DD not hearing the sounds in words. Any magic cure?

[LynetteScavo]

DD is 7 (summer birthday, Y3). She has "lots of dyslexic tendencies" and has intervention every day at school.

Her reading is coming on well, but her writing is still very poor. This seems to be because she just doesn't hear the sounds in words, so she can't even write them phonetically. Even familiar words, such as "from" she will write as "fom".

Her hearing is fine, but she talked late.

Is there anything at all out there that could help her with this?

What happens when you ask her to sound out words like cat?

We sang the phonics song when my daughter was two

Put a tick underneath each sound that she gets right. So, f o and m would have a small tick underneath them.

Then leave re-write the sounds, drawing a _ where the missing letter should be.

This time say the word in a very exaggerated way encouraging her to hear the sound that is missing.

When she identifies it get her to write the sound on the line.

Hope that helps!

Does she say "fom" or "from" when she speaks? DS used to say "d" instead of "th" in a lot of words (e.g. "de" instead of "the", "den" instead of "then") and only really started spelling them properly once we'd worked on his pronunciation - he didn't notice the sounds other people made in the same way as the sounds he made himself.

I asked her to sound out cat and she said c-a-t (the letter names)

I asked her to sound out from and she said f-r-o-m (the letter sounds) it was obviously harder, although she could do it this time.

She then started to show me what she had learned at school with the TA - so wrote "boy" and "toy" and "second". She then wrote "said" by sounding it out and wrote "sedau"

Try reading Dr Seuss to her. It all rhymes. You have to know some sounds to know what rhymes.

Some thoughts:

If she can say the word perfectly clearly get her to say it very slowly, this makes the 'sounds' easier to hear. Get her to think about the physical 'feel' that each sound has, too.

Get her to sound out and blend exactly what she has written; she may then be able to spot the sound she has missed.

If she sounds it out correctly from the spoken word, get her to write a line for each sound and then spell each sound on its line, saying the sound as she writes it. Then sound out and blend the word she has written to check it. (obviously, if there is an 'empty' line she's missed out a sound)

Does she use 'pure' sounds or does she tend to put an /uh/ on the end of a consonant? This may distort what she is writing as she's putting in the /uh/ as well (that would seem to me to be the explanation of 'sedau').

Lots of practice of sounding out from the spoken word (which you enunciate very clearly) should help her to develop better phonemic awareness.

(And what mameulah said, too...)

Has she had her hearing checked?

Yes, her hearing is fine.

But then her eyesight is fine when checked by an optician, but she has glasses and mint green overlay prescribed by a behavioral optometrist, (as well as tracking exercises) which have really helped her reading. If there was anything equivalent for her sounds it would be genius.

There are loads of equivalents for sounds:

FastForword
The Listening Program
Therapeutic Listening
Auditory Integration Training
Tomatis Method

To name a few......

Has she been checked for an auditory processing disorder (APD)? APD can affect the brain's ability to "hear" even when the ears' contribution to hearing is fine. There are different kinds of APD and some can lead to "dyslexic tendencies."

My DS 5 has this difficulty and it is part of his phonological processing difficulties which I understand can be part of dyslexia. He has difficulties with connecting the letters to their sounds and in particular 4 letter words that have 3 sounds. His speech therapist is looking into the listening programme for him.

Sorry, forgot about this thread.

How should I go about getting her checked for APD?
Having googled, I think this is what is going on, but not sure who can diagnose.

Get a box of buttons and let her physically put "sound buttons" on the written words while you say the sounds together

Reinforce the Letters and Sounds phoneme actions with her

Read with/to her a lot and pick one CVC word on each page for her to decode with you

Use foam letters in the bath for her to make and decode words like "duck" and "splash"

Give her incomplete words with a matching picture eg "ock" with a pic of a sock and get her to choose the sound she needs to add from a choice of three

Loads of praise and encouragement for managing to decode even simple CVC words, eve if she finds them easy

Thank you Greesleeves - I will give those a try.

I don't know what it is but my dd talks about her friend having a trumpet shaped device from her mouth to her ear. Her friend has no hearing problems - was just a bit slower to take to reading.

I don't know what it is but my dd talks about her friend having a trumpet shaped device from her mouth to her ear. Her friend has no hearing problems - was just a bit slower to take to reading.

I think that this is something to do with the fact that what you hear when you speak is not the same as what other people hear. Sometimes children find it hard to correlate what they are saying with what they hear when other people speak. The mouth to ear device helps the child to 'hear' not only the sound they hear 'internally' when they speak, but also the sound they produce 'externally', which they can then compare with the teacher's spoken sound.

I have an internet acquaintance on another forum who has done research into this; I think that I have interpreted the theory fairly correctly!

bdaonion, is it costing you a lot? I don't have £££ to spare atm.

I've found various websites with audiologists willing to diagnose, but it's what happens after diagnosis I need to know. How can I help a child with this problem? Or do all children with this problem need different help? There doesn't seem much info out there about it.

I was like this at school (and still am), I cannot properly distinguish the sounds - thankfully when I learnt to read/write there was no phonics required and I learnt through 'look and say' and essentially learnt spelling by rote. I'm an oxbridge graduate so it hasn't done me any harm My personal view is that phonics is overrated - it may work for some children but it does not work for all children and personally I would say look at alternative methods which don't require sounding out the words and see how your dd gets on with those.

I am interested to hear about the APD though as I wonder if that is what I have - my hearing was always fine on any tests but sounds (and music) have always been problems for me.

Even if a child is diagnosed with APD it is still advised that they are taught to recognise phonemes. Look for Dilys Treharne's (think I've got the name right) advice on the APD UK website.

My mother (a remedial teacher in Australia) has had a number of students who had very patchy hearing loss on audiograms - detailed ones required to show this I think, and I don't know how easily you can get them "properly" done in the UK. Patchy hearing loss affecting the frequency ranges critical for distinguishing certain consonant groups ... you can imagine they had a lot of difficulty with spelling! Teaching them with the knowledge that they find distinguishing those key sounds difficult, leads to more success because you know you have to fill in more for them to get it.