My 11 year old son just told me that he has a lot more trouble reading to himself than when he reads out loud. He says it’s harder to remember what’s going on in a story. He has read out loud to me, to tutors and to ld staff for years because of his reading disability. His oral reading is quite good—at least on grade level. His comprehension has always been excellent with oral reading. Now, I’m wondering…has he just not had the practice reading silently, are there new skills he needs to learn to become a good silent reader, or is this a facet of his disability I was never aware of?
Any information or words of advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Connie
Re: Oral reading vs. silent reading
Hi Connie,
I have a 11 yr. old daughter who also has trouble reading silently. Like your son, she has excellent reading comprehension when a story is read orally. Some days I feel so bad for her when she comes home from school crying, I feel as if we are failing her somehow. If your know of any tools that could be of help please send us an e-mail. Sorry I couldn’t give you more advice, I feel we are in the same boat.
Thanks
Laurie
Question for Robin
Hi Robin,
For a long time I have wondered if people who “move their lips” when reading do so because it somehow plays a role in helping them process the information. I know that when I was growing up we had “rules” not to move our lips, and not to use our fingers to keep track of the words. Do you have any information on findings that suggest whether this advice was good or bad? It’s great having your input on this BB! JJ
Re: Question for Robin
Thanks so much for the kind words:) There are some studies out there about subvocalizing- which is what this is called- and to the best of my understanding and recollection it has not proven to be a detrimental habit. As readers become more fluent, the behavior seems to diminish, though it will resurrect again when reading difficult material. I have always thought of it as a way for the brain to buy itself some more time to think. One study I read suggest that we all subvocalize to a certain extent as we read- it would be the way we attend to prosody or expression, but it is such an automatic and fluent behavior that we are unaware- until we need to be that is:) I would, for example, subvocalize madly though a physics text- but hardly at all in a novel.
Robin
I would guess that your son has good auditory processing skills and that he uses the oral input as an assist to his recall. I also suspect that he uses it as a way to keep himself focused perhaps because reading is still more work than it could/should because his grade level skills decoding skills are not all the way automatic.
I would not consider this a problem necessarily. It is conceivable that content reading will be less efficient as he gets older because oral reading is slower than silent- and there is just more reading to do.That is fairly easy to accommodate. It is equally conceivable that this will self correct before that becomes an issue. The more he reads, the more efficient he will become- just from practice. There are therapies that can be used in this situation- fluency training at a silent level occurs to me- but I would not be inclined to start that now. I would let him keep practicing fluent decoding as long as the slower speed doesn’t affect his understanding, and that doesn’t sound like an issue.
Robin