A MULTISENSORY APPROACH TO READING AND SPELLING

According to McIntyre and Pickering (1995), the multisensory approach is a model of language instruction which holds that learning or acquiring knowledge and skills in given subject areas is best facilitated by involving more than one of learners senses. For example, simultaneously tracing a letter made out of sandpaper and saying the letter's name is an example of the multisensory approach. The approach is also sequential in that instruction is organized in such a manner that students begin learning the easiest and most basic material and then progress to the more difficult material. In addition, McIntyre and Pickering point out that multisensory language instruction requires the direct teaching of all concepts with continuous student-teacher interaction. This interaction is one in which the teacher must be adept at both prescriptive and individualized teaching with a goal of having students to master the content.

McIntyre and Pickering (1995) further note that:

Multisensory, structured language programs include both synthetic and analytic instruction. Synthetic instruction presents the parts of the language and then teaches how the parts work together to form a whole. Analytic instruction presents the whole and teaches how this can be broken down into its component parts (p.1).

Finally, McIntyre and Pickering (1995) report that the multisensory approach can be used in almost every

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ion data were said to suggest that multisensory instruction increased both groups' phonemic awareness skills including rhyming, word perception, letter identification, sound/letter association, as well as blending and segmenting. O'Dea (1998) explored multisensory instruction with a sample of 23 high school students with learning disabilities. The multisensory program developed auditory-perceptual skills basic to self-correction in speech, spelling, and reading. This program emphasized the integration of sensory feedback from the eye, ear, and mouth to track the correspondence between the sound patterns of oral language and the alphabetical patterns of written language. Students were both pretested and posttested on spelling and reading and speech. After 18 weeks of instruction, findings showed that while spelling was not significantly improved, reading decoding and reading comprehension did significantly increase. Also, the students evidenced improved attitudes toward reading. O'Dea's (998) findings, while important for reading, do not support the use of multisensory instruction for spelling. And unfortunately some studies have found a similar lack of effect (see: Murphy, 1997). However, other studies have found some effects
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