What Comes Next?

Auditory Discrimination

Research indicates that phonemic awareness is the most important skill needed for literacy. Phonemic awareness is the ability to process individual speech sounds. A vital phonemic awareness skill is auditory discrimination as it allows us to tell the difference between words and sounds. Auditory discrimination plays an important role in both a child’s language and reading skill development. Trouble with auditory discrimination can pose challenges to young readers.

Auditory Working Memory

Children need the ability to remember what they have heard immediately, or store for recall later. Auditory memory is the ability to take in spoken information, retain it and recall it.

Working memory plays an important role in concentrating and following instructions.

Auditory Discrimination- Words in Sentences

Research indicates that phonemic awareness is the most important skill needed for literacy. Phonemic awareness is the ability to process individual speech sounds. A vital phonemic awareness skill is auditory discrimination as it allows us to tell the difference between words and sounds. Auditory discrimination plays an important role in both a child’s language and reading skill development. Trouble with auditory discrimination can pose challenges to young readers

Verbalising & Visualising

Visualising and verbalising is a strategy created by Nanci Bell, an expert in the treatment of language and literacy disorders. It teaches children comprehension and language processing to build pictures in their minds as they listen, and later, as they read. Creating mental images when reading can greatly assist comprehension. Proficient readers create visual images while they read.

Visualisation also helps with remembering things. Once children have seen an image, it makes it a lot easier for them to recall it later. Further, when they draw it, it becomes ingrained in their minds.

There are three steps to visualising:

1. Imagining. Close your eyes and think about what I am saying. Think about colours, shapes, sizes, characters, where it is happening, and what the characters are doing.
2. Visualising. Draw what you saw in your head when you imagined the words.
3. Verbalising. Explain (or answer questions about) what you imagined and visualised from the words I said.