Have you heard of Reading for Results?

Does he have a learning disability in reading? This does not look like a program for a child with dyslexia, whether he hates it or not. From looking at the webpage this appears to be basically a speed reading course.

Since I don’t know about this child, I can’t say specifically but if he has dyslexia or a severe comprehension problem this would not be appropriate. Although the page indicate that it works with kids with ADD, dyslexia etc. I am highly highly suspicious of anything that claims to be a quick fix. This claims to “fix” the person in 5 weeks. No way, Jose.

Tell us a little bit more about this child?

—des

He is 15 years old. He has a lot of NLD characteristics. He reads OK orally, with decent flow and intonation, but reads quite slowly silently. He has problems with comprehension. My sister thought his comprehension difficulties might be related to speed, so she enrolled him in this program. He does not appear to be dyslexic—he started reading at a fairly young age.

Do you know how fast a child his age should be reading? Do you know any comprehension programs that might work for him. They looked into Visualizing and Verbalizing, but it turns out his visualizing abilities are quite good. He’s a puzzle.

You might try V/V anyway. (Or Idea Chain, which might be a bit more user friendly). There are many skills in V/V and while the main weakness it works with is weak visual imagery, it does deal with verbalizing with the image. Also though he may be good at visualizing he may visualize details and not the whole (or gestalt). I actually think that is my problem. I have AS which is related to NLD, and many people with AS have very good visualizing but tend to visualize details. Not sure this is true for people with NLD. I haven’ t heard that this is generally a strength.

I very much doubt that the kind of program that this speed reading is will build up comprehension. Now fluency might be an issue. If he is sounding out words and doesn’t have a good, instant vocabulary, or doesn’t read with phrasing, this could effect comprehension. You might look into something like Great Leaps.

—des

My sister and I checked out the Great Leaps site yesterday. She is going to test him on the three sample speed drills they supply. The results will probably be interesting.

The site does say that it is not appropriate for people reading above a fifth grade level, which I’m pretty sure he does.

Your thoughts about Visualizing and Verbalizing are interesting. Kids with NLD also have forest for the trees issues. Do you really think it helps with that. (I’m now asking also for my son, who also has good visualization skills, but fails to get the big picture a lot of the time.

Thanks for discussing this with me.

The problem here is a lot of adults (not dyslexic or anything) don’t read much higher than a 6th grade level (newspaper at sixth grade level). Maybe someone else has an alternative fluency program?

I think V/V definitely would help for that. You need to be careful in questioning such a kid (in this program) and not get too caught up in details (which your kid will be only too happy to supply). The big thing in V/
V is “questioning to the gestalt”. This is that all your questions and comments eventually lead the child to the whole of the topic rather than little details. So at the single sentence level the kid reads “The cat sat under the tree”. You’d focus on picturing the cat and the tree, but not so much on the blades of grass or the background although you do direct a few questions that way.

Training would be VERY useful for you. I’m not sure if you can go anywhere nearby to get it.

I’m also too unfamilar with Idea Chain to tell you anything about how well that would work out. It has more lesson plans etc. You might look at their website (?) and even give them a call.

—des