Jj is for Jottings 137. Auditory Processing Disorders.
Following on from auditory skills and developing auditory processing skills, we now turn our attention to auditory processing disorders. There are so many conflicting ideas in the literature as to exactly what constitutes auditory skills. One could really become bogged down by this and therefore any resulting disorders. There is even disagreement as to whether it should be “auditory processing disorders” or “central auditory processing disorders.” I’ve decided to go with the thinking that “central” implies problems only at the brain level and consequently limits the definition.
Auditory processing disorders – attempting to prevent them is a good policy.
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Jj is for Jottings 136. Developing Auditory Processing Skills.
Following on from the article on auditory skills, we turn to the topic of developing auditory processing skills. An article on communication milestones from 12 months to 5 years can be found here. But now we will explore the development of auditory processing skills in a little more detail.
One general way of developing auditory processing skills is to read to your children.
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Jj is for Jottings 130. Auditory Skills.
Auditory skills underpin the development of speech, language and literacy. Therefore it is vitally important to be aware of these skills and, wherever possible, assist our children to develop them.
WHAT ARE AUDITORY SKILLS?
Auditory skills include the following: Continue reading
Jj is for Jottings 101. Vowel Shapes.
When I say “vowel shapes”, I am referring to the shape made by the mouth when saying a particular vowel. We have talked earlier about discriminating between vowels and vowel discrimination activities, but I didn’t mention vowel shapes because we were talking about auditory discrimination. The visual aspects were not necessary in that context.
VOWEL SHAPES ARE NOT SET IN CONCRETE.
In point of fact, there are no hard and fast vowel shapes, but there are general trends which are useful to know about. Continue reading
Jj is for Jottings 84. Vowel Discrimination Activities.
Vowel Discrimination Activity 3. Identifying /i/ and /e/.
As promised in the previous article, here are some vowel discrimination activities to help your child to hear the difference between vowel sounds, in particular the tricky pairs of a/u and i/e. At the same time these activities reinforce the sound-letter links for the vowels. After all, it’s not much use for reading and spelling if you can hear the difference between them but don’t know which letter belongs to the sound. Continue reading
Jj is for Jottings 83. Auditory Discrimination of Vowel Sounds.
Droofus, the bearded dragon, is not practising auditory discrimination of vowel sounds – she’s looking at April shaking off all the dust in “Aa is for Alpacas”.
Auditory discrimination of vowel sounds, especially some short vowels, can be quite difficult for some children. Very common confusions are between /a/ and /u/; and between /i/ and /e/. When you consider that there is only one short vowel sound left – /o/ – that’s quite some confusion going on! Of course, not all children confuse both pairs, many just confuse one pair or the other. Continue reading