For problems stemming from general learning difficulties, I recommend the techniques developed by Professor Sue Buckley of the Down Syndrome Education Trust/Sarah Duffen Centre, here.
Otherwise, literacy skills can be brought up to a person's intellectual capacity using the principles described here. Each case is different, and average progress or age-equivalent test scores will not relieve the frustration of a person who should be achieving much more than this. The goal of this work is to knock problems out.
1. The teacher needs a clear understanding of English spelling and grammmar. This means knowing its regular and irregular features, and how they have come about, so that they can be explained clearly. English is not completely regular, and much distress is caused by teachers pretending to children that it is, and then telling them just to learn the irregular features as "sight words". By grammar, I mean the principles of sentence construction in English. Everything should be understood and explained using normal English words, with specific terms introduced only when normal language will not do the job. A phoneme, for example, is a sound, and there is no benefit in replacing a perfectly good English word with a longer Greek one. Anything not clear to the learner needs to be explained in terms he or she can understand - Jerome Bruner's principle of "courteous translation" applies.
2. After gathering as much evidence as possible about the person's reading - test scores can be informative, but should be supplemented by hearing them read and seeing them write, teachers need to ask two questions:
What is it in this person's thinking that is preventing them from using the information conveyed by letters in order to read?
and
How do I help them to adjust their thinking so that they can read successfully?
These questions ensure that the teacher focuses on the person sitting before them, and not on some programme designed by someone else who has never seen this pupil. The answers will not be the same in every case, but there are patterns to them, often reflecting the teaching the person has received. Some people may be guessing at words from the first letter, some may be trying to sound them out one letter at a time, and so failing if the words are irregular, or b some may take shortcuts in longer words, some may be sensitive to light, which can cause extreme discomfort and symptoms similar to those of dyslexia, and some may have present or earlier hearing difficulties, which prevent them from receiving the whole of the sounds in a word, usually at the beginning or end.
3. Explain English spelling, using the principles set out in my books and in other postings below. It is essential to explain that letters, like people, do not always behave as they should. For reading, there are four main features - in very weak readers, these may not all be explained at once, but usually I do, with plenty of examples and encouragement to the learner to ask questions:
- Sounds. Most of the time, letters indicate a sound. Sometimes this tells us all we need to know, and sometimes part of what we need to know. Longer words usually have one stress point, and the letters won't tell us this, so we need to learn it - eg photograph, photographer, photographic.
- Information. Sometimes letters give us information that alters the sound normally indicated by another letter. Egs, centre, e softening the c. gin, i softening the g. made, e stretching the a.
- Groups of letters. Sometimes letters need to work in groups, especially vowel (voice) letters. Some groups are fairly obvious -sh in ship. Others require a big shift from the original letter - ti in station, patient.
- History. The language is 1000 years old, and if we were that old we'd have wrinkles too. Explain the French connection (eg how table makes perfect phonic sense in French, where we can hear the l before the e), changes in pronunciatin over time (was) and how printers and Dr Johnson made life more difficult by tidying spelling up.
5. Have the learner read to you from a suitable text - for young, complete beginners, I now usually use Ruth Miskin's Ditties (from ReadWriteInc), as these are completely regular and quite funny. For older children or adults I usually pick a text that they will be interested in. A typical choice for an eight to ten year old is Roald Dahl's Danny The Champion of the World, and for an adult a local newspaper. For children under seven, the other books in Ruth Miskin's series are very good, and I also have a set of an out of print series, Supersonics, which are funny.
6. When the learner makes a mistake, don't teach that word, but move to another that is like it - ie has the same feature that has caused the error. Unpack and teach that carefully. Once the learner is clear about it, add some more examples with the same feature - in practice, this will often involve changing the beginning, and is a technique developed from the onset-rime work (Bradley, Bryant and Goswami). Once the pattern is clear in the learner's mind, put in the word that caused the problem - they will usually get it right, but explain further if necessary. Then go back to the text from the beginning of the sentence and re-read. If there is any hesitation, reread again, if necessary, modelling and going back to the explanation, which I always note on paper. Overall, the approach is very similar to a music lesson, where instant sightreading is not usually expected.
7. Practice is as important here as it is in learning music. Flash back to words you've taught at later points in the lesson. Scatter them in a grid for the learner to read as you call out co-ordinates. Have them sleep on it and look again at the words in the morning. Make sure the learner practises every day, with a parent if a child. Check the previous lesson's words at the start of the new lesson, and explain again if necessary. Praise correct reading very liberally.
8. Keep going. With experience - and teachers' training rarely gives them this type of experience - you will find that you instinctively know the next step for pupils, selecting texts to match their interests as well as their development. The work is finished when they can read whatever they want to or need to, without stress, even if they occasionally have to work on a new word or revisit an old one.
The latest case in which these techniques have worked is of a ten year old who had become so distressed at not being able to read that he had deliberately injured himself and nearly died. He is now a confident reader, able to read long and difficult words quite easily, phrasing his reading, and remembering what he has learned. This took one lesson per week for two terms, with breaks for holidays and some nasty colds. His best friend is coming to see me this week.
Spelling will be discussed in part 2.