Shattering the Myths of Dyslexia #6: Abstract Symbols Are Not Triggers for 3-D Learning Problems

Around 80% of our student population can learn to read 2-dimensional abstract words and symbols through repetition. However, the other 20% of our student population are 3-dimensional learners, and abstract words and symbols cause confusion for these children. This confusion interferes with their ability to recognize and understand these words and symbols and ultimately leads to brain disintegration, avoidance and learning difficulties.

If a parent or loved one will watch closely when a child with dyslexia reads, they will notice that the words that cause the child to hesitate, insert a word, replace a word, omit a word, or skip a line are, for the most part, abstract words and abstract punctuation marks. For a 3-dimensional learner these abstract words and punctuation marks do not have a 3-dimensional picture and thus have no meaning for them. We call them “stumble” words.

To understand the difficulty that a 3-D learner has with abstract words and symbols, use your imagination while I ask you to picture a few words:

• Picture “pencil” … now “beach ball” … and now “house” … and finally “the”. Make note of the experiences you had for each word.

When you were asked to picture “pencil”, you did not picture the letters that spell the word pencil. Instead you pictured the object. You had the same kind of perceptual experience when you pictured the concrete words “beach ball” and “house”. When you tried to picture “the”, you realized there is not a 3-dimensional object to represent it. Most likely you pictured the letters—t…h…e.

A 3-D learner or dyslexic can easily picture and master the first three words but can experience confusion, disintegration, and breakdown with “the” and other abstract words. Until the abstract is made concrete for them, they will have difficulty with reading and writing.

The Learning To Read Program is designed to help the 3-D learner overcome these difficulties. The program is a multi-sensory approach to help children master the abstract words they would normally stumble over. It simultaneously stimulates the senses of touch, sight, movement and hearing to give experiential meaning to the abstract words and symbols. It makes the flat, 2-dimensional words become concrete in the 3-D learner’s mind.

Sincerely,

Bill Allen

Shattering the Myths of Dyslexia #5: The Dyslexic has “Learned” Something with Rote Memorization

The dyslexic, especially in the early years of learning, tends to equate memorization with learning. What is interesting is that a very high percentage of dyslexics excel in memorization. The bottom line for the dyslexic: if we cannot convert new material into a 3-D sense, then we naturally attempt to find success with memorization. Of course every student wants to please the parent or teacher who is helping the child to learn, so that he or she can receive praise and avoid their disappointment. If children can remember the words, then it “sounds like” they can read the words!

Unfortunately, memorization is a very poor substitute for learning. Whether you're dyslexic or not, if you memorize something, you are fortunate if you retain 20% of what you memorized six weeks later! This is why a younger dyslexic learner will have a skill or information one week but forgets it the next week. This is not the case with learning – once you have learned something, you know it. In fact that is the original reason for testing, to measure if you have learned some material or skill, and can use it to do more than parrot back what you memorized. The most notorious list of written symbols most often memorized is the alphabet. In 14 years of working with dyslexic children and adults, I have yet to come across one who has mastered (i.e., learned) reading the entire upper and lower case alphabet.

The Learning To Read Program helps the dyslexic learner master the upper and lowercase alphabet by learning it backwards with skills that promote 3-D learning. We want to avoid rote memorization and at the same time promote the 3-D thinking required to learn and recognize these written abstract symbols. Once the upper and lowercase alphabet is mastered, many blind spots are cleared up in the dyslexics’ process of visualizing and reading a line of text. Typically, when I work with a student, I spend close to three hours mastering the lowercase alphabet backwards. It is a critical step in the dyslexic’s process of learning to read fluently with complete comprehension. In today’s public and private education systems, rote memorization is still primarily used to “learn to read” the 270 abstract words in the English language. The Learning To Read Program is one of the first programs of its kind that gives abstract words concrete experiences that help the 3-D Learner become skilled at reading, instead of just memorizing words and sounds of words.

Special Ed teachers are singing the praises of The Learning to Read Program. Please go to www.ReadingTools.org and click the “Real-Life Stories” button to view what the experts have to say about our program and approach.

Sincerely,
Bill Allen

Shattering the Myths of Dyslexia #4: The dyslexic is easily distracted and can't stay focused!

Dyslexics and children doing poorly in school are easily distracted and do loose focus during learning tasks! When they are very uncomfortable (confused, frustrated, defeated, blank), their mind looks for a way to have a “mental health break!” The resulting diverting behaviors are not the problem. They are symptoms, which are like fire alarms indicating the effects of the stress experienced by the child. Let’s dig under these symptoms and look for the root causes, instead of taking steps to erase the symptoms (turn off the alarm).

Three conditions go hand-in-hand to make the dyslexic vulnerable to distraction and lack of focus while reading: confusion, the wandering of the mind’s eye, and Brain Dis-integration (these last 2 topics will be discussed at another time). The build up of stress due to confusion generated while reading causes frustration, stimulates the mind’s eye to wander in an attempt to find a solution for what is not understood, and tends to dis-integrate needed brain function and thinking.

The cause of these symptoms in 3-D learners: Confusion is triggered when the 3-D thinking child reads abstract words that have no inherent sensory meaning. He stumbles inconsistently while reading abstract words (like “a, and, the, when, he, for, what) and symbols (like punctuation marks and flat letters of the alphabet). His irregularity in being able to recognize the “small, abstract, stumble” words is what makes it so confusing for parents to understand what is happening in their child. Sometimes he remembers (has them in his short term memory because he just was corrected and heard them, perhaps) some abstract words and other times the same words make no sense to him, and can even appear invisible on the page (he skips over them). Abstract words can actually look to the reader like blank spots on the page between words he does see and understand!

All 270 of the written abstract words, all written letters and all punctuation symbols must be mastered 3-dimensionally by these students in order to give these words and symbols meaning. In contrast to abstract words, “tree” is a concrete word that can be experienced and recognized as something growing in your yard. There is a physical experience of tree that gives the written word meaning – makes it “concrete”. However, the abstract word “a” refers to nothing concrete that can be directly experienced. For a written abstract word or symbol to become “visible” (comprehendible) to dyslexics, the 3-D learner must experience, at the same time, all three parts of the word or symbol. In order to be experienced and understood by the dyslexic, an abstract word must provide a 3-dimensional experience of:

What the word looks like,
What the word sounds like, and
What the word means.

Then, the 3-D learner can focus on learning to read, and learning to read with comprehension. Confusion is reduced and no longer creates stress to the level that the reader needs to take a mental health break all the time. The result is a less distracted, more focused person!

Sincerely,
Bill Allen