Title of Intervention: Speech Discrimination, Letter-Sound Correspondence, and Phonemic
Awareness (SP/LPA)
Purpose: Improving reading and phonological abilities in children with reading disabilities
through speech discrimination, letter-sound correspondence, and phonemic awareness
training.
Age/Grade level: Fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, reading disability
Format: Check all that apply
Individual
Small Group
Dyads
 Whole Class
** 17 – 18 students, one trainer
Materials Needed: Magnetic board, Magnetic letters
Frequency/Duration: 20, 20 minute sessions. Once a day, Monday through Friday for four
weeks
Intervention Script:
PART 1: Training in speech discrimination:
Step 1: Phoneme discrimination in syllables: The trainer orally presents a set of eight
syllables differing only in the initial phoneme (e.g., pe, te, le, me, se, te, me, le) including
a target syllable (e.g., me). The children are asked to raise their hands when they hear
the target syllable. Four sets of syllables and four target syllables are presented in this
task. In each set, the linguistic structure of the syllables could be CV, CVC, or CCV
Step 2: Word pair categorization: The aim of this task is to teach the discrimination of
consonant contrast in context of word pairs. There are four word pairs; two different
only in consonant (e.g., alba, alga), and two pairs identical (e.g., toga, toga). The
children hear a pair of words and give an oral response of same or different after each
trial.
Step 3: Phoneme discrimination in words: The trainer presents a set of five words of
which only one is different (bunny, bunny, bunny, funny, bunny). The children are then
asked to raise their hands when they heard the different word. After each trial, the
trainer gives feedback by saying the two words of the set, and the children repeat them.
There are three sets in this task. In each set, the two words differ only in one
consonant. The sets are presented in order from less to more difficult (e.g., set: 1/m/
contrasted with /g/; set 3 /p/ contrasted with /b/).
PART 2: Training in letter-sound correspondence and phonemic awareness:
Step 4: Letter-sound correspondence: A trainer first presents a consonant and vowel in
isolation and then a consonant-vowel combination on a magnetic board. The children
are asked to give the sound for each letter and each combination. The linguistic
structure of the combinations could be consonant-vowel (CV), vowel-consonant (CVC) or
consonant-consonant-vowel (CCV).
Step5: Phoneme identification: the children are presented with a magnetic lowercase
letter and asked to name the words that begin with this letter, then the trainer orally
presents six or seven words and for each word the children are asked if this word
contained the phoneme and where.
Step 6: Segmentation: The children are asked to pronounce all the phonemes of a word
presented orally by the trainer. As they pronounce each phoneme, the trainer gives
visual feedback for the phoneme by putting the corresponding letter on the magnetic
board. Seven words are presented in this task.
Step 7: Phoneme deletion: this task contains 13 words. In the first 6 words, the children
are required to delete the final phoneme and in the next 7 words to delete the initial
phoneme (e.g. “say cat, now say it again but do not say /k/”). After the child
pronounces each word in with the deleted phoneme the trainer gives feedback by
placing the word on the board and removing the deleted phoneme.
Step 8: Phoneme blending: In each session, one of the children is given a magnetic
board with a word containing the phoneme being trained, the child has to pronounce
each phoneme of this word, the other children guess the word being pronounced and
say it aloud, Visual feedback for each word is given by the child showing the word on the
magnetic board. There are seven words presented in this task.
Data Collection: Pre and post testing of phonemic awareness, speech perception, verbal
working memory, naming speed, phonological decoding, and word recognition using:
PCF test (phonemic awareness test): consisting of phonemic synthesis, phonemic
isolation, phonemic segmentation of words, and omission of phonemes from words.
EDAF test (assessment of auditory and phonological discrimination) two subtests only:
Phonological Discrimination Task and Syllabic Discrimination task.
Culture Fair Intelligence Test: a measure of g.
Rapid Automatized naming Test: assesses phonological reading in lexical access.
PROLEC: standardized reading skills test: Word Reading and Pseudo word reading
subtests only.
Verbal working memory: supplied by Siegel and Ryan (1989). Children heard sentences
with final word missing, children provided word and repeated all missing words for the
set (set sizes 2, 3,4, and 5 words)
References:
Del Rosario Ortiz Gonzalez, M., Garcia Espinel, A. I., Guzman Rosquete, R. (2002)
Remedial intervention for children with reading disabilities. Journal of Learning
Disabilities. 35(4), 334-342.
Complied By: Andrea L. Magalski
Procedures for Documenting Integrity: Weekly meeting of trainers to review integrity of
treatment and plan for the following sessions. Training consists of analysis and discussion of
sessions and role-plays of program tasks.