---
title: "Investigating literacy teachers' linguistic knowledge"
author: "Dominik Lukes (Dyslexia Action), Daniel Gooch (IoE)"
outline_version: 2
auto_title_slide: false
auto_thanks_slide: false
---

## Investigating literacy teachers' linguistic knowledge
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**Dominik Lukes, Dyslexia Action**

**Daniel Gooch, IoE**

## Outline
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## Slide 3
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- Linguistic underpinnings of literacy
- Teacher knowledge
- Phonics vs phonology
- ILearnRW needs

## Slide 4
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> “Why do teachers need to know about the Structure of Language?”
>
> — Townend and Walker, 2006


## Slide 5
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_“those who were most comfortable with the course content were those who already had some knowledge of language structure.”_

## Slide 6
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> “Good teachers should be made uncomfortable by their first encounter with the social and structural complexity of language.“
>
> — Lukes, 2010


## Which reading skills do you teach most often?
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## Slide 8
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- “Syllable division”
- “Vowels”
- “Understanding unfamiliar words from context”
- “Finding patterns in words”
- “Dividing words into base and suffixes”

## How do you teach syllables?
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## Slide 10
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- “Wooden letters”
- “Cards - physically move things around”
- “Highlight things with pens”
- “Marking consonants and vowels in the text”
- “How many beats are there in that word”

## Slide 11
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- “Cumulative small steps building on each other”
- “Play games, particularly when a child is starting to struggle/get bored”

## What’s missing?
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## Slide 13
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- Pronunciation dictionary
- Phonics vs linguistics
- Corpus
- Dialect variation

## Syllable division knowledge
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## Phonic vs. phonological needs for syllable division
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|  | hospital / SWW | hospitable / WSWW |
|---|---|---|
| *Phonics* | hos / pit / al | hos / pit / a / ble |
| *CEPD* | hos / pi / tal | hos / pit / a / ble |
| *LDP* | hosp / it / al | ho / spit / ab / le |
| *Onset maximization before phonotatic constraints* | ~~ho~~ / spi / tal | ho / ~~spi~~ / ta / ble |

## Phonic vs. phonological needs for syllable division
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|  | kitten / SW | spelling / SW |
|---|---|---|
| *Phonics* | kit / ten | spel / ling |
| *CEPD* | kitt / en | spell / ing |
| *LDP* | kitt / en | spell / ing |
| *Onset maximization before phonotatic constraints* | ~~ki~~ / tten | ~~spe~~ / lling |

## MRC Psycholinguistic Database
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![Screenshot of a spreadsheet from the MRC Psycholinguistic Database: rows of English words from INHERITOR to INITIATIVE, each with a slash-separated phonemic transcription and a second phonetic transcription, with flag letters (S, B) in the first columns.](assets/media/img-46cf3f822332a631.png)

## Teacher knowledge of syllable division does not match linguistic analysis or needs of machine readable representation
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## Slide 19
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![The iLearnRW project logo: the word “ilearn” in blue with “RW” in red above a curved line of stars.](assets/media/img-e8c5129a3bbb3330.png)

## How do you tell the game where the boundary is?
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![Screenshot of a spelling game, “Split the suffix from the word below”: the word “Helpful” on a wooden plank with a division mark, a “Correct words” panel showing “Hopeful”, a cartoon figure in a white karate uniform with a black belt, “Round 1”, a star with “2”, and the score “2/10”.](assets/media/img-5e91723b181b191b.png)

## How do you tell a reader which syllables are open?
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![Screenshot of a text on a Samsung e-reader screen with a toolbar (My library, Bookmark, Search, Outlines) and a passage beginning “The train stopped in the station and all the cats got off”, with some words highlighted in cyan and yellow.](assets/media/img-80275fe6e05bdb45.png)

## How do you analyze text and find instances of < ay > = / eɪ / as in day, way
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![Screenshot of the iLearnRW Demo Application: a text pane on the left, a grid of coloured cells (green, yellow, orange and red) beside it, a “Problem Title: Vowel sounds” panel listing words with the problem, and a table of text properties below.](assets/media/img-bc4f2f80be78bcd4.png)

## Slide 23
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- **balloon**
- 2 syllables: bal[short, closed] loon [long, closed]
- adding rule
- noun, verb
- b & l oo n 5 phonemes, 7 letters
- stress loon
- possible misspellings: baloon, balun, balloonning
- possible confusions:
- inflectional forms: balloons [noun, verb], ballooning [verb, noun], ballooned [verb]
- derivational forms: balloonist
- example sentences
- ways of teaching difficulties
- Pedagogic knowledge: relative position in a learning programme
- Linguistic awareness: frequency (typicality) and relevance to individual student

## iLearnRW Internal Dictionary
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![Screenshot of a spreadsheet of the iLearnRW internal dictionary: rows of phoneme strings, suffix rules (SUFFIX_NONE, SUFFIX_ADD, SUFFIX_DROP), word forms such as “hor, hors, horse, horses” and phonetic transcriptions.](assets/media/img-c2ba8fc79203a1cb.png)

## Teacher decision tree
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![Diagram of the teacher decision tree in five steps. Step 1: choose a difficulty to work on. Step 2: choose a game activity. Step 3: choose additional words to complete the activity. Step 4: choose the proportion of words selected from the list of tricky words. Step 5: observe the student performance before designing the next activity, with a speed (slow) and precision (accurate) bar chart.](assets/media/img-32269b20806b9eca.png)

## Conclusion
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## Much of teachers’ knowledge is implicit and cannot be directly relied on for expert advice outside the classroom.
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## Teachers’ linguistic knowledge has to be represented through proxies and interaction patterns rather than algorithmically.
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## Teachers and non-teachers would benefit from tools that would support their access to the analysis of language.
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