The PAL introduces identification, segmentation, blending, and manipulation of speech sounds in syllables. It does not encourage reading using the whole-word approach, but instead teaches children to break written words up into individual graphemes and matching letters with their corresponding phonemes before reassembling the phonemes back into words to read. [2]
Key skills taught
Developing an awareness of linguistic terms: Checks a child's understanding of literacy terminology used and teaches the child how to talk about language (metalinguistic skills).
Sound–symbol association: Determines a child's knowledge of how letters and sounds correspond, and there can be several representations of each sound.
Block representation of consonant or vowel sequences: This component facilitates the child's ability to segment words into individual phonemes through developing auditory analysis skills. A single block represents an individual sound, and a row of blocks represent a string of sounds; so that the number of blocks directly correlates to the number of sounds in the sequence.
Block representation of syllables: Once the child understands that syllables consist of sounds, they then have to count the number of sounds, the order and distinguish between phonetic features. N.B. all block representation tasks deal only with non-words; this is to prevent the child from using pre-learned spelling patterns to respond to the tasks.
Reading and spelling non-words: This builds on previously learnt skills by using block representation to read and spell non-words. The child is encouraged to employ metalinguistic knowledge to describe changes.
Reading and spelling real words: Children learn to transfer the aforementioned foundation skills to simple/regular real words, which do not require specific spelling rules.
Components of therapy
Each level consists of subsections of teaching, auditory analysis, decoding and encoding. Children progress from non-words to real words within each level, prior to commencing the next level. The design of the program ensures that the child is not exposed to more difficult tasks before acquiring the necessary skills at preceding levels.
Level 1 - Simple words
The focus of this level is to provide the ability to decode and encode CVC syllables, before applying this skill in reading and spelling. This incorporates the learning of long and short vowels in addition to consonants. Words used at this level have consistent grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs).
Level 2 - Complex words
Consonant clusters are introduced, in addition to application of specific rules. This includes the introduction of the soft C, the soft G, and the silent E, which may change its preceding vowel into its "long" vowel sound.
Level 3 - Multisyllabic words
This level builds on the previously learned abilities of segmenting and manipulating sounds by transferring these skills to syllables within multisyllabic words. It also provides specific teaching on how to break words up into syllables and the introduction of grammatical morphemes.
