Strategies to Support Word Decoding

Clients with problems in phonological processing deficits will likely have issues with word decoding and will require explicit instruction in phonetics. When children have phonetic errors this can compound reading difficulties because they begin to lear errors. Ideally, client’s need error-free learning (with mistakes corrected immediately, followed by practice of the correct response).

To support clients in their word decoding skills you may want:

  • Encourage the client’s parents and teachers to emphasize building the client’s phonological processing skills, specifically by focusing on blending and segmenting word syllables.
  • Encourage the client to practice breaking down and blending words into individual syllables. There are books available that focus on teaching common syllable patterns to readers.
    • Road to Reading: A Program for Preventing and Remediating Reading Difficulties (Benita Blachman & Darlene Tangel, 2008, Paul H Brookes Publishing Co.)
  • Encourage the client to engage in active decoding of words rather than guessing.
  • Encourage the client to verbalize their skills when reading to help with memory of individual and blended sounds and to improve learning and long-term retention.
  • Encourage the client to engage in paired reading or neural impress method (NIM: reading the same text slightly behind an expert reader).  Demonstrations of NIM can be found on YouTube.
  • When the client is reading aloud, do not interrupt when a decoding error is made. Rather, let the reader finish the sentence, then encourage him/her to consider whether it made sense, look for the error and use context clues to think of a more appropriate word.
  • Encourage the client’s teachers and parents to engage them in fun activities and games at school and at home. There are many computer games that focus on building phonological and phonemic awareness and are free to access on reading websites. For example:
  • Reading material that includes many sight words may help increase automaticity. 
  • Encourage the client to use their ability to recognize gestalts, such as word stems (prefixes and suffixes), root words, and word families.
    • They can be drilled on increasingly long multisyllabic words with a stress on instant recognition. This can be done through the use of flashcards of words from a personal dictionary or word list.
  • Teaching high-frequency words and spelling-based decoding strategies may also be helpful.
  • Emphasize patterns in word families and spelling patterns (e.g., television; telescope). 
  • Teach the students word families to help them simplify the task of reading new words. Use two colours of ink so that they can see the differences visually (tan, ban, can, fan etc,; lid, hid, rid, sid, etc.). Have them say the words and then ask “Same or different?”.
  • Emphasize writing and reading activities simultaneously. The visualization needed for writing and spelling can help to reinforce aa sight vocabulary for reading.

Phonetics

Your client may require specific teaching of phonemic skills, including the ability to assemble sound patterns into whole words and to dissemble sound patterns into letters when reading, spelling, and writing. Their phonetic errors compound the problem because they begin to learn the errors.

A solid phonetic-skill program should include:

■ Letter-sound matching (m = “mmm”; b = “b”; build speed and fluency), using “keywords” that he/she can associate the sound with (e.g., “a” as in “ant”; “i” as in “igloo”; “e” as in “egg”; “o” as in “ox” – “u” as in “us”)

■ Letter-pattern matching (igh = “I”; er = “ur”; le = “l”; wh = “wh”)

■ Phonetic rules (“e” at the end of words is a silent letter and makes the previous vowel say its own name: “hop” becomes “hope”)

■ Sound-blending skills (c-a-t => cat; build speed and fluency)

■ Sound-analysis skills (breaking words down for spelling and reading)

■ Syllabication (un-der-ground)

■ Identifying root words (backpack = back + pack; history = his + story)

■ Increase spelling and reading practice

Your client would benefit from explicit teaching of meaningful phonics rules. For the rules to be overlearned, they must be extensively reviewed and practiced.

The following are some of the most common:

■ Every word must contain a vowel. The vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and y (y is a consonant when at the beginning of a word). Eg: A, me, sit, no, up, my.

■ When a one-syllable word ends in a consonant and has only one vowel, that vowel is short. Eg: mat, red, fish, sock, rug.

■ When a syllable ends in a silent “e,” the vowel that comes before the silent “e” is long. Eg: lake, gene, kite, rope, use.

■ When w is before “or”, the “or” says “er”. (work, word, – but not sword)

■ Qu are always together. Eg: queen, quarrel, quick, quiet

■ When “g” is followed by “e, i, or y,” it usually has the soft sound of “j.” Eg: gem, gym

■ When “c” is followed by “e, i, or y,” it usually has the soft sound of “s.” Eg: city, cent, cyber

■ When a syllable ends in a vowel and is the only vowel, that vowel is usually long. Eg: “la/ter, me, I, o/pen, u/nique, my”.

■ When 2 consonants join together and form one new sound, they are called ‘consonant digraphs’. They count as one sound. Eg: “ch, sh, th, ph, wh”.

■ When a syllable has 2 vowels together, the first vowel is usually long and the second is silent. Eg: “rain, meat, coat, res/cue, day,” NOTE: Diphthongs don’t follow this rule.

  • Since many words in the English language do not follow phonetic rules and patterns, students will need to build a sight vocabulary for common words and non-phonetic words.
    • This could be done using flashcards, which would help the students to rely on nonverbal abilities.
    • This should not begin until they are able to identify all of the letters and their associated sounds.
  • Continue to work on building your client’s understanding of phoneme-grapheme correspondence (i.e., sound-letter correspondences).