Shawna Pope-Jefferson, MS/CCC-SLP, provides individualized language and literacy intervention through Language and Literacy Solutions. She works with students and adults who struggle with reading, spelling, written language, dyslexia, and complex language-learning profiles.
Her work is grounded in Structured Word Inquiry, an approach that helps learners understand how English spelling works through meaning, morphology, etymology, and phonology.
Online Language and Literacy Intervention
Rather than asking students to guess at words or rely on “sounding out” as the primary strategy, Shawna teaches clients to investigate words and understand the structure of the English writing system.
Her intervention is individualized, inquiry-based, and responsive to each learner’s needs. Sessions focus on helping clients understand why words are spelled the way they are, how words are related, and how meaning, structure, history, and pronunciation work together in English spelling.
Who Shawna Works With
Shawna’s clients have included learners with dyslexia, autism, apraxia, traumatic brain injury, intellectual disability, CVA, Klinefelter’s Syndrome, language processing disorder, and mixed receptive/expressive language disorder.
Because Structured Word Inquiry is flexible and intellectually rich, Shawna is able to adapt intervention to each learner’s unique needs, interests, and language profile.
Shawna’s Background and Qualifications
Before moving into private practice, Shawna worked at Southern Illinois University Carbondale as a senior lecturer and graduate supervisor. During that time, she encountered undergraduate students who were still struggling with language and literacy skills, which led her to ask how students could complete years of schooling without mastering reading and spelling.
That question shaped the next stage of her professional work.
After leaving SIU-C, Shawna focused more directly on literacy intervention. She studied various approaches, including Orton-Gillingham and phonics-based methods, but found that they did not adequately explain the writing system or meet the needs of many struggling readers and spellers.
She eventually discovered Real Spelling and began a deeper study of the English writing system. Real Spelling is the same source from which Dr. Peter Bowers developed his original understanding before creating the framework for word study he would later call Structured Word Inquiry.
How Structured Word Inquiry Sessions Work
Through Structured Word Inquiry, Shawna’s sessions become collaborative investigations into how words work. Students learn to use tools such as word sums and matrices to study spelling, meaning, and word families. They are treated as thinkers, not guessers.
This approach allows students to study real words in meaningful contexts while developing a clearer understanding of the English writing system.
A Different Way to Understand Reading and Spelling
Many of the students Shawna works with have experienced years of frustration or failure. Her goal is to help clients understand written language in a way that is explicit, logical, and personally meaningful.
Structured Word Inquiry gives learners a way to make sense of English spelling, build confidence, and develop stronger reading and spelling skills through the structure of the language itself.
Schedule a Consultation
To learn whether Structured Word Inquiry intervention is a good fit for your child, student, or client, contact Language and Literacy Solutions to schedule a consultation.