Phonemic Awareness and Symbol Imagery

Indicators of weak phonemic awareness and /or symbol imagery would include:

• Poor decoding
• Poor spelling
• Poor contextual fluency
• Weak sight word base
• Poor reading comprehension
• May be labeled with a reading discorder

An individual struggling with weak phonemic awareness/symbol imagery may present with the following signs:

• Presents with a difficulty in learning the sound to symbol correlation in younger years, such as kindergarten and first grade.
• Looks at the first letter of a word and guesses the rest. For example, sees frost and says friend
• Does not track sounds within words correctly. For example, sees fist and says first, or sees sign and says sing
• Spells phonetically. For example, enuf for enough or spells function as “funkshun” or leaves out sounds and does not self correct. For example, spells agitate as “agibate” or spells dress as “drs”
• Presents with reading errors where sounds are omitted or changed. For example, reading pupil for purple or reading sweet for street
• Does not remember words that he/she just learned from a previous sentence.
• Reads very slowly, trying to sound out each individual word.
• Reading comprehension falls drastically below that of oral comprehension.
• Writing samples show the use of words far below that of his/her vocabulary ability, because the spelling of more simplistic words is much easier.

Identify the cause and apply the appropriate instruction

The sensory cognitive functions phonemic awareness and symbol imagery are responsible for an individual's ability to auditorily perceive and visually image the identity, number and sequence of sounds and letters within words. Very often, this is the underlying cause of one's weakness in word attack, word recognition, contextual reading fluency, as well as spelling.

When struggling with this weakness, a student will receive auditory cues, but may not effectively process this information at the central level. The difficulty of holding sequences of sounds and letters in visual memory contributes to an inability to automatically self-correct reading and spelling errors. This type of sensory-cognitive weakness is highly correlated with literacy disorders, including dyslexia and weakness in contextual reading fluency.

Instruction with the Lindamood-Bell LiPS®* and Seeing Stars®* programs include Socratic questioning to stimulate sensory information related to reading, both isolated words as well as contextual text, and spelling. In a systematic, structured manner, instruction moves through a progression of tasks, starting with isolated phoneme/graphemes to simple and complex single syllables, affixes, multi-syllabic words, orthographic expectancies, and contextual integration. When the auditory modality is supported and augmented by the visual and motor modalities to a sufficient degree, we have seen changes in the way the brain processes stimuli, and the student is better able to provide the sensory feedback and integration as a spontaneous function.

With intensive, daily instruction, studies show there are physiological changes in the way the brain responds to contextual stimulation, producing a more fluid and effective reader. The goal is to produce a reader who is automatically able to manifest self-generating, self-correcting reading and spelling skills, enabling one to feel success and pride in his or her reading ability.

*London Achievement Processes is NOT Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes® nor is it affiliated with, certified, endorsed, licensed, monitored or sponsored by Lindamood-Bell, Nanci Bell, Phyllis Lindamood or Pat Lindamood.  Lindamood-Bell-an international organization creating and implementing unique instructional methods and programs for quality intervention to advance language and literacy skills-in no way endorses or monitors the services provided by London Achievement Processes.