Working with adult

Um… how long have you been using PG?
How old is the student?
WHat does the student struggle with?
How is his/her comprehension?

This is something I do. I’ve posted a lot of long articles and finally decided rather than to keep reposting, to save them down and send them on request. Email me at [email protected] if you would like copies.

And yes, more info about the adult would be helpful! I was tutoring a guy at a similar level (reading below grade 2, age sixty) a few years ago; it turned out he had an undiagnosed hearing disability and had been treated as a discipline problem all his childhood, finally got a hearing aid after age twenty but had very limited language skills and even with the aid quite poor hearing, not to mention a mountain of confidence problems. He did make some progress but just couldn’t keep up with working on it.

One thing about adult teaching (that’s sort of obvious when you think about it) — do as much real reading within the context of what he can do as you can; he’s going to be neuro-developmentally rather beyond the “let’s play with rhyming words” stage. Older readers, even very good ones, don’t have the phonemic awareness kids do (tho’ I suspect phonics teachers and singers do :-)) so while you want to work on the awareness you want to use the other advantages that age has provided.

Sam,

I have been using a concrete, multisensory, pencil and paper decoding method that works with any text, any level. Also inexpensive.

I developed it when I was teaching an adult who has dyslexia. In fact, she had lots of input in its development.

If you would like to know more, email me at [email protected].

Anita

Sue -
You say ‘Older readers, even very good ones, don’t have the phonemic awareness kids do ” Can you explain this please for me. Is this why some adults are not very good at helping their children with blending or segmenting?
Is it difficult to teach this skill to older semi-literate people?

JAC