Consider your reply if you were asked to list the words most frequently missed in reading, spelling, and/or writing by the child with a learning disability. In spite of the fact that teachers are familiar with these words, authors have continued to record this information in various ways. These words have been printed on cards for the teacher to flash before the child’s eyes; others have included these words in “high-interest” stories for all age groups. The words “who”, “what”, “where”, “when”, “why”, and “how”, regardless of the presentation, remain an abstract language concept if the emphasis is continually placed upon the visual configuration of the words.
Nebulous hypotheses have been proposed and devised to “cure” a child of this strange phenomenon – the inability to read. By some miracle, a few are helped to continue their struggle with the visual code while many others are doomed to the label – a reading problem. In recent years, the list of possible approaches has become longer and more complicated. To mention a few – some advocate physical activities, such as crawling, walking a board, or swimming. If one must swim before he reads, then this author can assume that all excellent swimmers are fluent readers! Others recommend a visual approach, emphasizing the configuration of visual symbols. The recommendation for initial training consists of recognition of form, manipulation of puzzles, color clues to show relationship of the parts to the whole, reproduction of designs, and exercises to strengthen eye movements. If the academic subjects of reading, writing, and oral language are ignored, the child does not learn to read, write, or consider which part of the total program can be accredited with the final results. In isolation, neither eye exercises nor angels in the snow can teach Japanese or any other language to students.
This author is of the opinion that the abstract concepts of the language and the words that describe the child’s world and the world beyond him are the important factors that have been completely ignored by educators. Language can be learned if it is taught. The deaf child who learns the language has perfect perceptions of his world; the deaf child who does not learn the language could have the same difficulty as the hearing child who does not learn the language because he may have imperfect impressions of his world. The blind child can learn the language if he has been able to grow with intact perceptions of the environment; the blind child who has not been able to perceive the abstract conceptions of his world can be expected to have the same difficulty as the seeing child with a learning disability. This child with a learning disability must begin to learn the language as the normal child learns to speak.
Except for the disability of nominal aphasia (the approach will be the same) the words that are most easily understood are concrete – the “who” and “what” words. As an example, consider the first words the child learns. These are usually Ma-Ma and Da-Da. They are concrete; they are the “who” words within this child s experience. The vocabulary increases as the child gains experiences and is able to project himself out of his home environment to the world about him. His vocabulary increases to “what” words, such as dog, or he will point to the sky to identify the airplane. Very gradually discrimination begins to occur in the language as Ma-Ma can be used as I, mother, woman, teacher, she, and her – the ambiguities of the language are endless. The oral language becomes complicated and particularly so for the child with a learning disability. The teacher can only project these to the difficulties encountered with the printed and written word. These “who” and “what” words “do”. The language becomes even more complicated as the “do” words change form according to the time when “who” and “what” are involved in action.
The language is now dependent upon the child’s ability to analyze “when”. The child with a learning disability, who cannot discriminate between present, past, and future, is further inhibited with this lack of concept. Teaching the “do” words will be dependent upon concept of time.
The “where” words are as equally dependent upon the concept of spatial relations.
Everything must happen someplace! Note, the abstract concept that the child must be able to project to understand. The child’s weird perceptions of himself, the people around him, the things that are happening, and the places and times where they are happening cannot build perfect concepts of his world. How can we expect him to interpret letters on a page relating to the abstract world?
Let’s make it concrete for him. Let’s make his perceptions of the world concrete. Picture in your mind the totally impractical idea of the teacher who could bring a cow into her classroom. On the side is written these words:
- cow – what
walk – do
today – when
in the classroom – where
These questions are then written for the child:
- What is in the classroom?
What did the cow do?
When did the cow come?
Where did the cow go?
This is an example of a concrete experience for the child. Replicas of objects and, secondly, pictures can provide similar experiences for development of language. The importance of the material is secondary and not the primary concern for the teacher and the child.
The material used initially will be replicas of objects within the child’s experience – e.g. home, school, and community. After the initial ground work of language, printed word, and written words are established as labels for the child within his experience, then and only then will the child be able to use the transitional concrete models or pictures which will assure understanding in a vicarious or abstract setting.
The presenting of concrete materials is of utmost importance as well as the use of modality for learning. The symbol or visual code must be interpreted and reproduced first auditorally, secondly from the visual symbol, and finally reproduced to a visual code.
Simply stated the child learns to decode most readily auditorally initially.
Both types of disabilities need an auditory approach – the first type of disability to strengthen or integrate visual to auditory, and the second type of disability to integrate the visual to the auditory. The process is a reverse process of visual to auditory and opposite auditory to visual. In both cases the child is unable to code visually or to code auditorally; but, in both instances, the two processes of visual and auditory perception must be synthesized in order to complete the cycle of being able to understand spoken language, produce spoken language, read language, and write language.
In conclusion then, all problems for all these children are basically language problems based upon concept formation. It would seem that if we approached all learning disabilities from this approach, many confusions of different types of disabilitation would be clarified. Further emphasis should be placed upon the child who seemingly is without disability in visual areas; this child codes visually but encounters difficulty in math and/or social studies. It is this group of children who have fooled teachers for years. This is reflected in the stock answer, “but he reads well.” Many of us can “read” highly technical material with absolutely no understanding of the content. It is “parroting” visual code the same as the child that can parrot speech. Perception of the visual code or auditory code of language is only the first step to learning. The second is dependent upon the first. The second step must be comprehension, integration, association, and finally memory of the language so that the third step of reading with understanding, writing, and speaking will enable the child to communicate in his environment.
In contrast to a child without a learning problem, this child cannot learn incidentally but must be taught language concepts deliberately. They must be taught with concrete examples which are first taught auditorally and second visually. It must be concrete before the abstract symbols are conceptualized. Training through either the strong or weak auditory modality is the same for each type of disability.
The magic for learning is not contained on any printed page. Text-books have been written for the child who can advance in learning from 1 to page 200 and for the child who needs remediation on page 110. It is time we face up to the fact that remedial reading cannot be remedial if the child has no concept of the language upon which to base his reading. If remedial reading has worked, why do we still have the child with a reading problem? We, as teachers, have been spinning our wheels; the child has been practicing his mistakes!
This author challenges you to really observe a child with a reading disability in a classroom setting. He becomes withdrawn for his lack of communication and his face reflects the lack of communication in its mask-like countenance, or he learns to hide his concern with a perpetual grin that is more acceptable or more infuriating to those about him. In either case, he “covers up” for his lack of communication with people.
This author recalls experiencing a reversal problem while driving in the car. When approaching the street sign at an intersection, the sign read “spot” instead of “stop”. Past experiences and perfect concept would not allow letters to remain reversed, as the letters soon reverted to the proper message. Teaching would be simplified for the child if we could find the “cookbook” for dealing with such problems.
However, it remains that the teacher must bring the cow in the classroom, as it will be “for real.” The “real” is now for understanding and the basis for understanding the yesterday and the tomorrow. The direction problems, the sequence problems, the co-ordination problems, and the behavior he will learn to live with because, as with the blind or the deaf, they are his handicaps to live with the remainder of his life.