totally boring language comprehension geekery time!
Taking a small break from writing ficbits and coughing my lungs out to talk about my job!
At work, we sort of subdivide language comprehension issues into three equal and overlapping compartments: Word Attack, Word Recognition, and Reading in Context, the idea being that when you get all three of these working together, you get understanding. A student who's got either or both of the first two marked is probably on the dyslexic end of the spectrum; the third marked points to the hyperlexic/autistic end.
Word Attack (WA) refers to the ability to look at a cluster of letters and make phonological sense of them, even if they don't make a known word. If I held up a card with the word spreft, a student with a high word attack score could look at it, decode the six sounds, and tell me that it sounds like the first half of spring and the end of left put together. A student with a low score might tell me speft or sprift, or might squint and sound out each letter individually.
Word Recognition (WR) is the ability to look at a cluster of letters and grab them instantly as a word you know. It's how we get along in a language that isn't strictly phonetic -- you learn words on sight so that you're not flummoxed every time you see laugh or colonel or does, trying to sound out a word that you'll never get phonetically, no matter how hard you try. A student with a low score is also likely to read doesn't for don't and what for want, grabbing only a few letters at a glance and guessing for the rest.
Reading in Context (RIC) is the ability to understand what those words you've just read mean. The sentence the cat is on the chair is meaningless unless you can both understand what all the individual words mean and how they work together. A student with a low score may create a mental picture of a cat, or a chair, or even both, but have trouble picturing both in relation to one another -- or even if they can, won't be able to summon the words to get them back out again; students will low scores will say 'thing' and 'stuff' a lot, and will give 'big' as their one-word description of just about anything.
A student with high WR and low WA has developed a functional sight-word reading vocabulary, but will have a devil of a time improving it past the basics. A student with high WA and low WR will sound out everything. A student with high WA/WR and low RIC will read you the front of the New York Times flawlessly and have no idea what they just read. And a student with low scores in all three can't recognise words, can't sound them out, and wouldn't understand them even if s/he did. Half of the kids the company sees (I don't have statistics on just our center) are just WA/WR; the other half is broken up pretty evenly between WA/WR with secondary RIC focus, RIC with secondary WA/WR focus, and just RIC.
My own WA is prone to occasional failure, leaving me with some great misreads. I remember a time when I was little and there was a poster that advertised LOW COST PET VACCINATIONS in the window of our grocery store -- only every time I read it, my eyes grabbed LOST COW PET VACCINATIONS. Of course, because my WR and RIC scores are very high, my brain could take those words in, render a judgement of that can't be right!, and convince me to look again more slowly so I could find the real meaning. Most of my kids couldn't get past the LOST COW misread -- and that's why I've got my work cut out for me.
At work, we sort of subdivide language comprehension issues into three equal and overlapping compartments: Word Attack, Word Recognition, and Reading in Context, the idea being that when you get all three of these working together, you get understanding. A student who's got either or both of the first two marked is probably on the dyslexic end of the spectrum; the third marked points to the hyperlexic/autistic end.
Word Attack (WA) refers to the ability to look at a cluster of letters and make phonological sense of them, even if they don't make a known word. If I held up a card with the word spreft, a student with a high word attack score could look at it, decode the six sounds, and tell me that it sounds like the first half of spring and the end of left put together. A student with a low score might tell me speft or sprift, or might squint and sound out each letter individually.
Word Recognition (WR) is the ability to look at a cluster of letters and grab them instantly as a word you know. It's how we get along in a language that isn't strictly phonetic -- you learn words on sight so that you're not flummoxed every time you see laugh or colonel or does, trying to sound out a word that you'll never get phonetically, no matter how hard you try. A student with a low score is also likely to read doesn't for don't and what for want, grabbing only a few letters at a glance and guessing for the rest.
Reading in Context (RIC) is the ability to understand what those words you've just read mean. The sentence the cat is on the chair is meaningless unless you can both understand what all the individual words mean and how they work together. A student with a low score may create a mental picture of a cat, or a chair, or even both, but have trouble picturing both in relation to one another -- or even if they can, won't be able to summon the words to get them back out again; students will low scores will say 'thing' and 'stuff' a lot, and will give 'big' as their one-word description of just about anything.
A student with high WR and low WA has developed a functional sight-word reading vocabulary, but will have a devil of a time improving it past the basics. A student with high WA and low WR will sound out everything. A student with high WA/WR and low RIC will read you the front of the New York Times flawlessly and have no idea what they just read. And a student with low scores in all three can't recognise words, can't sound them out, and wouldn't understand them even if s/he did. Half of the kids the company sees (I don't have statistics on just our center) are just WA/WR; the other half is broken up pretty evenly between WA/WR with secondary RIC focus, RIC with secondary WA/WR focus, and just RIC.
My own WA is prone to occasional failure, leaving me with some great misreads. I remember a time when I was little and there was a poster that advertised LOW COST PET VACCINATIONS in the window of our grocery store -- only every time I read it, my eyes grabbed LOST COW PET VACCINATIONS. Of course, because my WR and RIC scores are very high, my brain could take those words in, render a judgement of that can't be right!, and convince me to look again more slowly so I could find the real meaning. Most of my kids couldn't get past the LOST COW misread -- and that's why I've got my work cut out for me.