Project Leader: Insiya Bhalloo

Project Description: Teachers help to prepare future readers by exploring sounds present in words. This is called phonological awareness and includes the building blocks needed to 'decode' words in preparation for reading. This means understanding that the word 'sun' is made up of three sounds s-u-n. It is also the ability to remove the /k/ sound from ’crow’ , which results in ’row’. While many language and reading assessment tools are available in English, there are comparatively limited tools in heritage languages commonly spoken by Canadian children, including Urdu. These tools are very important, especially to clinicians, as bilingual children need to be assessed in both of their spoken languages in order to have a clear idea of language development. This project developed an Urdu phonological awareness tool to assess Urdu- English bilingual children both across Canada and in a number of other countries where Urdu is spoken.

Are you a speech-language pathologist or educator working with Urdu-speaking monolingual and/or bilingual children?

You can access our free-for-use Urdu phonological awareness tool by contacting Insiya Bhalloo directly (insiya.bhalloo@mail.utoronto.ca) or filling out this form.