Goh Tze Chee - Group A

Topic: Case study 1


Area of intervention
It is stated in the case study that Annie tends to bite her classmates, and is extremely shy and withdrawn especially when she is teased by her friends over her facial deformities. She also has speech impairment and communication difficulties. The area of intervention I would be working on would be speech impairment as I feel that the above problem behaviour shown by Annie are a result of her inability to express her thoughts and emotions verbally, thus resulting in her expressing her feelings in the form of actions (in this case, violence).

The intervention
The journal is targeted at promoting reading in students with speech impairments as a result of a physical disability. It was mentioned in the journal that three students with severe physical and speech impairments took part in a study where the Nonverbal Reading Approach (Heller, Fredrick, & Diggs, 1999; Heller, Fredrick, Tumlin, & Brineman, 2002 as cited in Heller, Wolff & Coleman-Martin, 2007) was used. The Nonverbal Reading Approach places focus on subvocal rehearsal, where students are taught to decode unfamiliar words and evaluated systematically on their ability to read words. It can be used together with phonic-based reading curriculum to assist students with physical speech and physical impairments. Students are encouraged to pronounce words slowly with the teacher regardless of their speech clarity. Students are then taught a decoding process by first using internal speech to vocalize the syllables, followed by bringing the sounds together without pausing, while the teacher pronounces the word aloud, and lastly bringing the sounds together quickly while the teacher pronounces the word aloud again. Additional instruction can be provided by the teacher after the students pronounce the words.

Effectiveness
The study (Heller et al., 2002) examined the effectiveness of using the Nonverbal Reading Approach to teach students to decode words, and their ability to apply the decoding skills to words they do not know which have similar phonemic sequences. The results show that the participants were able to learn the targeted words, and were either able to decode a set of unknown words with similar phonemic sequences or learn new words at a fast pace with minimal additional instruction.

Personal Evaluation
Personally, I feel unsure whether Annie will benefit from this intervention, as the study did not mention the age group of the students. However, if the user of the Nonverbal Reading Approach is familiar with it, I feel that it can be adapted such that young children with speech impairments can benefit from the approach as well. In Annie’s case, I feel that the Nonverbal Reading Approach might benefit her if it was used to introduce expressive vocabulary such that Annie would have the ability to express her feelings.

Suggestions for adjustments
I think that picture cards can be used in conjunction with the Nonverbal Reading Approach such that when Annie has difficulty pronouncing the words, she can make use of the cards to express how she feels. Also, the Nonverbal Reading Approach might be taught in the form of songs to make it easier for Annie to link the syllables of words together.

Reference
Heller, K. W., & Coleman-Martin, M. B. (2007). Strategies for promoting literacy for students who have physical disabilities. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 69(4), 28.2 Retrieved from Expanded Academic ASAP database.