Return-Path: <nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id g6Q3vGX07628; Thu, 25 Jul 2002 23:57:16 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 23:57:16 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <007301c23458$123bcab0$7e82f3ce@DeepThought> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "Woods" <woods@ncia.net> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-LD:4026] Re: More LD questions X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; Status: O Content-Length: 2827 Lines: 49 Andrea wrote: > When you come across these reading disabilities, how do you remediate them? > Do you do diagnosis--what does this tell you? I work with adults at the high school level who sometimes are poor readers. I notice that very seldom do they ever have problems with phonics. They seem to have learned this very well over and over again when they were in school. Often they have very limited vocabulary. Sight words (or the lack thereof) impede their reading. Fluency is often a problem. Memory can be troublesome (i.e. they can understand what they read as they read it, but when you ask them to retell or answer questions about the material, they can't remember.). Sometimes structural analysis (i.e. breaking down big words into little words) is a weakness. I also sometimes work with college students. They read fairly well, but they are what I'd call passive readers. They just let their eyes pass over the words and they don't think about what they've read. They don't really have a reading problem, but their lack of engagement kills them on their tests and assignments. Do I use diagnostics? Of course. How else would we know what to do if we don't take a careful look at exactly what the student both does and does not do as she or he reads? What do I do? That depends on what the student needs. I was trained to look at reading as the balanced use of a number of different strategies. When there is a reading problem, it's because the reader may have not learned some strategies, or s/he has an overreliance on one strategy (i.e. it's not balanced). The answer is to help the reader achieve balance. Through diagnosis, you figure out what strategies are weak or missing. Then you try to help the reader improve in those areas. There are many many practices and techniques for the various reading strategies. Among my favorites are language experience, repeated reading, playing Scrabble, cloze, asking and answering as many questions as you can about a passage and guess-the-covered-word activities. The professional journals are full of many others. There are a couple things I feel do NOT especially help a student who has trouble reading. I tend to get in a lot of trouble saying it, but I don't believe we help poor readers very much by trying to identify a cause of their problem. dwelling on the psychological, intellectual, and emotional processes that interfere with reading does not tell me what I need to know to try to help the person read better. The effort would be better spent learning about the reader's strategies and working on the areas of weakness. There is an exception to this. Identifying the physical problem of poor vision and correcting it can sometimes make all the difference. I can see how this might also hold for hearing problems, but I have no experience in that area. Tom
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