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Talk;EAL

Saturday stream 4 Session 09.00 - 11.10 Length 25 minutes

Enhancing phonological awareness in English, with the aid of a language lab, among learning disabled Hebrew speaking students, improved their phonological awareness in their L1 as well

Sylvie Rubinfeld

Kfar Yona 40300, Israel melel@netvision.net.il

Abstract

Recent research shows that certain learning disabilities are caused by phonological awareness deficits (Tallal, Goswami, Sparks, Genshow, Metsala). Phonological awareness can be improved by retraining the brain, working on the audio-phonetic cycle. Based on research I have created a therapeutic learning program for teaching English as a foreign language to speakers of Hebrew with learning disabilities, in a language lab. The method used systematically focuses the students' attention on the sounds of words, and teaches the full range of auditory processing and phonological awareness skills critical for reading success. I believe that: Reading begins with the ears, Reading becomes listening with the eyes Poor vocabulary, dysnomia, damaged short term memory, difficulty in keeping sequences, omission, distortion and substitution of letters are some of the characteristics learning disabled students suffer from. All these benefit from the program. The benefit is correlated to improvement in their mother tongue as well, which leads to self-confidence. A higher self-esteem is eventually gained by the process.