Word level

Word bank has less accurate phonological forms and less complex spelling patterns

• difficulty representing letter clusters, rime families, word structures
• takes longer to retrieve names and sounds of letters, clusters, words; slower naming speed (RAN) due to a difficulty activating a sound code for the written word (slower naming speed + average phonological awareness ---> impaired orthographic skill of immature phonological awareness deficit - 'double-deficit hypothesis of reading disability.
• do not develop the capacity to learn an orthographic code; ability to manipulate identified sounds rather than letter-sound links that causes problems.

• use distinctive visual features to read words
• convert each letter in a word to a sound and blend sounds.
• less able to make analogies between words.
• phonemic recoding; progressively recode and blend letter and sounds.
• less able to recognise letter clusters or digraphs in words; segment letter strings into letters or into inappropriate clusters although they may segment spoken words into onset and rime,
• less able to integrate letter segments; use letter by letter sounding strategies rather than letter group-sound matching
• difficulty learning the visual code - learning the visual symbol
• difficulty producing blends and multisyllabic words (articulation)
• difficulty phonologically recoding non-words

Sentence level

More tests

Short-term Visual Sequential Memory
(Teacher Record Sheet)

for Objects and Letters
(Stimulus pages)

• restricted, immature grammar, lower syntactic awareness, predicts later reading disabilities
• limited sentence propositions (how meanings are linked), punctuation, written sentence structure
• restricted verbal short-term working memory predicts reading; difficulty retaining verbal but not nonverbal information briefly, take longer to retrieve verbal information from long-term, name information memory more slowly, use memory strategies inefficiently, less likely to use rehearsal, elaboration, chunking.
• Reading improves auditory (but not visual) short-term memory.

They are less likely to use:

• a range of strategies such as visualising and paraphrasing, re-read, ask questions about the ideas, retelling
• text structure knowledge to generate expectations prior to reading and to organise text information while reading,
• generate questions to assist them to comprehend and remember the text read,
• elaborate and infer while reading or to summarise as readily.

Word versions: retelling and comprehension

Conceptual and topic levels

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Verbal Analogies

They are less likely to:

• use prior content or text structure when reading
• organise text data in working memory or
• infer or elaborate the information, summarise, or to anticipate ideas and words.
  They comprehend when cued to use advance organisers that stimulate their existing knowledge.

Self-management and control strategies
Students with reading disabilities are 'non strategic or passive' readers; they are less likely to direct and regulate the use of reading strategies, to:

• decide when and why to use each,
• evaluate its effectiveness in terms of some goal or purpose
• monitor our reading, initiate corrective action, decide when to re-read, self-correct, how they use what they know at each level, monitor how their reading is progressing, take further strategic action if necessary.
• review and self-question to see whether reading goals achieved, review or consolidate what they have read
• organise the information gained from reading to fit our purposes for reading
• believe they can learn to read (self efficacy)

Oral language knowledge Disabled readers may have difficulty

• at word level, learning how words are said ("crinimal" for 'criminal' ), less aware of sounds in words, remembering names of items, particularly RAN, poorer concept of word --> building a word bank, smaller expressive vocabularies, difficulty learning word meanings and a less developed network of word meanings (they use context but not as efficiently to induce the meanings of unfamiliar words).
• at sentence level, reading underachievers have difficulty understanding complex grammatical forms in oral comprehension
• at conceptual level, how ideas are linked into themes
• at topic or theme level, how a theme is communicated in a narrative, description
• at the pragmatic or dispositional level, how the social context affects how ideas are communicated, the attitudes and values of the writer towards the ideas in the text.

Experiential Knowledge;

• experiences, visual imagery knowledge
• action, motor knowledge
• knowledge of symbols

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