Semi-finalists announced for $200,000 business competition prize

Sound Reading Solutions Sound Reading Solutions is one of the semi-finalists announced for $200,000 business competition prize.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/semi-finalists_announced_for_2.html

How Can We Motivate Today’s Readers? By Bruce Howlett

As strong readers read, they enhance their reading skills. As they read more their enjoyment increases. They may choose to go on Facebook or play with their Xbox over reading, but that is natural. On the other hand, struggling readers rarely find reading pleasurable and often develop a sophisticated set of avoidance behaviors. While strong readers become better readers, struggling readers make minimal gains in reading and rarely develop a love of books. It’s no wonder that over a third of adult females and half of adult males rarely read for pleasure.

Traditional reading instruction is geared towards students who have average to excellent reading skills. Strong readers have very different motivational needs than those of struggling readers. Strong readers need some freedom from mandated reading, because they are intrinsically motivated to read. However, this is not to say that parents and teachers shouldn’t nudge solid readers to improve their reading choices and challenges because, Captain Underpants or Twilight may not win over students who would rather be playing with their Xbox or watching Gossip Girl.

What about struggling readers? Struggling readers need to develop a strong self-concept as a reader, so they should be free to pick their own reading material and allowed to focus on one genre or series of books. I didn’t start reading until third grade and rarely read anything longer than a picture-laden National Geographic article into my teens. My biggest recollection of reading was that it took too much attention and was anything but enjoyable. I rarely read books as a young adult, and when I did, I got very little out of it. I remember reading 1984 and being confused about the message. I could never keep all the characters straight in Michener’s Hawaii. In college, I had to read textbooks twice before I could pass a test.

The reason that people struggle with reading is because decoding printed words into meaningful spoken words is a very complex cognitive process. If you want to experience just how un-fun reading words is; read the following sentence from a biochemistry paper:

We have produced a monoclonal antibody against myelin basic protein that reacts with astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and Schwann cells. This antibody was generated by fusion of mouse myeloma cells with spleen cells from BALB/c mice immunized with delipidated white matter from adult rat corpus callosum. The antibody was characterized via solid-phase radioimmunoassay, immunoblot of SDS-PAGE, and by indirect immunofluorescence staining of monolayer cultures.

Having fun? How much effort did that take? Could you read material like this for 15 minutes?

Today neuroscientists offer brain scans of struggling readers that show us that even the slightest struggle with decoding or fluency takes all the fun out of reading. A struggling reader’s brain works three times as hard as a solid reader, and as the brain sucks in energy like a sponge, fatigue sets in after only ten or fifteen minutes of reading.

Even if someone is a good word reader, they still have one more major hurdle to overcome before they are going to enjoy reading – fluency. Researchers have found that an overwhelming number of unmotivated readers can’t read fluently for more than a few minutes. More than anything, fluency is the key to reading enjoyment. When reading is enjoyable, motivation becomes much less of an issue.

To summarize, students who struggle to read words accurately and with ease find reading anything but pleasurable. They don’t feel that they are successful readers. The most interesting research I’ve read recently says that children rarely learn from their mistakes and need an almost constant feeling of success to learn. Success is a huge factor in motivation. Even a few small mistakes can stifle learning while, a series of small successes and reading help leads to increased learning. The things we enjoy doing, from reading to talking, we do with high degrees of success. We avoid activities that provide us with even a little negative feedback. Therefore, word reading and fluency must become automatic in order for it to be an enjoyable activity.

At Sound Reading, we make sure that our students are overcoming the two biggest roadblocks to reading motivation – word reading accuracy and fluency. Our reading software for kids and adults often seems too easy, and it is! We want our students to feel successful and self-motivated. I know that this is why I do a lot more reading now than when I was a struggling reader.

Bruce Howlett

Remember When Reading Was Fun?

Many students struggling readers find reading instruction tedious and difficult. They spend more time trying to avoid reading practice than they do actually working through the activities.

We are excited to announce our new Reading Comprehension games that target this exact problem, allowing students to have fun while learning how to read. Bruce Howlett created the games to target the following skills:

• phonemic awareness
• clear code instruction
• word building
• decoding

By enabling children to have fun with reading Sound Reading hopes to break down children's frustrations and get them excited about reading.

English Is the Least Phonics Friendly Language

English is dramatically more difficult to learn than nearly every other language. With 44 different phonemes and 1,200 different spellings it is no wonder a third of Americans struggle with reading!

Italian and Spanish, on the other hand, have 25 and 28 different phonemes. They only have 29 or 32 different spellings! Compared to these other major languages, English is nearly 50 times more complex. It is amazing we learn to read at all.

With that amount of complexity, students who are struggling with reading can easily be overwhelmed by phonics instruction as they try to memorize all 1,200 spellings and the exceptions to the rules. Struggling readers need to start one step before phonics, learning these different sounds organically instead of by route memorization. The complex nature of the English language makes it the least phonics friendly language.

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Heading Home

This weekend I am headed back to my hometown for a weekend full of old friends and family. I am sure there will be a few summer BBQs in the backyard and lots of hugs. I even have plans to meet up with a few friends that I have not spoken to in years!

My bags are already packed and ready to go, complete with an entire bag of books. No, I don't plan to read the 13 titles this weekend, although that much free time would be a welcome change. My family and I have a long tradition of swapping our books. We will each bring a dozen or so books to the table, some of our favorites and some classics, and at the end of the weekend we will all leave with new reviews and a new bundle of books.

I find that even if it is a book I had already read years ago, the swap brings with it new reviews and opinions that make a second reading all the more enjoyable. After all, in the past few years my life has changed significantly and different backgrounds and experiences can completely change the way you read a book.

Do you or your family have any traditions similar to ours? Does your community have a book swap program already in place? Let us know!

Amazing Results!

As our website continues to evolve, more and more exciting facts about Sound Reading are being posted.

We are so excited every time more data comes back to the office because we love to help children read! All of these reports show that students that were once struggling with reading will be able to catch up to their peers. They will not only be able to finish a chapter book but now they are able to enjoy it! We are excited to share these results with everyone and can promise similar results for your family or school.

We recently added more in depth analysis and results reports under the results tab. You can read more about success in Kindergarten classrooms, with Upper Elementary School students, and with Teens and Adults.

An overview of more of the studies we have performed can be found on the website as well.