Reading Comprehension

1. Reading comprehension - making sense and meaning of written characters & words
2. Dyslexic differences -  a different way of processing and learning
3. Present school approach does not work for dyslexics
4. Phoneme training does not work for dyslexics
5. Rote memorization ... a misleading crutch at best
6. Multi-Sensory education is needed for teaching children with dyslexia
   
   

Reading Comprehension -Making Sense and Recognize Meaning of Written Characters & Words

If the multi-sensory student cannot experience letters and their related sounds meaningfully through his senses, they make no sense to him. He cannot comprehend them because they provide no sensory meaning to him.

LD Coach has found that Most learning disabilities associated with dyslexia result from the inability of an individual to find significance, meaning and understanding for 2-dimensional written charactersand words. 

The dyslexic child starts as a motivated student and does his best to learn. However, when unable to “make sense” and meaning out of what he is being taught, he may develop many educational and behavioral diversions to avoid the pain of not being successful. For this reason, dyslexia can look like a vision problem, a hearing problem, and/or a behavioral problem.

Dyslexic Differences - A Different Way of Processing and Learning

The dyslexic student often does not seem to be able to “see” or “write” the letters of words correctly, and does not seem to be able to blend the sounds of individual letters into words.  It is not a pathological problem; it is a different way of processing the input of sensory information than used by the majority of children.  This difference in learning style requires multi-sensory teaching tools that make use of its inherent attributes and skills of the dyslexic student.

The Present School Approach Does Not Work for Dyslexics

Most school systems approach learning to read through phoneme education (i.e., making the sounds of letters and letter combinations in words). This method does not fit the learning style of the dyslexic who is a multi-sensory learner. 

The dyslexic is often predominantly a global thinker who processes sensory information as a gestalt, or whole picture.

 

The dyslexic uses the composite of the experiences of all his senses, primarily his 3-dimensional sense of vision, when thinking and reading. 

When the dyslexic is taught to read by the use of phonemes, he learns/memorizes letter sounds that are actually meaningless sounds to him.  Althought he may become skilled at "sounding the letters, the letter sounds, phonemes, do not give the dyslexic any meaningful, experiential relationship to the 2-dimensional letters and words he is sounding out. All he can do is memorize the sounds. He has no understanding of what they mean and what they represent about the meaningless 2-dimensional letters that they represent.  This usually results in a very poor translation of the sounds into unrecognizable words.

So, you may ask, “Why does phoneme training work so poorly for the dyslexic when it works so well for so many other types of learners?” 

Let’s take a look at the US-based early reader, age 5-7, who is learning to read the word “bat.” 

 

Three phonemes (“bah”… “aah”… “tuh”…) are used to represent the three letters (b… a…t) that make up the word bat. If the dyslexic is confused about the significance of the phonemes that sound out the written word “bat,” he is unlikely to join together all the sounds of “bat” and recognize the word they sound out. 

 

The dyslexic has been given 2-dimensional written characters (b…a…t…) that have been associated with 3-dimensional sounds (bah…aah…tuh…) that have no meaning to him. Understandably, confusion prevails and the dyslexic gets stuck while using phonemes.

 

Rote Memorization and Guessing ...  Misleading crutches at Best

Often, a student struggling to read, or an early learner, who seems to "know" his letters and words is actually using the crutch of rote memorization of phonemes and written characters to get through his educational training. 

As a result, he may or may not be able to put together consecutive phonemes to recognize and form the word they represent.  If not, his comprehension while reading will be very low. 

    In the example above of “bat,”

The dyslexic probably will have memorized correctly the phoneme sounds for each letter of the word and still be unable to blend them… or join them … together to read and say the word “bat”.  He is eager to succeed and he repeats the phoneme sounds of the letters (bah… aah… tuh…) over and over, hoping that some mysterious solution will show itself to him. 

The dyslexic may memorize or guess correctly the sounds of written characters, yet these sounds have no meaning to him.  He cannot relate the 3-dimensional abstract phoneme sound to the 2-dimensional abstract letters associated with them, and therefore he cannot link the sounds into a word that he is supposed to recognize and read out loud. 

 

The dyslexic lacks the reliable sensory feedback he requires to give him a meaningful experience of the written characters of a word, and thereby give the written word any 3-dimensional meaning. When sounding out the letters of a word like bat, he seldom gets to the point of recognizing the word and wondering if it refers to a bat in a cave or a baseball bat.  Essentially, phonemes have presented the dyslexic with another foreign language (sounds of phonemes) to master at the same time he is learning to read and write.

 

We do not advocate that phoneme training be given up in schools. It is an essential process to learning to read and write in English.  However, we want to make it clear that phoneme training (phonics) is insufficient to resolve the learning problems of the primarily multi-sensory thinking of the dyslexic student. 

 

In order to recognize, understand and read a word, every child needs to know, all at the same time,

What the word looks like

What it sounds like

What it means or shows

 

With the MELT™ techniques and The Learning to Read Program, the LD Coach provides the missing pieces that the multi-sensory thinker requires in order to learn to read, write and do math in his native English language, or to learn English as a Second Language.