09/23/2024
Why Do So Many Children, Teens, and Adults Have Reading Problems?
The Answer is Complicated–and It’s Important to Understand Why
The reading field operates on two fundamental assumptions with the potential to negatively effect reading development. These are:
“Reading experts” actively tell teachers that they must explicitly tell students what they need to do to read. This places virtually all emphasis on what a teacher tells children to do (a.k.a., explicit instruction), NOT a student’s output and developing performance. This idea ignores the reality that every complex thing humans learn to “do” (e.g., crawl, walk, talk, ride a bike, play an instrument, perform a sport, etc.) requires active and on-going implicit experimentation on the part of the learner. In essence, all “how to” things must be “figured out” individually.
Teachers are also told that the main event of reading must be identifying individual words, one phoneme and whole word at a time, every word in sequence. This is problematic because the human brain is equipped with far more efficient brain systems that, by design, are fully capable of using STRATEGIC INFORMATION to quickly and efficiently anticipate both language and meaning! The brain can use strategic information (the idea that “less is more”) rather than literal information (EVERY individual letter in EVERY word on the page) to anticipate both the language and meaning that authors intend to convey. Learning to read through strategic information and the brain’s naturally-occurring anticipatory systems GUARANTEES comprehension because the focus, from the beginning, is accurately recreating a mean-filled message.
We know with certainty that “reading experts’ ” assumptions are wrong because Read Right methodology has been transforming struggling readers into excellent readers for 40 years without ever asking students to decode a single word. “Decoding” is the fundamental skill associated with phonemes and “synthetic phonics instruction” now taught in schools for both early reading development AND reading remediation. Teachers are told they must deliver this instruction year after year, at every grade level for early reading development (K – 3), as well as reading intervention (Grades 2 – 12). For 170 years, the approach has NEVER WORKED to reliably and systematically improve reading ability. Ironically, failure of the approach has convinced the reading field that dyslexia must be COMMON (no, it’s not) and some individuals will be destined to be dyslexic (not true for most individuals with reading problems).
We encourage you to explore our website to learn more. Better yet, CONTACT US. We’re here because we KNOW that most reading problems can be successfully remediated. AND, because we know that there is a better way to teach children to read from the beginning that will prevent reading problems from forming.
Call 360-427-9440 today to learn more or visit www.readright.com
