Not again!

     It was that familiar telephone call. For years I have heard its various versions: the harried voice of a mother expressing concern and perplexed confusion about her youngster who has been labeled one or more of those alphabet soup designations, learning disabled or dyslexic. As so often in the past the youngster was a male adolescent.

     "He's thirteen years old, and he's still not reading. When the school failed in teaching him to read we took him out and I homeschooled him. But that didn't work either. I've tried everything. Every kind of flashcard, every kind of phonics drill imaginable. When these didn't work, we tried to teach him how to take words apart so he'd recognize their phonemic components. That was a total bust. So we tried the whole language approach. Again, no go. Never mind what we tried, he just doesn't get it. He's such a smart boy in everything else. What makes things worse, his six-year old sister is already reading. I didn't even have to teach her. She just knew how. And there's four-year old Jason. I'm afraid he's going to be just like Mike. There's got to be an answer to this."

     There was desperation in Mrs. Armstrong's voice as she continued describing how clever both boys are in every other respect. "Mike's no good at memorizing things, and yet he remembers things that happened years ago. And when he sees a diagram showing how to build something, he just has to look at it once. He has no trouble remembering the diagram. So why can't he remember his phonics? What's wrong with him? The school said he's dyslexic and learning disabled and all that. But he isn't learning disabled when it gets to understanding complicated wiring diagrams. And now Jason is showing the same fascination with building things, but no interest at all in books."

     From personal experience I knew exactly what Mrs. Armstrong was talking about. When I was a child I too found the written word an incomprehensible mystery, and definitely not interesting. But wiring diagrams were fascinating and easy to comprehend and remember. Years later, data from our research lab shed light on how my and Mike's supposed problems are a reflection of ways we humans can differ cognitively from one another. Further:

Contrary to the usual viewpoint, which assumes that these cognitive differences are indications of a defect, we found them to be a reflection of the diverse ways that different brains organize and process information. However, our data also revealed that basic to all of us are fundamentals of cognitive organization - regardless of IQ or alphabet soup designation. These common fundamentals of cognitive organization, if tapped, mean success even for tasks where our cognitive differences cause failure for many a child when standard teaching practices are used.

     Summarizing the implications of our data for Mrs. Armstrong went something like this: "The way Mike's brain is organized, diagrams give him extensive contextual clues which are lacking for him in the way reading is usually taught. For his six-year old sister, on the other hand, the alphabet letters work like diagrams do for Mike. Her brain can attach enough contextual clues to them to give her the information she needs in order to put it all together and read. So in order for reading to be as easy for Mike as it is for his little sister he has to be given, not only phonics, but also additional contextual language clues. Similarly his little sister, should she have difficulty with diagrams the way Mike has had with reading, will understand and remember diagrams once she's given additional contextual clues."

     Mrs. Armstrong's response was the logical "But we tried the whole language approach which is all context. And that didn't work either."

     "That's because without the phonic code Mike couldn't build the words with which to compose linguistic context. He needs to be shown how to use the letter sounds to build not just words, but words that tell a story. By doing this the alphabet letters and their sounds become anchored in meaning and he will finally remember them. Up to now the letters have been meaningless hieroglyphs for him, which is why the various sounds they can make keep slipping out of his memory."

     I'll never forget how in my own childhood I desperately searched for the contextual clues that would help me recognize and therefore remember those hieroglyphs that were supposed to compose words. I had trouble telling the letters apart; how they differed from one another; so how could I remember the sounds they were supposed to make? Eventually I figured out a method that worked.

     Using my understanding of language, in other words story comprehension, I made a simple discovery. If, at the beginning of a sentence, I managed to build just a few words with their letter sounds the rest of the sentence required fewer alphabet clues to recognize the words that made sense in the story. And very important, this technique finally helped me differentiate the letters and their sounds. Previous years of practice in pulling meaningless words apart or trying to read word lists hadn't worked. But story context, by creating meaning, facilitated letter recognition; and it anchored in my memory the association of the letters with the variety of sounds they can make in different words.

     Realizing that pulling words apart according to their phonemes didn't produce meaningful words I searched for a different approach. This turned out to be something very simple. By starting at the beginning of a word and adding each letter sound to the combination I had just built I could create a word that made sense in the story. The technique didn't require phonemic awareness, which continues to be difficult for me to this day. Because my approach involved story context I often didn't have to laboriously finish building a complete word. Instead the rest of the word fell into place, speeding up not only letter recognition but word recognition as well. Story comprehension, the meaning of what I was deciphering, helped me learn to read.

     The first book I used for this purpose was THE WIZARD OF OZ. I was already familiar with the story. Its simple language, similar to actual speech, gave me the contextual clues that helped in alphabet recognition and word building. Although it took three weeks of eight-hour days I eventually deciphered the whole book. Because I was reading for meaning, instead of trying to decode isolated meaningless words, it wasn't too difficult to recognize and accept the irregular spelling of so many English words.

     Years later, after I had already been involved in over a decade of cognitive research, this childhood experience gave me a unique take on how to make learning to read an exciting and easy enterprise. I could now add to the know-how acquired in teaching myself to read the new research findings from neuroscience and developmental psychology. Knowledge of how children learn language as well as findings from my own lab allowed me to simplify the method I had used with myself years before. Another seven years was spent researching on ways to add additional contextual clues to beginning reading.

     The result was a system that was successful with high and low IQ groups, the brain damaged, the learning disabled, the dyslexics as well as four-year olds. I had not expected easy successes with such very different populations of students. After more research to understand the reason for these successes, it became apparent that the reading system had inadvertently tapped into basic fundamentals of cognitive organization. How was this achieved?

     In the system, simplifications of the method I had used on myself as a child begin with the alphabet. To make the letters easier to distinguish, and therefore remember, the student is shown how they can be constructed with three basic forms - a circle, a line and an angle (given the fun names of ball, stick and bird). Other simplifications include an altered sequence with which the alphabet is presented. This makes it possible for a word to be built already with the introduction of the second letter. With the presentation of the fourth letter enough words can be built to compose the simple sentences that introduce the adventures of Vad of Mars who has rockets for feet. Early introduction of the vowels so useful in the building of words accelerates the telling of Vad's story.

An example of the early introduction of the first two vowels.

     The purpose of these methods was to reduce the initial memory load thereby allowing the power of context to play an essential role even before most of the alphabet has been learned. Already in the first lesson students find that they are actually reading; building the few words that introduce a science fiction adventure. The immediate experience is that books, instead of being covered with incomprehensible hieroglyphs, can tell marvelous stories. Adults, who as children were introduced into reading with this system have told us that learning to read was an exciting and unforgettable experience. Theirs was a joyous introduction into that greatest of human inventions - written communication.
(Click to learn "What Makes Ball-Stick-Bird So Different")

An example of a humorous introduction to sophisticated written communication.

     The power of contextual language was demonstrated when four-year olds, "dyslexic" and "learning disabled" students, even the severely retarded, easily built the meaningful words that combine into the sentences that tell the story of Vad of Mars.

An example of meaningful words as part of a story in the beginning books.

One of our early students, Tom, was an extreme example of the power of context. His brain-injury had left him with severe graphic aphasia. Contrary to my predictions he learned to read using this heavily contextual approach. However, even after becoming a fluent reader he continued to have difficulty differentiating letters. Such is the power of meaning: of linguistic context.

     When I first developed the reading system, I didn't realize the all-encompassing power of context: how it is organized, or its evolutionary heritage. Only after the results came in did the wide ranging implications of context become apparent; that this is how all of us, regardless of labels, organize information. But what exactly is linguistic context? When and how is it organized?
(See Dyslexia article under Popular articles by Dr. Fuller)

      Research findings on language acquisition in children (referred to by psychologists as developmental linguistics) have demonstrated that already with the first words a toddler's utterances are context driven. These first words are usually important nouns that communicate a want, an idea, readily understood by the tuned-in parent. These early nouns are followed in short order by the verbs that describe what the nouns do. Now even an outsider can frequently understand the thoughts, wants and feelings that the child is trying to communicate. Right from the start of language acquisition the child is trying to express meaning.

     Our experimental results with students in the 20 to 30 IQ range revealed that even for the severely brain damaged linguistic context can be a powerful teaching tool. Which is why, contrary to my own expectations, we were able to teach reading to severely damaged students who had little or no language production.

Our data was a demonstration that context, the meaning of words, is so basic to human neural organization, so over-represented in our brain, that even in cases of severe brain damage there is some understanding of the meaning of a surprising number of words. Although there may be little or no language production, there frequently is considerable language comprehension. The reading series built on language comprehension, which for all of us, regardless of IQ or disabilities, surpasses language production.

     An additional unexpected finding was what happened when the students were exposed to the developmental linguistics of the reading system. The beginning books utilize developmental linguistics in order to simplify story comprehension and therefore learning to read. The short sentences that compose the first two adventures of Vad of Mars are composed primarily with nouns and verbs mimicking how children acquire language. Then gradually the more complicated parts of speech are added and the sentence structure becomes advanced.

     The results of this approach were as unexpected as they were unintended. By recapitulated early word learning the system taught not only comprehension of new vocabulary but also its use to even very low IQ students. Curiously, although the very low IQ students in our study had previously been exposed to a variety of language enrichment programs, these had failed. Only learning to read with a system that, among many other innovations, recapitulated language acquisition resulted in this dramatic increase in language production.

     Even Mike, with his obvious superior intelligence, experienced a dramatic increase in vocabulary and what can be done with language. For him, as for all our previous students, words became not only advanced communication tools but also advanced thinking tools. We saw first hand that language is not just a device to communicate with others, but even more important, it increases the ability to communicate with ourselves. By helping establish context, language gives meaning to the happenings that surround us.

     Within weeks after starting the system Mike had become a fluent reader. His was a catch up phenomenon. Test results after six months showed him reading above grade level, albeit slowly. But now that he had discovered the pleasures of reading it wasn't long before Mike devoured books at a surprising rate, which increased his reading speed. Mrs. Armstrong had been right, Mike is a very intelligent youngster. As for being learning disabled, Mrs. Armstrong decided that that was a diagnosis best forgotten.

     And four-year old Jason? The Armstrongs didn't wait for the school system to label him dyslexic and/or learning disabled. As soon as Mike had finished book three of the series he insisted on becoming his little brother's teacher. And so by the time Jason was six he was reading about dinosaurs. His mother told me that he had swaggered into the local library demanding the Encyclopedia Britannica to read more about his favorites. The librarians had melted.

Mike's story is not unusual. It reflects a frequently made teaching mistake; which is that we expect our brains to function as though they were computers. Breaking up tasks into bits of information is how to teach computers, how to program them. In contrast our brain and the brains of other chordates automatically organize the bits of information of the environment into meaningful wholes. This is why when we teach bits of information without showing how they make a meaningful whole they tend to fade out of our memory almost instantly: if they are processed at all. On the other hand, if the bits of information are placed into context, the now-meaningful bits become anchored in our memory.

     Human survival, in contrast to the contextually ignorant computers, depends on meaning. And so, because it is contrary to our biological heritage, teaching approaches that are similar to computer programming are largely responsible for the many failures we see in our schools. The extraordinary and immediate success in learning to read by youngsters like Mike and four-year old Jason, as well as our many brain-damaged students are a demonstration of the power of meaningful context.