The Phonological Awareness for Literacy (PAL) Program (Burrows, Allison, Barnett, and Savina, 2007) is a commercial literacy therapy program for use by

speech therapist Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...

s designed to improve

phonological awareness Phonological awareness is an individual's awareness of the phonological structure, or sound structure, of words. Phonological awareness is an important and reliable predictor of later reading ability and has, therefore, been the focus of much res ...

skills required for

literacy Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, hum ...

in children aged 8 – 12. It aims to create/strengthen awareness of the relationship between phonological awareness skills to reading and writing.

Theoretical foundations

Adapted from Auditory Discrimination in Depth (Lindamood & Lindamood, 1975), which is now known as the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing (LiPS) Program.

Intervention description

The PAL introduces identification, segmentation, blending and manipulation of speech sounds in syllables. It does not encourage reading using the whole-word approach instead teaching children to break written words up into individual

grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called ''graphemics' ...

s and matching letters with their corresponding

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

s before reassembling the phonemes back into words to read.

Key skills taught

Developing an awareness of linguistic terms: Checks child's understanding of literacy terminology used and teaches the child how to talk about language (

metalinguistic Metalinguistics is the branch of linguistics that studies language and its relationship to other cultural behaviors. It is the study of dialogue relationships between units of speech communication as manifestations and enactments of co-existence ...

skills). Sound–symbol association: Determines child's knowledge of how letters and sounds correspond, and that can be several representations of each sound. Block representation of Consonant or vowel sequences: This component facilitates the child's ability to segment words into individual phonemes through developing auditory analysis skills. A single block represents an individual sound, and a row of blocks represent a string of sounds; so that the number of blocks directly correlates to the number of sounds in the sequence. Block representation of syllables: Once the child understands that syllables consist of sounds, they then have to count the number of sounds, the order and distinguish between phonetic features. N.B. all block representation tasks deal only with non-words; this is to prevent the child from using pre-learned spelling patterns to respond to the tasks. Reading and spelling non-words: This builds on previously learnt skills by using block representation to read and spell non-words. The child is encouraged to employ metalinguistic knowledge to describe changes. Reading and spelling real words: Children learn to transfer the aforementioned foundation skills to simple/regular real words, which do not require specific spelling rules.

Components of therapy

simple words complex words multisyllabic words Each level consists of subsections of teaching, auditory analysis, decoding and encoding. Children progress from non-words to real words within each level, prior to commencing the next level. The design of the program ensures that the child is not exposed to more difficult tasks before acquiring the necessary skills at preceding levels. Level 1 (simple words): Simple syllables with structures up to a

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...

–

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...

–consonant (CVC) level. The focus of this level is the ability to decode and encode CVC syllables, before applying this skill in reading and spelling. This incorporates the learning of long and short vowels in addition to consonants. Words used at this level have consistent grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs). Level 2 (complex words): Consonant clusters are introduced, in addition to application of specific rules (e.g. borrower c and g, and Magic E). Level 3 (multisyllabic words): Specific teaching on how to break words up into syllables and the introduction of grammatical morphemes. This level builds on the previously learned abilities of segmenting and manipulating sounds by transferring these skills to syllables within multisyllabic words.

Materials/Training Required

The manual Coloured blocks, letter tiles Record sheets and file/folder Suitable reinforcement (stickers, stamps etc.) Therapy should be delivered by a suitably qualified

Alternative/Similar Interventions

Reading Freedom Remedial Reading Program (Calder, 1992) Sounds Abound. Listening, Rhyming & Reading (Catts, 1993) Auditory Discrimination in Depth (Lindamood and Lindamood, 1975) A Sound Way (Love and Reily, 1995)

References

{{Reflist Speech and language pathology