[NIFL-LD:3625] No support for Phonetic awareness as cause of reading

From: Clifton Willard (clifwillard@home.com)
Date: Fri Oct 19 2001 - 23:29:37 EDT


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From: Clifton Willard <clifwillard@home.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov>
Subject: [NIFL-LD:3625] No support for Phonetic awareness as cause of reading
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As an introduction, My name is Clif Willard and I am a Licensed 
Professional Mental Health Service Provider in Tennessee. I have a masters 
degree in communications and a second masters degree in educational and 
counseling psychology. I also spent 2 years in a graduate program for 
special education, multiple disabilities. I read on a third grade level and 
have ADHD myself. I attended thirteen different elementary schools and 
dropped out of high school after six weeks in the ninth grade. I am an 
adjunct assistant professor and teach a graduate class in ADHD and Language 
Based Disabilities. I am in private practice and concentrate on young adult 
and adult clients with language based disabilities and 
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Most clients participate in 
counseling on a weekly basis for several years rather then short term 
therapy. Several years ago I participated in this list. At that time I felt 
that there was no real support for the idea that a lack of phonetic 
awareness was the cause of a reading disability. Over the last 10 years I 
have not found any research that supports this theory.

My clinical experience does however support the notion that a reading 
disability is caused by a perceptual deficit and that this perceptual 
deficit is caused by a timing problem of one of the processors being out of 
sync with the other processors in the system. It is a timing problem and 
dynamic. Because it is dynamic, people with a reading disability can appear 
to "do it" one minute but can't ten minutes later. It is part of the 
disability, not an indication that they are "getting it." A broken clock 
tells the correct time twice a day.

I am aware that 98 percent of the research supports phonetic awareness as 
does Sally Shaywits at Yale. I have looked at much of the research and find 
that it makes all kinds of assumptions that are not supported in the 
experience of those with the disabilities. Dr. Shaywits' research seems to 
epitomize the folly of the research on reading disabilities/dyslexia. I was 
wondering what you think??

Clif



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