Buffalo Hearing & Speech Center hosting conference

Communication is the foundation of human interaction. Literacy, as a component of communication is a necessary life skill for child and adult alike.

Educational, social, and vocational success is influenced by an individual's literacy status. Our ability to read and communicate is a functional right that every child and adult is entitled to.

Buffalo Hearing & Speech Center will host the National Literacy Conference on Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 18 and 19 at 50 East North St., Buffalo.

The center's literacy program is founded on the belief that most often literacy problems are rooted in language discrepancies, and in order to read fluently with accurate comprehension, you need to have firm fundamental skills in several basic areas.

The program philosophy is that you must go "back to the basics" of several areas which compose "language literacy" in order to have age appropriate reading skills and be successful in the classroom.

These areas include: auditory processing, or what you do with what you hear (i.e. the ability to attend to and retain auditory information) phonological awareness, or the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate sounds of spoken language, as well as the ability to rhyme, and identify words, syllables, and sounds; phonics, or having a firm grasp of the letters and spellings which represent sounds in written language; and expressive (use of) and receptive (comprehension of) spoken and written language, including the use of vocabulary, grammar, and concepts. The program and curriculum that we have developed follows a hierarchical progression addressing the above skills.

The 2008 Literacy Seminar that the Center is presenting will expose participants to key concepts, curriculum areas and operation of the BHSC copyrighted, and highly successful, Language to Literacy Curriculum.

Written and presented by Speech and Language Pathologists, the seminar will focus on what is necessary to plan and offer a successful literacy intervention.

Call Lynn Scheuer at 885-8318 for information about the seminar and registration.

Visit www.askbhsc.org for additional information.