It is unfortunate that some children develop serious reading problems quite unnecessarily. The cause can be the design of the early reading books that they use. As a parent or teacher, it is important to know the pattern of symptoms you will see when this is happening.
However, this problem has proved easy to fix.
How To Spot The Problem
At first things seem to go quite well. The child often learns most of the alphabet and then a few words without a problem.
But as the child starts to read books, you will see some guessing of words going on. And often the guess has no relation to the word on the page, but makes sense in the context.
Then the books get more complicated and the child's reading seems to go into reverse.
Eventually you get an implosion of confidence, usually around the age of 6 or 7. By this stage the child is very reluctant to read at all.
Without the right help, the child can get stuck in this state permanently, wrecking their entire education, even though we find it can usually be fixed in a matter of weeks.
The Cause
Most children find text very baffling initially. And so they will use whatever seems the easiest way to decode it. A child with a strong visual memory will use that strength to memorise words by sight. That will seem the easiest option.
The child will probably be taught some phonics in class. But that does not mean that it really makes sense. And it is hard for a teacher to really know that, or fix it in the time available.
Now the concept behind most early reading books actually encourages this memorisation approach. They use very few words which get repeated a lot.
But, unfortunately, the child's reading is not really progressing at all. And eventually you reach the end of the blind alley.
We need to guide the child out and carefully into the right direction.
How To Fix It
The key is to help the child get a memory hook on all the different phonemes being used in English. The Easyread Coaching System does this by presenting a bright and slightly bizarre image for each of them, with a simple rhyme to remember. This was developed from memory activation processes used by memory specialists.
Then you need to present exercises that break the memorisation and guessing habbit. The Easyread Coaching System uses games and exercises specially designed to do that.
And finally, the child needs to be able to practise reading without fear and loathing. In Easyread we achieve that by showing the text with the phoneme images floating above them. It allows the child to read the text unaided and build experience and confidence each day.
The result of these changes of approach is that we regularly see children who have been completely stuck after years of effort, become enthusiastic readers in just a few weeks.
For more information on reading help and online literacy support and more on Easyread, visit our site EasyRead Coaching System Get your own completely unique content version of this article.
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