ACQ Vol 11 no 2 2009

Literacy

My top 10 resources Adult literacy Karen Smith-Lock

birthday cards and notes. We need to be able to assess this. For normative data for the Cinderella story, readers are referred to: • Smith-Lock, K.M., Mortensen, L., & Nickels, L. (In press). Story writing skills of adults with a history language- impairment. Reading and Writing . • Mortensen, L., Smith-Lock, K.M., & Nickels, L. (In press). Text structure and patterns of cohesion in narrative texts written by adults with a history of language impairment. Reading and Writing . Both are available online from Online First, www. springerlink.com/content/0922-4777. 4 Rosner Test of Auditory Analysis Rosner, J. (1979). Test of auditory analysis (TAAS). In Helping children overcome learning difficulties: A step-by-step guide for parents and teachers (pp. 77–80). New York: Academic Therapy; www.academictherapy.com This test itself might not be particularly useful for diagnosis in adults, as there are 13 items, and the norms only to go year 3, but it uses a great technique: the say XY, now say it again, but don’t say X technique. I find this extremely useful in helping clients identify the sounds in words, particularly the vowel. I often ask a client, as a first strategy in spelling a word, to identify the vowel (then I ask if it’s short or long, then I ask them the ways they know to spell short and long vowels). The task of identifying the vowel is often difficult. Clients are usually successful after I ask them to progressively remove sounds. For example, for pit , I would say “Say pit .” [pit]. “Now say it again, but don’t say p .” [it]. “Now say it again, but don’t say t .” [i]. “There’s the vowel, ready to be spelled!” 5 Duplo (Lego) blocks While these may be considered childish, it all depends on how you present them. These aren’t for playing with, they are for representing sounds. I use them to help my clients segment words into their component sounds, and to identify consonants and vowels. I use different colours for vowels and consonants to highlight the vowel/consonant structure of the syllable. This is important for figuring out the vowel sound (i.e., VC means vowel is short [e.g., at ], CV or VCe means that the vowel is long [e.g., me , ate ]). We move one block for each sound of the word, while saying the word aloud. We can also add and remove blocks, as we manipulate words by adding and removing sounds. 6 COKO Phonic Learning Bricks: lower case, vowel sounds, digraphs These Phonic Learning Bricks are like Duplo blocks, but with letters on them. They can be used on their own, or in conjunction with the plain coloured Duplo blocks to map letters to sounds. I only use ones that have one block related to one sound (or in the lower case set, the blocks are half the size of the Duplo, so, for example, the t and h can stack on one Duplo block for th ). This is important to reinforce the relationship between sounds and letters. Even with adults,

I work as a clinician in private practice in Perth, WA and as a researcher at Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS) at Macquarie University. Both my research and clinical practice focus on developmental oral and written language impairments in children and adults. My top 10 resources for adult literacy are very similar to those I would use for childhood literacy, as the same information generally needs to be covered, usually with the same techniques. It’s really just a twist in presentation and a respectful consideration of what the adult brings to the learning task. 1 Gallistel-Ellis Test of Coding Skills This is my favourite test! It does not provide age or grade- based norms; it simply tests a person’s ability to read and spell single words of various spelling patterns. Especially with adults, the assessment question is not if they have a problem (they come to us saying that they do), but what is their problem? This test is an excellent tool for identifying exactly what a person understands about the writing system and what he/she doesn’t. It is a great basis for planning treatment. It covers: 1) closed syllables, both with single consonants and consonant combinations; 2) vowel- r syllables; 3) silent- e syllable words and multisyllabic words; 4) words with simple endings, such as s , ed , ing , and y ; 5) words with soft c and g , tch and dge ; 6) words with cle and common suffixes ( tion , ture ) as endings. The test is available from Montage Press; montagepress@ibi-usa.com 2 Megawords Assessment of Decoding and Encoding Skills: A Criterion- Referenced Test This test complements the Gallistel-Ellis Test of Coding Skills by looking at multisyllabic words in detail – so often a problem in older children and adults. Finally there is something that breaks down the factors involved in reading and writing multisyllabic words! This test identifies specific skills that have been learned and those that have not. Skills tested include: syllable division of two-syllable words; common prefixes and suffixes, schwa sound, vowel variations, consonant variations, unaccented vowels, and assimilated prefixes, all in multisyllabic words. Available from: Educators Publishing Service; www.epsbooks.com 3 Cinderella story and/or cookie theft picture Both the Cinderella story and the cookie theft picture are very useful for collecting a writing sample, so critical with adult clients. Often, these clients perform adequately on basic tasks, but tell us they are having difficulty. A writing sample can flush out spelling problems and grammatical difficulties (e.g., morphological errors, reduced complexity in syntax, tense shifting, vague pronominal reference), and can also show text organisation, cohesion and narrative structure. In addition, connected text is a very functional task. Many adults with reading and writing difficulties are very worried about their ability to write even casual things like

Karen Smith-Lock

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ACQ Volume 11, Number 2 2009

ACQ uiring knowledge in speech, language and hearing