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Q: I am a Reading Specialist working in the Title 1 program at an Intermediate Center. I have been trained in Lindamood-Bell, Wilson, Reading Recovery, Orton-Gillingham, and guided reading. I take the best of these programs to work with my students. How does your program compare with these programs? Is it just a phonemic approach or do you work on comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary too? Am looking forward to learning more about this program and the possibility of a reading center.
A: First, I would like to congratulate you for selecting the best of all the other methods. As you have apparently discovered, each one of them neglects large segments of crucial skills. You may also have discovered that each of them has many exercises and drills that either delay or inhibit the actual process of learning to read. Our method is not based on any other method. It is the result of several years of intensive research, development and testing. It omits all the extraneous, nonproductive activities that are contained in other methods, while teaching students how to attack every word they may encounter.
The process of learning to read can be broken down into many segments, but the very first step, as you already know, is to learn how to decode words. Without that ability, reading is a very difficult process. We have streamlined and simplified the process. The only method other than learning word-attack skills is to try to memorize every word as someone pronounces it for you. Although some people can manage to do that, most can memorize only a few hundred or at best a few thousand words. The process of decoding words as naturally as possible lays the foundation for all the other steps in reading, as you mentioned, comprehension, vocabulary development and fluency. In our very first lesson, every student—even those with learning disabilities—will learn to decode at least 300 words.
When students learn the proper methodology for meeting new words, our experience has shown, along with other research such as that of Sally Shaywitz* of Harvard University, that the brain begins to process incoming data in a smooth, natural, logical manner. Almost without exception, students who learn to read with our method experience little or no difficulty with comprehension. Of course, we have specific techniques for teaching comprehension after students have learned proper word-attack skills, but poor comprehension is not usually a problem once students have completed the course. Fluency can be mastered easily after the first steps are mastered. While we do not focus primarily on vocabulary development, it is a built-in option if teachers wish to use it. Vocabulary development per se, albeit important, is a completely independent field from learning reading skills.
Most of our students gain from two to six years in reading skills after only 30 to 60 hours, and we only hear from them occasionally or not at all after they leave here. Some have kept in touch for years, and have become almost like family to us. Of course, some students with severe neurological handicaps may require years of tutoring. We currently have two students who have been coming for seven years, and will need help until they graduate from college. They can read well, but need help in other areas.
Six year-old Ian came to us about a year and a half ago. He had three dossiers from different testing agencies, all of which had concluded that he was destined to be a lifelong non-reader. Ian finished here last May reading sixth grade material with fluency, expression and comprehension of 80 to 100 percent on standardized tests. His word-attack skills tested at 10.7 (10th grade, seventh month). He spent over 100 hours here. He still has some learning disabilities, but reading is not one of them.
Our method doesn’t cure learning disabilities, but our experience shows that it helps the brain to learn to use undamaged areas that bypass the defective areas.
If you have a question for Cliff Ponder, President of Academic Associates Learning Centers®, you can email or just give him a call. 800.550.9194 or academic1@verison.net
For training and others concerns contact Richard Rayl, Director, at 800.861.9196 or academic@kcnet.com
*Sally Shaywitz, M.D., is the author of Overcoming Dyslexia, and is not affiliated with the Academic Associates Learning Centers
The Academic Associates Reading Program complies with current research. |
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