Visual learners learn through seeing. These learners need to see the teacher’s body language and facial expression to fully understand the content of a lesson. These students tend to prefer sitting at the front of the classroom to avoid visual obstructions. They frequently think in pictures and learn best from visual displays including diagrams, illustrated textbooks, overhead transparencies, videos, and handouts. During a lecture, visual learners prefer to either take detailed notes to absorb the information or receive a printed copy of the instructor’s lecture notes.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Early Phonics Instruction Leads To Better Reading
Research conducted by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NICHD) reinforces that systematic and early instruction in phonics leads to better reading. This is because knowledge of sound-symbol relationships aids in the development of word recognition. Word recognition increases fluency since less effort must be applied to decoding. When less effort is applied to decoding, more attention may be applied to extracting meaning from print through heightened concept imagery, the ability to image basic concepts and visualize the gestalt from what is read or heard. This ability underlies oral and written language comprehension, problem solving, and critical thinking. Individuals with well developed concept imagery create imaged gestalts or holistic mental representations in their minds and, consequently, are able to process the “big picture” from which to reason, resolve problems, and think critically. They can perform higher order thinking skills such as understanding the main idea, making inferences, drawing conclusions, predicting, problem-solving, and performing other reasoning tasks. Conversely, lack of English code-breaking skills translates into the creation of a disability in basic reading skills.
What Is Phonemic Awareness?
Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and visually image the number, order, and identity of sounds and letters within words. These abilities underlie accurate word attack, word recognition, reading fluency, and spelling. Prior to learning to read, it is necessary for a child to understand that words are composed of strings of speech sounds called phonemes. Children who have phonemic awareness skills are likely to have an easier time learning to read and spell than children who have few or none of these skills. Weakness in these functions causes individuals to add, omit, substitute, and reverse sounds and letters within words while reading and spelling.
What Are Phonemes and Graphemes?
Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word. For example, the word, at, has two sounds or phonemes, / ă / / t /. The word, dog, has three phonemes, / d / / ŏ / / g /. The word, box, has four phonemes, / b / / ŏ / / k / / s /. As evidenced by the word, box, phonemes are completely separate entities from the symbols that we call letters of the alphabet, or graphemes. A grapheme is the smallest part of written language that represents a phoneme in the spelling of a word. A grapheme may be just one letter, such as “t” or “d” or several letters, such as “aw” or “eigh”. Graphemes represent the phonemes in written language.
What Is Tactile-Kinesthetic Processing?
Tactile-kinesthetic ability refers to motor movements, and there are two classes: tactile or fine motor (speech production, handwriting, typing) and kinesthetic or gross motor (running, athletics). Motor memory is a very powerful tool. Physical activities such as riding a bicycle remain in active memory, once the skill has been acquired, despite the time lapse that occurs between rides. Therefore, the movements of the hand while writing and of the speech organs and vocal tract during phoneme or word production provide a crucial pathway of the learning process. The area of the language brain that controls the vocal tract is called Broca’s Area.
What Is Auditory Processing?
As visual processing ability referred to word recognition and recall of words after the image has been received by the eyes, auditory processing ability refers to what happens to impulses of sound in the brain after the ears have received them. You will recall that sound is processed into understandable words in an area of the temporal lobe of the dominant hemisphere called Wernicke’s area. The level of functioning of Wernicke’s area directly impacts the auditory recognition and recall of words. Those students who have a high level of activity in Wernicke’s area have good auditory processing ability. Those who have low levels of activity in this region struggle with the verbal skills associated with spoken words and ideas. These students have difficulty remembering what was said (following oral directions), are highly susceptible to distracting noises, and find it extremely difficult to master foreign languages. As with visual imagery and word recognition and recall, auditory processing ability is independent of intelligence. Further, longitudinal research demonstrates that six out of ten people with visual processing difficulties also have auditory processing deficits.
Auditory processing includes:
- hearing differences between sounds
- replicating a particular sound
- remembering general sound patterns
- segmenting words into individual sounds
- blending parts of words together
- rhyming
Students with an auditory deficit usually have most difficulty with reading, writing, and both expressive and receptive language.
What Is Visual Processing?
The visual pathway is the most important pathway involved with the acquisition of written language skills; however, when discussing visual processing ability, the actual process of seeing is not the issue. Acquisition of a visual image in the “mind’s eye” is believed to be determined by the level of functioning of the angular gyrus, an area in the left hemisphere of the brain, the hemisphere that serves as the language hemisphere for ninety percent of the human population. The angular gyrus sits on the junction of the temporal lobe and the parietal lobe. It is located directly behind Wernicke’s area (See post, “What Is Auditory Processing?”), the language center of the brain that is responsible for processing sound into understandable words. The level of functioning of the angular gyrus directly impacts the recognition and recall of words. Those students who have a high level of angular gyrus activity have good visual memory. Those who have low levels of angular gyrus activity struggle with reading, spelling, and composition. These students have poor visual imagery and pronounced word recognition difficulty. Those toward the lower end of the spectrum, approximately fifteen to twenty percent of the world’s population, can be described as dyslexic with a specific visual processing difficulty.
Visual processing includes:
- seeing differences between things
- remembering visual details
- filling in missing parts in pictures
- remembering general characteristics
- visual-motor coordination
- visualization and imagination
- organization of a room, desk, binder, etc.
Students with a visual processing deficit often experience most learning difficulty in the areas of reading, spelling, and math because they have trouble visualizing words, letters, symbols, etc.
Visual imagery and word recognition ability have no direct correlation to a student’s intelligence. Cultural icons such as Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein had visual imagery and word recognition skills toward the lowest end of the spectrum. In fact, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein were both dyslexics.
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