Can fast readers catch up to those with specific reading disabilities who aud?

Colleagues interested in reading, auding, universal design, and/or technology and learning,

A little background

Some people with specific reading disabilities, for example dyslexia, use an efficient way to get meaning from text. It's called "auding"; using this strategy they get meaning from text that is read out loud to them. Some do this using audio books; some use text-to-speech on computers or portable digital devices such as smartphones,  tablets or e-readers. Some traditional readers might assume that this is fine for those who cannot read in traditional ways, but too slow for "good readers". Not necessarily.  Some who aud get meaning from text faster than you probably do when you read it in traditional ways. They have learned to accelerate the speed of the text being read out loud, whether by a person or by a computer, and they have learned to understand the words read at that rate. Of course, unless you have learned to do this, as they have, auding text at those speeds will sound like garble.

Questions to Consider

1. Do we need to explicitly include auding as part of what we mean by reading in adult literacy education? After all, a widely agreed-upon definition of reading is "getting meaning from text". Because there was no other way to do this until the past few decades, auding was neither specifically included nor excluded from the definition. It now depends on how we now choose to interpret it.

2. If auding needs to be explicitly included as a way to read, does this imply the need to allow reading test versions that are "aud-able" not just read in traditional ways? If so, should these be available to everybody, or only to those who have been assessed as having specific reading disabilities?

3. If those who have learned to aud quickly can read faster than those who don't, should we teach high-speed auding skills in schools and adult literacy programs both to those who have specific reading disabilities and those who don't?  Should we be using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles that with the same strategy or design feature meet the needs of those who have reading disabilities and that also benefit those who do not? (A widely-cited example of the benefits of UDL is curb cuts; originally designed for those who use wheelchairs, they also widely benefit those with strollers, and on bicycles and skateboards.)

4. If we should be teaching auding, should this be part of what we expect to teach in reading, digital literacy, or both?

Think this is far-fetched?  Read this article in today's Boston Globe ,"Audio enthusiasts move onto the fast track," about people, presumably without reading disabilities, who aud books and news stories at fast speeds!

I would be interested to hear your answers to any or all of the four questions I posed above.

David J. Rosen

Moderator, Technology and Learning CoP

djrosen123@gmail.com

 

Comments

Hi, David -

Thanks for sharing this with the Disabilities in Adult Education community.  I'm also curious what others think about this as a strategy to support comprehension of text.  I think it may be a useful resource for those with reading-based disabilities, like dyslexia.  I also wonder how the same idea may apply to those with auditory processing issues. Is it possible to also slow the rate of speech to the point where it still sounds natural, or at least comprehensible, but allow for more processing time?  Would that help learners with auditory processing issues?  I'm curious what others think as well.  

Best,

Mike 

I'd like to take it a step further.   I'd like to build in "auding" and practice and instruction in getting meaning from listening.   We teach comprehension from printed text, right?  (Well, actually lots of folks don't -- they give practice exercises and hope you figure it out...)    I know students who are reluctant to listen ... but it can be the make-or-break (pass or fail) strategy if they'll do it... 

     Anything available to folks officially stamped as having disabilities can be available to all... this is one that generally people don't run towards.   I have had a student or two ask if there's a way to hear the text before them the way they can hear stuff on their mobile devices... 

   I'm helping a student right now in math who probably is hiding a pretty significant reading issue (finding from a list where it said "Display the equation" was a challenge)... it would probably help him immensely if it were just routine to demonstrate setting up things so you could highlight and hear, as "a good app if you find it useful." 

David, you bring up excellent questions, which Mike and Susan have addressed eloquently and efficiently. Earlier in the year, in the Reading and Writing, and Diversity and Literacy groups, we had several comments relating to the benefits of oral reading, or "auding," as you refer to here, among adults. The approach has been widely advocated among younger kids, but it is also being promoted lately among adults. After all, auditory learners, disabled or not, benefit from hearing text. So "Yes," to all of your questions. In addition, if we learn what we teach, those who read to others would be learning, too. Let's advocate auding in Adult Ed! Leecy

I would like to jump in here briefly to mention that reading out loud for beginning ESL students is very helpful.  

My students are primarily Spanish speaking adults, and I "teach" them to read phonetically, starting with the alphabet and the numbers. In  a "live" class, I focus on difficult areas of pronunciation, such as the G/J, short i, V, short u, W, L vs R, Th..., and include practice on the silent e at the end of a word, and the elimination of the e with words that begin with S followed by a consonant.

All of these lessons are reinforced by going to Pumarosa where the students can hear the lessons pronounced slowly and clearly, and are encouraged to repeat the words out loud, copying my voice as well as they can.

A particular problem with learning how to read English is that probably half of the words are pronounced differently from the way they are spelled, so that in order to learn to read well, it is important to learn pronunciation first. In this case, dividing the words into phonetic groups is necessary; for example, ..gh... words.

During all classes, I  usually provide time for students to read lessons out loud from the workbooks, so that reading out loud becomes a normal activity in the class. The lyrics to songs are useful in this regard as well as poetry.

I think that in this way the students eventually become more comfortable with English and advance rather well.

Below is a study recently done that I think is pertinent to the discussion.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/may/reading-brain-phonics-052815.html

From the introduction:

"Beginning readers who focus on letter-sound relationships, or phonics, instead of trying to learn whole words, increase activity in the area of their brains best wired for reading, according to new Stanford research investigating how the brain responds to different types of reading instruction.

In other words, to develop reading skills, teaching students to sound out "C-A-T" sparks more optimal brain circuitry than instructing them to memorize the word "cat." And, the study found, these teaching-induced differences show up even on future encounters with the word."

 

 

I am a proponent of reading aloud and practice it in my Basic Skills reading class. When reading, we look for accurate decoding, fluency and vocabulary (word meaning), all which lead to comprehension. Oral expression and fluency in reading is as important as voice tone and inflection is to speaking. Reading serves many purposes. We read for pleasure, to do a job or task, to learn new information etc. In my opinion, reading is a luxury. The goal is to take in all of the nuances the author has put into the text in order to extract meaning; not to see how quickly one can get through it. When reading, speed may be important, but there still needs to be phrasing that is so important to comprehension. For example, on a timed test, one may "skim" in order to get through the passage and answer, if any, questions that may be a part of the reading assignment. Those individuals who need accommodations,scaffolding or other techniques which aid comprehension, should certainly use any process which helps them to comprehend text. However, I am unsure that everyone would benefit from the technological aids mentioned in the article from the Boston news report. 

Our colleague, adult education researcher Thomas Sticht, recently posted the informative comment below about auding on the AAACE-NLA discussion list. I thought it might be of interest as part of this discussion to share it with you.

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com

--------------------------------

Colleagues: On November 6, 2015 our aaace-nla founder, David Rosen, posted a message on some Lincs discussion lists about the role of auding in adult education and asked “Do we need to explicitly include auding as part of what we mean by reading in adult literacy education?” 

The word “auding” was coined by D. P. Brown,  a blind psychology graduate student at Stanford University in 1954  as a parallel word to “reading”.  David discusses digital  technologies for speeding up or slowing down recorded spoken messages, without introducing the “chipmunk” sounds that occur when simply playing a record at a faster speed than recorded,  as a tool for overcoming reading disabilities or for other learning by adult learners. This is an important discussion in which I have been involved for many years.

Before the advent of digital technologies, in 1965,  I worked with Dr. Emerson Foulke, a blind psychologist,  at the University of Louisville on the use of a mechanical technology for speeding up or slowing down audio recordings of spoken language, without “chipmunk” distortions, as a study tool for blind students. This was referred to by blind students as “reading by listening” (see Foulke & Sticht, 1969 for an early review of auding with rate-controlled recordings ).
 
Later, I conducted a number of studies on the use of time-compressed or expanded recorded speech as a means of developing both auding and reading skills with low literate young adults in the armed services (e.g., Sticht & Glasnapp, 1972).  In 1974, colleagues and I published a book entitled “Auding and Reading: A Developmental Model.”  This book includes an extensive review of literature on auding. The book is written in the context of  the need for developing language and reading abilities with lower literate adults, as David discusses in his Lincs posting,  and is available for free from ERIC online.
 
 In 1999, and again a decade later I presented workshops on listening (auding) and reading processes in adults in multiple locations in Canada. In these workshops I discussed much of the foregoing research and writing and in 2008 this and additional research, e.g.,  on assessing literacy by telephone, completed with colleagues in the mid-1990s, was  included in a report on listening (auding) and reading published in England (Sticht, 2008). This report called for teaching both speaking and auding (called “oracy” as a parallel term to “literacy” by Andrew Wilkinson in 1971 ) with native English speaking adults of limited education.
 
I find it significant that David has raised the importance of auding for both the learning of content as a substitute for reading in cases of those with learning disabilities, and as a means of learning and developing knowledge with less literate adults.  I will be watching to see if anyone picks-up on David’s interest in auding and reading and pursues this important line of inquiry further.
 
 References

Sticht, T. (2008). Listening, reading, and succeeding: A 40 year perspective. In: C. Hudson (Ed.). The sound and the silence: key perspectives on speaking  and listening and Skills for Life. SEMINARPAPER 1, Nottingham, England: Quality Improvement Agency (QIA) Publications.

Sticht, T., Beck, L., Hauke, R., Kleiman, G., and James, J. (1974).Auding and Reading: A Developmental Model. Alexandria, VA.: Human Resources Research Organization.
 
Sticht, T.G. and Glasnapp, D.R. (1972). Effects of speech rate, Selection difficulty, association strength and mental aptitude on learning by listening. Journal of Communication, 22, 174-188.

Foulke, E. and Sticht, T. (1969). A review of research on the intelligibility and comprehension of accelerated speech. Psychological Bulletin, 72, 50-62.

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