"The brain has to build phonemic awareness, but does so as a result of hearing a sufficiently large number of words a sufficiently large number of times."
that may happen with most of us, but it hasn't happened with my student.
(He has a diagnosis of 'special education' - I don't know the details.)
He is 23 years old - the words that he knows aurally, he has heard probably thousands of times, he comes from a high-middle-income family which talks a lot, watches educational TV, talks among themselves, etc.
So just hearing these words has not translated into being able to read them.
He has a great vocabulary, he is very smart, most of the words that he cannot read, he knows them once he hears them.
So I have to teach him to be able to sound a word in his head - when he is reading - so that he will recognize the word in print. Once he can "hear" the word he is reading, he can recognize it.
At least that is my theory.
If you have another approach I'd love to hear it.
This is what I do:
eg
cognition.
I break it into cog-ni-tion.
do this enough times, he sees "tion" and knows it sounds like shun,
since we've done many "tion" words. same for the other 2 syllables.
Even when knowing each syllable , sometimes putting all 3 sounds together is difficult for him.
If there is another way to teach him to read, besides teaching him to sound the word out - I am all ears.
thanks!
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