VRA Exam for Reading Specialists, Part 7

Question 1: Describe how a reading specialist should approach the education of an ESL student.

Answer 1: When preparing to teach a student who is learning English as a second language, a reading specialist must take into account the student’s primary language. The specialist needs to find out the similarities between the sound system of the primary language and the sound system of the English language. Through doing this, he or she can make a positive transfer between the two languages. If certain letters correspond to the same sounds in both languages, the specialist can use these similarities to make the student’s reading development much quicker and easier.

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Question 2: Briefly describe each stage of reading development.

Answer 2: The first stage of reading development is the prealphabetic stage. Children do not know that letters represent sounds in written words, but they do understand that written words carry messages. They may have an understanding of some familiar words, but the understanding of most words comes from the context of the words around them. The next stage in reading development is the early alphabetic stage. The approach to reading and spelling changes as students learn a crucial fact. They learn that letters make up the sounds in written words, also known as the alphabetic principle. As their knowledge grows, they begin to read and spell out words by “sounding out” parts of those words. During the later alphabetic reading and writing stage, children slowly begin to recognize all of the sounds within a word and match letters to those sounds. They are able to attempt sounding out complete words, although this can take a considerable amount of time. On the other hand, sight words can be picked up quickly if the students are exposed to them enough.

Question 3: Describe different types of phonemic awareness skills.

Answer 3: Phonemic awareness skills include the ability to count the phonemes in a word, separating a word into its phonemes, connecting phonemes to form a word, and substituting phonemes to create other words. It is important for a teacher to be able to count the phonemes in a word and relay that information to a student. For example, you should know that the word “rich” is composed of three phonemes—/r/i/ch/. By counting phonemes in a word, you should also be able to separate a word into individual phonemes—another skill. An additional phonemic awareness skill is the ability to blend separate phonemes to create a word. As an example, take the phonemes /b/r/a/n/ch/. When blended, these phonemes create the word “branch.” Finally, there is the ability to delete or substitute phonemes to create a different word. As an example, take the word “mat.” By removing the /m/ sound, you are left with the word “at.” You can also substitute a sound, such as /ch/ and form the word “chat.

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