Orthographic Facilitation – Incorporating Research Into Speech-Language Therapy

Looking for an easy way to incorporate research-based practices into your speech-language therapy sessions?

 

Try orthographic facilitation!

Orthographic facilitation “describes the phenomenon in which a spoken word is produced more accurately when its corresponding written word is present during learning.”  (Baron et. al., 2018)

Zhang et. al. (2023) found that students with lower and higher reading abilities all benefit from “the presence of spellings of complex words to remember word meanings and spellings.”

We also know that it is important to provide multiple exposures to new vocabulary words to facilitate learning – about 36 exposures for students with developmental language disorders.  (Storkel et, al., 2019)

Some practical ways to incorporate these both into therapy:

• When introducing new vocabulary, make sure to provide a written version of the word for students to view, along with the definition.  You could have the students write the new words themselves with their favorite color marker, and/or make a small notebook with new words that they write out themselves.
• When you encounter the new vocabulary in books, make sure to draw attention to them.  You can underline the words (if you own the book) or use removable highlighter tape to spotlight the target words.
• Create a “word wall” in your therapy space to store words different students are working on.  This doesn’t have to be fancy – you could write them on a dry erase board or use index cards on a magnetic board.

What other ideas do you have to incorporate these into therapy?  Leave a comment below!