BACK CHAINING - Working Some Word Magic: A magical, top secret technique parents, teachers and tutors can use to help young and older readers pronounce difficult words.

by Willette Coleman ©2020

Here’s a magical, top secret technique or tool parents, teachers and tutors can use to help young and older readers pronounce difficult words.  As we all know, pronunciation is one of the central components to reading comprehension, noted in my previous three-part post How Parents and Grandparents can "Spark Joy" in Reading for Reluctant Readers. 

The magical tool is called “back-chaining” or “backward buildup,” and involves teaching a child or adult (or an adult teaching her or himself) how to say a word starting at the end of the word.  That is, starting with the last syllable of a word and working backwards to the beginning.    

This strategy in teaching oral language skills, especially difficult multi-syllabic or polysyllabic words, is used internationally.  Many English education experts believe back-chaining retains phonological structure better than front-chaining and that it makes natural stress easier for students.   

Although employed in other countries, back-chaining is considered top secret because most teachers, tutors and parents in the United States never heard of it. 

Until a world-traveling, multi-lingual, business associate and wonderful conversationalist told me about it (thanks Barbara), I’d never heard of back-chaining either.  Barbara shared this “secret” when I told her about my challenge with helping a second grader pronounce the word “botanist.”  The charming little boy, I’ll call him Little “T,” exhibited a strong affinity for  flowers, which I observed during a Project Based Learning (PBL) class - From Garden to Table - that I, along with other tutors, facilitated.  

After five-weeks of witnessing Little T’s flower drawing enthusiasm border obsession, I concluded he was a born botanist.  He reminded me of a young George Washington Carver.  The celebrated agricultural chemist, widely appreciated for his peanuts, soybean and sweet potatoes research, “devoted considerable time to painting flowers, plants, and landscapes” later in life.  Some images show Carver holding/inspecting a flower.  

Agricultural Chemist - George Washington Carver

We guided each student in making his/her own notebook in which they wrote guiding questions, facts and other information about vegetables’ origin, and used their imagination to draw their favorite vegetable.  Little T insisted on drawing flowers. All attempts to help him focus on vegetables were met with a sweet, tiny voice, “Okay,” and without looking up, remained focused on drawing another group of flowers.  Not wanting to thwart his enthusiasm and creativity, we relaxed and went with his flow.  His finished book contained ten pages filled with drawings of flowers including their roots - some colored in, some not.
   

Then we gave the students small, colorful pots, soil and seeds and guided them through the process of growing their own vegetables.  Unfortunately (or fortunately),  a packet of sunflower seeds were among the packets of vegetable seeds.  Small hands are very quick, and before we could blink, Little T had grabbed the packet of sunflower seeds.  At the time, we didn’t know that, technically, sunflowers are classified as a fruit, according to science.  Here’s a fun video that simplifies the classification differences between a fruit and vegetable.

After planting their seeds, the children ran into the classroom each day excited to see what was happening beneath the black soil.  Five days later, carrot, green bean, sugar snap peas and sunflower seedlings sprouted and flourished in the sunny classroom window under the children’s careful watering and love.  They measured the plants’ growth every day and noted the progress in their notebooks. 

When Little T gave me this picture he drew (below), I told he him could be a botanist.  I simplified the definition and segmented (forward chained/front to back), the word into its three syllables for him to repeat.  After numerous tries, he still struggled, which

Little T's black and white drawing of flowers and roots

brings us back to back-chaining.  Had I known, I would have started with the last syllable and proceeded to the beginning.  For example, instead of bo-ta-nist (forward), I would have divided the syllables like so:  nist-ta-bo (sounds like “bah”).

The procedure goes like this: 

• Parent, teacher or tutor pronounces the last syllable, “nist,” first; the child repeats;

• Parent, teacher or tutor continues working backwards and says the next syllable “ta”; child repeats;

• Parent, teacher or tutor blends ta and nist (as in tanist); child repeats;

• Parent, teacher or tutor says the last (actually first) syllable, “bo” (sounds like “bah”); child repeats; 

• Parent, teacher or tutor blends bo-ta-nist; child repeats.

• Parent, teacher or tutor says the entire word – botanist - and the child repeats. 

The exercise is done a minimum of three times.  Why three times (or more)?  According to NemoursReading BrightStart.org, “Repetition helps to improve speed, increases confidence, and strengthens the connections in the brain that help children learn.”  More assertively, Zig Ziglar declared:  “Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.”  

Had I known about back-chaining, I would have done a better job of building Little T’s confidence through a sense of accomplishment.  Hopefully, going forward, his parents and teachers recognize and encourage his natural talent, and, if he stays on track, maybe one day he’ll read Stefano Mancuso’s The Incredible Journey of Plants, get one of the college scholarships from Garden Club of America and thrive in a career as a botanist or agricultural scientist, or he could draw and paint stunning flowers as did George Washington Carver.

   

Adults also get frustrated when they come across difficult-to-pronounce words in prescription medications and some food, health and beauty ingredients, such as methylisothiazolinone.  Here’s an excellent video/YouTube that demonstrates how adults can use back-chaining to pronounce that polysyllabic word.

 As an effective tool or methodology that involves breaking down a particular task into steps, back-chaining is also used in learning tasks like training dogs to do tricks or change behavior, teaching a language, teaching children the proper way to wash their hands or tie their shoes, and in chess, teaching the closing moves first, proceeding to the middle, then to the beginning, as Jay Alden described in his book Back Chaining Teaching Task Performance.

Forward-chaining and back-chaining each have pros and cons, but clearly, back-chaining is an opportunity for parents, teachers and tutors to embrace an ELA (English Language Arts) teaching technique from a different – shall I say, backwards – perspective. 

So here’s to working some word magic – forward and backward.

Magic, Miracles & Blessings,
Willette

More Resources: 

Forward Chaining vs. Backward Chaining

Backward Chaining… A Fantastic “Trick” for Helping a Toddler Learn Multisyllabic Words

Back Chaining: The top secret teaching tool that is the key to professional success

FUNctional Phonology: A Language-Based Approach for Treating Speech Intelligibility Problems in Very Young Children