The hidden side of reading difficulties

In our 20 plus years of helping students improve their thinking skills and English language and reading, we noticed that some students were not responding to “normal” instruction.

For example, they had a variety of issues

They simply were not following the teacher in class

• They did not seem to have the fundamentals of language
• They couldn’t communicate clearly and precisely
• They had problem remembering things
• They seemed to not pay attention in class and more.

It’s the “other side of the coin”—as if they were not able to learn as effectively as other students.

Despite multiple attempts using phonics, decoding, comprehension, and compensation strategies, the students seemed stuck.

We saw that without serious intervention they would miss their education and personal development milestones.

They suffered in their schoolwork.

• They were dismissed as “day-dreamers” because they lost attention
• Their classmates dismissed them as “dumb” because they could not read fluently
• They fell behind in their work as they could not take in what was being said

They suffered because the negative effects caused them to lose their self-confidence, and they became unhappy.

Of course, when we looked to find an answer for these students, it wasn’t as straight-forward as we expected.

Students needed to develop their ability to pay attention in class, remember better, follow instructions, and so on. Commonly these are known as cognitive (or learning) skills.

Fortunately, science has developed exercises and practices to improve their English language and reading.

Unfortunately, not all students can avail of this training in their own schools.

We knew that to be effective in helping students, we needed to provide students with a learning method that combined academic skills and cognitive skills.

The approach called Fast ForWord was validated by research including this breakthrough study published by The Phonics Bulletin

Would you like to see how these exercises work?