Read Right® transforms struggling readers to confident, competent readers. Individuals of all ages can participate in Read Right through our Online Tutoring Services. Institutions and organizations use our methods at highly successful project sites. These include elementary and secondary schools, colleges, youth detention facilities, adult prisons, community-based organizations, and corporations (work-force literacy). Read Right methodology is documented to be equally effective with mild to severe reading problems, as well as Native Americans, African Americans, English language learners, and students who qualify for special education—including those who have been diagnosed with ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism, etc.
Why Do So Many Children, Teens, and Adults Have Reading Problems?
Answer: The Implicit Nature of Procedural Learning is Not Acknowledged by the Reading Field
The reading field operates on two assumptions with the potential to negatively effect reading development. These are:
- Teachers can explicitly tell students what they need to do to read, placing the emphasis on the teacher’s explicit instruction instead of the student’s excellent performance.
- The main event of reading is identifying individual words, not whatever the brain must do implicitly (below the level of conscious awareness) to construct meaning.
The “assumptions” are wrong. We know with certainty because Read Right methodology transforms struggling readers into excellent readers without ever asking a student to decode a single word.
EXPLICIT TEACHING vs. IMPLICIT PROCEDURAL LEARNING
Neuroscientists have long acknowledged the implicit nature of procedural learning. All processes—anything you can put a “how to” in front of, like how to ride a bicycle or how to read—are learned and operate primarily below the level of conscious awareness. No one has access to or control over what the brain does to make a process happen. That’s why processes cannot be explicitly taught, but must be figured out by the brain for itself. Instead, an environment must be created that enables, or even compels, the brain to figure out all of the complex neural work necessary to make excellent performance happen.
Read Right provides the right environment. That’s why it is impressively effective. Read Right unleashes the power of the brain to do what brains do: make sense of the world—we call this learning.
An iceberg is the perfect metaphor to illustrate the implicit nature of procedural learning: The small portion above the waterline represents the explicit aspects of any process that can and should be explicitly and systematically taught. The gigantic portion beneath the waterline represents the implicit aspects of the process that cannot be explicitly taught.
The brain is a powerful learning machine that, from birth, begins to experiment and learn. It can’t be stopped from learning if the environment is right. The field of education has not quickly and efficiently addressed reading problems for 160-plus years, in part, because the implicit nature of procedural learning was ignored. Rather than apply strategies appropriate for procedural learning, such as methods that support students as they experiment with reading on the road to achieving fluent and fully comprehended reading each and every time they read (when the vocabulary is known), the reading field simply reorganized, renamed, and/or re-emphasized how explicit instruction should be delivered. If explicit instruction has not solved the problem in the past, it cannot solve the problem in the future!
Read Right provides a learning environment that acknowledges the implicit nature of procedural learning. With Read Right methodology, each student’s brain regardless of the nature of the reading problem is compelled to figure out how to make excellent reading happen. The methodology simply unleashes the power of the brain to do what brain’s do—make sense of everything, whether it is simple or more complex. In this way, excellent reading supports the growth of knowledge and neural efficiency.
INDIVIDUAL WORD IDENTIFICATION VS. MEANING
Is word identification the foundational skill for reading? Logic seems to suggest that we read “individual words” on the page because we see the words. However, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) suggests otherwise. In recent neuroimaging studies. when subjects identified individual words on word lists as their brains were scanned, the neural activation pattern was significantly different as compared to the pattern that emerged when subjects read sentences and paragraphs of text. This indicates that identifying individual words and passage reading are separate and distinctly different cognitive acts. This makes perfect sense when the science of procedural learning is understood. Unfortunately, virtually all classroom reading instruction today focuses on individual word identification (decoding and/or sight-word recognition) instead of procedural learning. Fact: the human brain uses anticipatory systems guided by executive function to make all processes happen. Procedural learning focused on quality of performance is what the brain uses to develop excellence. Whereas decoding and sight-word recognition focus on the simplistic act of—identifying—one—word—at—a—time, procedural learning that places the focus on anticipating meaning compels the brain to use executive function to activate and integrate all the neural systems required to create meaning from text.
Successful readers and highly competent learners continuously search for meaning—even when they are directing the process of reading. As a result, individuals who read proficiently do not care what the individual words are. Rather, their brains want to know what the message is. Meaning is the focus, not slow and laborious individual word identification.
Every reader needs to use procedural learning to build neural circuitry for passage reading, not individual word recognition. The years and years of flat reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the dismal reality that two-thirds of our Grade 4, 8, and 12 students read at a basic level or below suggest this is true. Individual word recognition may be more effectively taught through the separate cognitive act of spelling, not reading. We recommend that students learn to read first before they learn to spell so that the brain is free to focus on an author’s message and not on decoding and how words are spelled.
Below, we invite you to compare Main Stream Reading Theory with The Read Right View. Notice how they are significantly different. This difference explains Read Right’s success transforming struggling readers into excellent readers:
MAIN-STREAM READING THEORY
Source:National Reading Panel
THE READ RIGHT VIEW
Source:Dee Tadlock, Ph.D.
Phonemic awareness must be explicitly taught because it is a necessary pre-requisite for decoding and word-attack.
Every individual who can speak successfully already possesses implicit phonemic awareness. Implicit awareness is all that is needed to begin to learn to read.
The foundational skill and main event of reading is the ability to easily and comfortably identify each word—using decoding, sight word recognition, and word attack skills. PROBLEM: Neuroscience challenges this view. Neuroscientists have found that the human brain cannot process more than 3 to 7 bits of information at one time before working/short-term memory wipes everything clean and starts over. As a result, syllable-by-syllable and word-by-word reading make comprehension very difficult, if not impossible.
Read this sentence. Keep in mind that it is about pets:
M_ d_ _ l_ _ _ _ t_ b_ _k a_ m_ c_ _.
How is it possible to read this? Rather than decode or recognize words, your brain relies on a different strategy: using minimal phonetic information to “anticipate” the author’s message. Relying on anticipation compels integration of minimal phonetic information with knowledge of how language works, as well as knowledge associated with the subject matter (e.g., “pets”) where ever the knowledge is stored in long-term memory. Anticipation allows the brain to get around the limitations of working/short-term memory. When readers learn to read this way, excellent reading becomes effortless. Read Right uses highly structured methods to coach struggling readers to read this way. The method has demonstrated effectiveness with mild to severe reading problems, including dyslexia.Fluency is a reading skill that can be explicitly taught by encouraging students to identify words faster.
Fluency is not a separate reading skill. Lack of fluency is a symptom that the brain isn’t reading right.
Vocabulary instruction helps students recognize the studied words when encountered in print. Word lists or words used in phrases are often used during instruction.
Research has documented that the act of reading is a major source of vocabulary expansion. It happens seamlessly, often without the reader noticing.
Comprehension is addressed by explicit teaching of comprehension strategies and by providing correction for incorrect answers.
Comprehension does not have to be addressed as a separate skill. Literal comprehension, like fluency, is a by-product of the process when the brain reads right (creating anticipatory sets that accurately reflect the author’s message).
Read Right’s methods are rapid and effective. Dozens of educators, school administrators, parents, and students verify its effectiveness in our Written and Video Testimonials.
We all want the same thing: Reading success for every child, teen, and adult. Read Right delivers! Rather than give educators a manual and set them free to figure out the methods on their own, we provide hundreds of hours of training with students present. Each of our Online Tutors has received the same intensive training. For our Online Reading Intervention Program, see our Online Tutoring Guarantee.
Explore this website to learn more:
- Who is Dee Tadlock, Ph.D., and how was Read Right methodology developed?
- More on the differences between main-stream reading instruction and Read Right.
- Quantitative and qualitative results attained by participating in Read Right.
- Learn more about Read Right Online Tutoring for All Ages as well as Read Right On-Site Small Group Instruction for: K-12,
- College,
- Corrections, and
- Adult Workforce Programs.
Above: Ten years ago at age 8, Ethan recommended for Special Education classes. Instead, his mother enrolled him in Read Right Online Tutoring. With just 9 months of tutoring, Ethan was reading at grade level. Our reading improvement methods lean on procedural learning associated with complex processes the brain performs, not simplistic decoding and individual word identification. How powerful is this approach? His kindergarten-age sister, Allie, wanted to participate, too–and she was reading chapter books by Grade 1.
Above: This video from our Read Right library will show you the “before” and “after” power of Read Right Tutoring for Reading. Throughout their reading intervention experience, struggling readers focus on comprehension. They are never asked to decode individual words because doing so violates the human brain’s limitations on short-term/working memory.
Excellent Reader at Age 6: Very young children can learn to read excellently from the beginning when the methodology is right. Ray Nunn’s parents followed Read Right methodology for early reading development from the day he was born (see “Read Right! Coaching Your Child to Excellence in Reading” by Dee Tadlock, Ph.D., New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005). Ray, pictured in the upper right corner, became a successful reader before starting kindergarten. In October of his kindergarten year, he tested at an upper first/lower second grade reading level. He spent Grade 1 at home, due to the COVID Pandemic. Then, in October of his Grade 2 year, testing revealed he was reading at a Grade 4 level. Seven-year-old Ray accomplished this without EVER being asked to decode a single word during his early reading development. Read Right methodology is powerful for both early reading development and elimination of reading problems.
