p. 45) National Reading Council (1998). Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. National Academy Press .

Engaging students one sound at a time!

 

Reading disability and the brain by  Shaywitz(2003) indicates that for print material to be recognized in the mind, it must be converted from the linguistic code. ... "the phonetic code, the only code recognized  and accepted by the language system." 


"To break the code, ... readers must develop phonemic awareness... that words come apart into smaller pieces of sound."


Proof that #FrenchSounds makes a difference in developinglifelong reading acquisition through segmenting and blending phonemes.

La finalité de la lecture est la compréhension de ce qui est lu.

 

Cependant, une grande partie des difficultés d’apprentissage de la lecture ne provient pas de difficultés de compréhension mais de difficultés de décodage, c’est-à-dire de difficultés à lire des mots réguliers sur le plan des correspondances graphème-phonème, ce qui est le cas de la plupart des mots du français."

(Lecture et dyslexie, Dunod, pp. 57-69).  Sprenger-Charolles, L. & Colé, P. (2010). Evaluation de la compréhension et de la fluence : lecture à haute voix d’un court récit (test élaboré pour l’étude Gentaz et al., 2013)

#researchbasedevidence that proves decoding is the tool for reading comprehension.

Based on the assumption that good #decoding skills constitute a bootstrapping mechanism for reading comprehension, the present study investigated the relative contribution of the former skill to the latter compared to that of three other predictors of reading comprehension (listening comprehension, vocabulary and phonemic awareness) in 392 French-speaking first graders from low SES families.


This large sample was split into three groups according to their level of decoding skills assessed by pseudoword reading. Using a cutoff of 1 SD above or below the mean of the entire population, there were 63 good decoders, 267 average decoders and 62 poor decoders. 58% of the variance in reading comprehension was explained by our four predictors, with decoding skills proving to be the best predictor (12.1%, 7.3% for listening comprehension, 4.6% for vocabulary and 3.3% for phonemic awareness).


Interaction between group versus decoding skills, listening comprehension and phonemic awareness accounted for significant additional variance (3.6%, 1.1% and 1.0%, respectively). The effects on reading comprehension of decoding skills and phonemic awareness were higher in poor and average decoders than in good decoders whereas listening comprehension accounted for more variance in good and average decoders than in poor decoders.


Furthermore, the percentage of children with impaired reading comprehension skills was higher in the group of poor decoders (55%) than in the two other groups (average decoders: 7%; good decoders: 0%) and only 6 children (1.5%) had impaired reading comprehension skills with unimpaired decoding skills, listening comprehension or vocabulary.


These results challenge the outcomes of studies on “poor comprehenders” by showing that, at least in first grade,

poor reading comprehension is strongly linked to the level of decoding skills.

Citation: Gentaz E, Sprenger-Charolles L, Theurel A (2015) Differences in the Predictors of Reading Comprehension in First Graders from Low Socio-Economic Status Families with Either Good or Poor Decoding Skills. PLoS ONE 10(3): e0119581. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0119581

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