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Keeping the issue of literacy on the front burner
A conversation with Dr. Ron Goldman
By Laura Kuhn

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Dr. Ron Goldman

In the United States one out of five school-age children suffers from reading failures. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, poor reading and writing skills can have a devastating impact, as shown by high rates of reading problems in high school dropouts and young adults with criminal records.

Addressing the issue of literacy

Finding ways to improve literacy has captured the attention of educators and policymakers, alike, for the last few years. Speech-language pathologists have also addressed this challenge. In 1999, ASHA's Ad Hoc Committee on Reading and Written Language Disorders adopted a significant position. They recommended that speech-language pathologists play a critical and direct role in the development of literacy in children and youth who have communication disorders.

A steadfast advocate

Dr. Ron Goldman, author and professor emeritus from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has been a literacy advocate in the Speech-Language profession for many years. Strongly committed to the issue, Dr. Goldman reflected on how far the profession has come.

"It wasn't so many years ago when speech-language pathologists weren't even talking about their role in literacy. Many of them avoided it and were afraid to get involved. They didn't understand the nature of their experience in dealing with literacy. We forgot how knowledgeable we were in the area of language and we let other specialists deal with it."

Identifying the speech-language pathologist's role in literacy

That changed, said Dr. Goldman, especially after ASHA published its guidelines on literacy. "However," he added, "speech-language pathologists are still uncomfortable with getting involved and not sure of how to insert themselves in that role."

Dr. Goldman has been working to address this problem. He continues to speak on the topic of "The Speech-Language Pathologist's Role in Literacy." His next presentations will be held in Kentucky and Mississippi.

In these discussions, Dr. Goldman promotes the need for the speech-language pathologist to have a relationship with the school system. "We can input by being an adjunct to both the teacher and the reading specialist. The school setting is an ideal vehicle for that. Our ultimate goal is to get the teacher, reading specialist, and speech-language pathologist working as a team. It's also important to make sure parents are involved." All in all, Dr. Goldman believes speech-language pathologists have the expertise and experience, and should be more fully utilized in addressing reading skill problems in our schools.

Phonics makes a comeback

Dr. Goldman spoke about Sounds & Symbols to this lucky class.

Dr. Goldman remembers, "Back in the 1970's, Martha Lynch, and I were convinced that one of the best ways of teaching articulation was through the process of reading. That's when we developed the Goldman-Lynch Sounds & Symbols Development Kit, which used the visual modality as a major technique for teaching articulation. We discovered that if you could get very young children into a strong phonics program as an introduction to reading, their articulation skills improved dramatically. Although, we didn't focus on the gains that took place in reading initially, we couldn't help but notice a significant improvement."

Dr. Goldman noted that phonics has traditionally been an area of controversy. "Phonics was like a fashion coming in and out each year. There were periods of time when the whole-word approach dominated."

Times changed, however. Now the Department of Education and the National Reading Association recommend phonics training as integral to literacy. "Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading," states that phonics instruction improves children's ability to identify words. The report recommends that phonics be taught early and kept simple.

"It's no longer a question of whether or not a child should be taught phonics. The issue is how phonics should be taught," said Dr. Goldman. He continued, "Studies have demonstrated that speech sound awareness, letter knowledge, and phonics are indispensable components of early reading instruction."

The benefits of an early reading program

Dr. Goldman and AGS Publishing friends at the 2003 ASHA Convention

When Dr. Goldman presents on the topic of literacy, he explains how early reading programs can be a vital part of the language training and remedial process.

For example, many speech-language pathologists and classroom teachers throughout the nation currently use the updated version of the Goldman-Lynch kit, Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program. It addresses the five building blocks of early reading development as outlined in Reading First and Early Reading First: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Text Comprehension.

"Sounds & Symbols is a highly structured program that provides a format of how you can teach reading and articulation skills at the same time. So if you are dealing with a population of children who have speech-language disorders, this is a specific program for tying these skills together," he said.

Through his work, Dr. Goldman has seen the development of spoken language provide the foundation for reading and writing. As frequently cited in the literature, children who have problems with spoken language often tend to be the same ones who have difficulty with reading and writing. "Sounds & Symbols teaches children to recognize individual sounds and pair them with their grapheme counterparts. The program not only teaches how to discriminate them, but how to blend them together to make words and sentences." In addition, Sounds & Symbols encourages parent involvement and carryover of skills with fun, take-home worksheets.

Dr. Goldman explained that a program based on sound research alone is not always enough. "With Sounds & Symbols, our goal was to develop an engaging vehicle of speech improvement that would also provide phonic training and phonic awareness. At the same time we made sure that it was interesting and entertaining for young children." In the program stories and the High Hat puppet bring sounds and symbols to life.

The literacy pioneer knows his audience well.