Students experience reading failure for many reasons. Some may have learning disabilities. Other students are learning English as a second language, while some do not succeed with the sight-reading method. Boys often have more difficulty learning to read by conventional methods. The Academic Associates method has simplified the process of learning to read. With this […]
Some blame the teachers when students fail, while others blame the home environment of failing readers. Assigning blame, however, will not help anyone to learn to read. In fact, struggling readers come from every type of home background. Rudolf Flesch, the author of Why Johnny Can’t Read, noticed that one of his sons was unable to […]
Reading comprehension is a common problem. A child reads the words correctly, but misses the meaning of the passage he read. He is unable to answer questions about it correctly on his homework, or summarize the meaning. He lacks comprehension. A problem with reading comprehension can indicate an issue with decoding or word recognition skills. […]
No, it’s not just our imagination; here is more solid evidence regarding phonics instruction. A recent comprehensive study confirmed the effectiveness of phonetic reading instruction. The results were published on an educational website, www.bestevidence.org, of Johns Hopkins University School of Education. The conclusions included data from a total of 96 studies in all, which compared […]
Turns out that babies need to hear talking and listen to stories as infants from birth onward, according to an excellent article by Jane Brody. Here’s a link to the piece she wrote for the New York Times on the importance of talking to and reading to babies from their earliest age, and the difference […]
As their reading skills improve, children feel more confident and find more joy from reading. Naturally when an activity is a positive experience, we enjoy it more. When children dislike reading, there is usually one simple reason– they can’t read. They can’t decode enough of the text for it to make sense. If they are […]
Javier* wanted to improve his English. He had studied English in his native Mexico, both in high school and college, and he had taken an English as a Second Language class in the US. His aim was to improve his fluency and pronunciation. Though he had completed his ESL course, his instructor said his English […]
Every child can read. That is why every child must be taught to read. A student who hasn’t mastered the basics of reading will continue to lag behind the class. In fact the problems will compound with each year of school. Joey* was not able to keep up with his assignments in the parochial school […]
Some proponents of sight reading argue that English is not a phonetic language, so phonics isn’t a proper method for reading instruction. As proof they point to some of the many spelling and pronunciation inconsistencies that abound in English. While there certainly are irregular words and other anomalies, on the whole English is more phonetic […]
If there is any natural method of teaching reading, it flows from speech. The sounds that we speak and hear are represented by the letters of the alphabet, which are then combined to form written words. In the conventional method of teaching reading, after learning the alphabet, students memorize words from flash cards or text. […]
