What is a defining feature of the cycles approach (Hodson & Paden)?

• A. Remediation of targeted patterns during specific time periods; designed for highly unintelligible children
• B. Immediate mastery of all targets
• C. Focus on reading tasks
• D. Uses only maximal oppositions

Answer: (A)

The cycles approach centers on remediation of phonological error patterns, not isolated sounds, and does this within fixed, time-limited cycles. For children who are highly unintelligible and have multiple patterns across their speech, you select several common error patterns and work on them intensively for a set period, then rotate to new patterns in subsequent cycles. The goal isn’t instant mastery of every target in one go; it’s reducing the use of the chosen patterns and promoting generalization across contexts over several cycles. This method isn’t specifically about reading tasks or about using only maximal oppositions.