A “speech-to-print” approach is about encoding words (Moats, 2000 and Moats, 2005). To turn a word children already know how to say into a word that they can construct with letters requires their brain’s speech center to separate each sound as they say the word and then link that sound to a letter. They are driving in the opposite direction on their neural highway. Decoding traffic (print-to-speech) is from the back to the front of the brain–linking a visual symbol to a speech sound. (Visual stimuli are processed in the back of the brain; speech production occurs in the front). By contrast, encoding traffic (speech-to-print) is from the front to the back—linking a speech sound to a visual symbol.
With lots of practice, this two-way traffic for decoding and encoding builds super neural highways that speed up processing for word recognition and skilled reading and writing. However, when children are told what a word is without decoding it themselves, or are told how to spell a word without “sounding it out” themselves, they are deprived of this necessary practice. Unless a word is truly “irregular”, early literacy instruction should forego “sight words” and spelling lists, and instead encourage both decoding and encoding in equal measure (Weiser & Mathes, 2011; Weiser, 2012).
Summer offers a chance for families and schools to introduce software that can make a significant difference for students trying to consolidate or enhance what they’ve learned about reading and writing through the long summer months. Many children are not getting adequate practice with phoneme awareness and phonics, and writing and spelling, and that is why students are having such difficulty with reading nationwide. Our evidence-based software, READ, WRITE & TYPE is a good way to ENRICH and ENHANCE what children learn during the school year by putting it into their summer fun. Watch out! You may not be able to pull them away once they get started. And they are learning to type at the same time they are learning to sound-out and spell hundreds of words, phrases and sentences.