AVAILABLE SERVICES INCLUDE:
FOR SCHOOLS & ORGANIZATIONS AT READ RIGHT PROGRAM SITES: We train staff members employed by K-12 schools, community colleges, universities, and trade schools, in Read Right methods for Small Group Instruction. We also train individuals employed by organizations, such as home-school coops, community or work-force literacy programs.
Appropriate for: Every institution and organization serious about developing reading excellence within a population, and every institution and organization that is tired of reading instruction that hasn’t worked.
ONLINE TUTORING SERVICE / READING INTERVENTION: Individuals of all ages receive in-person reading instruction anywhere in the world where Internet is available through our interactive Zoom-based video-conferencing service. Read Right methodology is grounded in the latest brain science–not old ideas about reading. By design, our tutors and reading coaches focus on the development of READING EXCELLENCE. Our continuous, non-stop output expectation is reading that is fully COMPREHENDED in the moment, as reading progresses, and oral reading that sounds just as natural and comfortable as conversational speech.
Appropriate for: Individuals of all ages with mild to severe reading problems and/or formally or informally diagnosed with dyslexia, ADHD, Autism spectrum disorders, non-verbal learning disorders, and cognitive challenges. Also appropriate or English language learners. Explicit vocabulary instruction is continuous, as new concepts and language are encountered within text.
ONLINE TUTORING SERVICE / READ RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING: The Read Right Primary Core Curriculum is a NEW WAY to develop reading excellence from the start. Online, we call this “Read Right From the Beginning.”
Appropriate for: All non-readers, ages 5 and 6, without or with disabilities. As soon as children immediately recognize the sounds represented by the 18 stable letters of the alphabet (consonants that primarily make one sound) they are ready for our reading program! If they lack the knowledge, parents will be provided with tools and instructions for explicitly and systematically teaching the 18 stable letters and their sounds, or they can have our staff teach their children. When the sound-symbol knowledge children must have as a reading prerequisite is 18 stable letters, phonics isn’t hard or complicated to teach!
Why Do So Many Children, Teens, and Adults Have Reading Problems?
The Answer is Complicated–and It’s Important to Understand Why
The reading field operates on two fundamental assumptions with the potential to negatively effect reading development. These are:
- “Reading experts” actively tell teachers that they must explicitly tell students what they need to do to read. This places virtually all emphasis on what a teacher tells children to do (a.k.a., explicit instruction), NOT a student’s output and developing performance. This idea ignores the reality that every complex thing humans learn to “do” (e.g., crawl, walk, talk, ride a bike, play an instrument, perform a sport, etc.) requires active and on-going implicit experimentation on the part of the learner. In essence, all “how to” things must be “figured out” individually.
- Teachers are also told that the main event of reading must be identifying individual words, one phoneme and whole word at a time, every word in sequence. This is problematic because the human brain is equipped with far more efficient brain systems that, by design, are fully capable of using STRATEGIC INFORMATION to quickly and efficiently anticipate both language and meaning! The brain can use strategic information (the idea that “less is more”) rather than literal information (EVERY individual letter in EVERY word on the page) to anticipate both the language and meaning that authors intend to convey. Learning to read through strategic information and the brain’s naturally-occurring anticipatory systems GUARANTEES comprehension because the focus, from the beginning, is accurately recreating a mean-filled message.
We know with certainty that “reading experts’ ” assumptions are wrong because Read Right methodology has been transforming struggling readers into excellent readers for 40 years without ever asking students to decode a single word. “Decoding” is the fundamental skill associated with phonemes and “synthetic phonics instruction” now taught in schools for both early reading development AND reading remediation. Teachers are told they must deliver this instruction year after year, at every grade level for early reading development (K – 3), as well as reading intervention (Grades 2 – 12). For 170 years, the approach has NEVER WORKED to reliably and systematically improve reading ability. Ironically, failure of the approach has convinced the reading field that dyslexia must be COMMON (no, it’s not) and some individuals will be destined to be dyslexic (not true for most individuals with reading problems).
We encourage you to explore our website to learn more. Better yet, CONTACT US. We’re here because we KNOW that most reading problems can be successfully remediated. AND, because we know that there is a better way to teach children to read from the beginning that will prevent reading problems from forming.
EXPLICIT TEACHING vs. IMPLICIT PROCEDURAL LEARNING
The act of “reading” does not involve explicit information alone (e.g.: the letter “b” says “buh,” “d” says “duh,” the sky is blue, the grass is green, and/or the capitol of the United States is Washington D.C.) More accurately, it is a symphony of implicit brain activity, guided by executive function and supported by anticipatory systems. Thus, reading is a complex process that must be figured out through experimentation by every individual learner.
THE SOLUTION: Create the right kind of environment that enables, or even compels, the right kind of experimentation needed for the brain to figure out all of the complex neural work necessary to make excellent reading 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. CONTACT US for more information–or, read on.
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.
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 integrate STRATEGIC INFORMATION with 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.
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 brand new and 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 more than 100 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.
