The Right to Read

Chapter 9
Things that Do not Fall from the Sky

Human learning, as we concluded, does not take place on a single level, but is a stratified process. There are certain preliminary skills that need to be mastered first, before any person can learn the skills of adding and subtracting, or the game of soccer. The same applies to reading. There are also skills and experiences that form the basis or foundation of reading and writing.

A “foundation,” according to the dictionary, is the “natural or prepared ground or base on which some structure rests.” This means that “foundational skills of reading” would refer to skills that form the prepared ground or base on which the structure of reading rests. This would further mean that, unless this base has been prepared adequately, no effective reading could take place.

The Foundational Skills of Reading

The reading act is a unitary occurrence, meaning that the actions taking place while one is reading occur simultaneously. However, for the purpose of this discussion, these actions will be divided into steps, and a schematic diagram representing these steps of the reading act is shown below. It is suggested that the reader refer to this diagram throughout the rest of this discussion.

Reception

Reading must be regarded as an act of communication. There is a communicator — the author of the book that the reader is reading, there is a message, transferred to the reader via symbols on paper, and there is a recipient of the message — the reader.

There are many factors involved in the reception of the message when a person is reading. The first of these is that the reader must pay attention. Paying attention is a body function, and therefore does not need to be taught. However, paying attention as such is a function that is quite useless for the act of learning, because it is only a fleeting occurrence. Attention usually shifts very quickly from one object or one thing to the next. The child must first be taught to focus his attention on something and to keep his attention focused on this something for some length of time. When a person focuses his attention for any length of time, we refer to it as concentration. Paying attention therefore, is the body function that makes the skill of concentration possible, just as the functions of seeing and hearing make the skills of looking and listening possible.

Concentration rests on two legs. First, it is an act of will and cannot take place automatically. The will to focus attention on the message must be sustained in order to carry out all the actions needed to fully comprehend the message. Second, it is also a skill, and therefore has to be taught.

Although LD specialists (with our italics) acknowledge that “the ability to concentrate and attend to a task for a prolonged period of time is essential for the student to receive necessary information and complete certain academic activities,”² it seems that the ability to concentrate is regarded as a “fafrotsky”—a word coined by Ivan T. Sanderson, and standing for “Things that…FAll FROm The SKY.”³ Children who cannot concentrate — simply because they have not learned to do so — are therefore frequently diagnosed as suffering from ADD (“attention deficit disorder”). If one inquires what has been done to teach these children to concentrate, one invariably finds that nothing has been done at all. Concentration must be taught, after which one's proficiency can be constantly improved by regular and sustained practice. In the same way, one can also teach them all the other skills that are foundational to reading, and then one finds that the reading ability of a child, for whom reading previously was a seemingly endless nightmare, improves by leaps and bounds.

The next step in receiving a written message is that it must be perceived. In other words, perception must take place. Before one can read or learn anything, one has to become aware of it through one of the senses. Usually one has to hear or see it. Subsequently one has to interpret whatever one has seen or heard. In essence then, perception means interpretation. Of course, lack of experience may cause a person to misinterpret what he has seen or heard. In other words, perception represents our apprehension of a present situation in terms of our past experiences, or, as stated by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): “We see things not as they are but as we are.”

The following situation will illustrate how perception correlates with previous experience:

Suppose a person parked his car and walks away from it while continuing to look back at it. As he goes further and further away from his car, it will appear to him as if his car is gradually getting smaller and smaller. In such a situation none of us, however, would gasp in horror and cry out, “My car is shrinking!” Although the sensory perception is that the car is shrinking rapidly, we do not interpret that the car is changing size. Through past experiences we have learned that objects do not grow or shrink as we walk toward or away from them. You have learned that their actual size remains constant, despite the illusion. Even when one is five blocks away from one's car and it seems no larger than one's fingernail, one would interpret it as that it is still one's car and that it hasn't actually changed size. This learned perception is known as size constancy.⁴

Pygmies, however, who live deep in the rain forests of tropical Africa, are not often exposed to wide vistas and distant horizons, and therefore do not have sufficient opportunities to learn size constancy. One Pygmy, removed from his usual environment, was convinced he was seeing a swarm of insects when he was actually looking at a herd of buffalo at a great distance. When driven toward the animals he was frightened to see the insects “grow” into buffalo and was sure that some form of witchcraft had been at work.⁵

A person needs to interpret sensory phenomena, and this can only be done on the basis of past experience of the same, similar or related phenomena. Perceptual ability, therefore, heavily depends upon the amount of perceptual practice and experience that the subject has already enjoyed. This implies that perception is a skill that can be improved tremendously through judicious practice and experience.

A further important point about perception is that the stratified nature of learning also applies here. Perception in itself consists of a large number of subskills, that can all be automatized. First, there are various ways of perceptualizing, namely visual, auditory and haptic. The latter includes touch perception and kinesthetic perception. Because we read with our eyes, visual perception plays the most important role in the reading act, and will therefore be discussed at some length.

When a person is reading, visual discrimination must take place. All printed letters are set against a certain background. The most important difference between the letters and the background is that they differ in color. Obviously, the first discrimination will therefore be in terms of color. The second discrimination is in terms of foreground-background. The particular letter, or word, or sentence, that the reader is focused on is elevated to the level of foreground, whereas everything else within the field of vision of the reader (the rest of the page and the book, the desk on which the book is resting, the section of the floor and/or wall that is visible, etc.) is relegated to the background. Our Latin alphabet consists of twenty-six letters, each with its corresponding capital letter with a difference in size and sometimes in shape compared to the lower case counterpart. The letters all differ in form or shape and must be discriminated accordingly. Capital letters, being used at the start of a sentence, sometimes look exactly the same as their lower case counterparts, and must therefore be discriminated mainly with regard to size. The letters in dyslexia and DYSLEXIA may all differ in terms of form and size, but must nevertheless be interpreted as constituting the same word. One also does not only read letters, but thoughts, all compiled from a conglomeration of words. A word is made up of a number of letters arranged in a particular sequence. The reader must therefore be able to discriminate the letters in terms of their positions. If a sketch or picture is included in the text, there must be discrimination of dimensionality as well.

One of the most obvious — and one of the most common — telltale signs of dyslexia is reversals. People with this kind of problem often confuse letters like b and d, either when reading or when writing, or they sometimes read (or write) words like no for on, or pot for top. One invariably also finds that these people find it difficult to distinguish between left and right, or that they find it difficult to cross the midline. These difficulties are not signs of minimal neurological damage, as is often asserted, but simply signs that not enough had been done to teach these people to distinguish between left and right, or to cross the midline.

The human body consists of two halves, a left side and a right side. The human brain also has two halves, which are connected by the corpus callosum. Mindful of the wise words of Immanuel Kant that man does not see things as they are but as he is, it is inevitable that a person will interpret everything in terms of his own sidedness. A child or adult, who has not learned to interpret correctly in terms of his sidedness yet, who has not learned to distinguish properly between left and right, will inevitably experience problems when he finds himself in a situation where he is expected to interpret sidedness. (See the Act of Reading diagram in this chapter — sidedness is a “position in space” interpretation.) One such a situation, where sidedness plays a particularly important role, is when a person is expected to distinguish between a b and a d. It is clear that the only difference between the two letters is the position of the straight line — it is either left or right.

It is important to note that people who are confused about left and right cannot use mnemonics or memory aids while reading, as is often advised by experts. Susan Hampshire, for example, advises that children should remember that “left” is the side on which they wear their watch. Girls, she says, sometimes enjoy having their right hand marked with a pretty ribbon.⁶ Serfontein advises that one should put nail polish on the little finger of the student's left hand in order to teach him that reading and writing start on the left-hand side of the paper.⁷ These tricks never work to improve reading ability. This is just like going to China with a Chinese dictionary and then hoping to be able to speak Chinese. One has to learn to speak Chinese. In the same way one has to learn to interpret sidedness. As all the other skills foundational to reading, the ability to distinguish between left and right must be drummed in so securely that the person can apply it during reading without having to think of it at all.

After having discriminated every letter in terms of color, foreground and background, form, size and position, letters must be combined into words. The reader must thus be able to perceive individual parts as a whole. In other words, he must be able to synthesize.

Although the ability to analyze, i.e. to perceive the whole in its individual parts, does play a role in reading, this ability is of the utmost importance in spelling. To be a good speller, one must be able to analyze.

The above events sound very complex, and indeed must be recognized as being just that. In reality they take place all the time — at lightning speed — while a person is reading, but a good reader is unaware of these events because they have been automatized. It can be compared to driving a car. Try to remember your first driving lesson. How hard you had to concentrate on what to do when to prevent the car from wrapping itself around the nearest tree! Now, after many years of experience and of doing it over and over, your driving has become an automatism and you need not even think while you drive. In fact, your mind is probably on something else most of the time, like talking to the other people in the car, or listening to the radio, or looking at the beautiful scenery outside.

Speaking is another example of the importance of drilling some activities to such an extent that they become automatic. Any person, who speaks a language that he knows well, does not concentrate on vocabulary, or on sentence structure, or on grammar. His mind is focused on what he wants to say.

Decoding

However, when a person attempts to speak a language in which he has not become automatic yet, he will necessarily have to divide his attention between the content of his message and the language itself. He will therefore speak haltingly and with great difficulty. As explained in the Journal of Learning Disabilities, “if the skill on the primary task is automatized, it will not be disrupted by concurrent processing on the secondary task because automatic processing does not take up attentional resources. If, on the contrary, the skill is not automatized, it will be disrupted by concurrent processing of a second skill because two skills are then competing for limited attentional resources.”⁸ This also applies to the act of reading. The child, in whom the above-mentioned foundational skills of reading have not yet become automatic, will read haltingly and with great difficulty. The poor reader is forced to apply all his concentration to the reception of the message, and therefore has “no concentration left” to decode the message.

The decoding of the message is a very important aspect of the reading act. Without being able to decode the message, the receiver cannot understand it. This explains why some children can “read” without understanding what they are reading.

Decoding implies that the reader is able to decipher the message, in other words, he is able to ascribe meaning to the written word. This becomes possible first by integrating the message that he is reading with his foreknowledge. Foreknowledge can be defined as the range of one's existing knowledge and past experiences. If one reads something that cannot directly be connected to or tied in with knowledge that one already possesses, one cannot decode or decipher the contents of the message. As Harris et al. state, “What a child gets from a book will often be determined by what the child brings to the book.”⁹

It has been found that LD students often fail to integrate what they are reading with their foreknowledge.¹⁰ The main reason for this has already been explained, i.e. that the poor reader is forced to apply all his concentration to the reception of the message, and therefore has “no concentration left” to decode the message.

A decoding skill that is closely related to that of integration is classification. When a person sees a chair, although he may never have seen a chair exactly like this one, he will nevertheless immediately recognize it as a chair, because he is familiar with the class of objects we call “chair.” This implies that, whenever a name is ascribed to an object, it is thereby put into a specific class of objects, i.e. it is classified.

The Gestalt principle of closure means that the mind is able to derive meaning from objects or pictures that are not perceived in full. W- -re s-re th-t y-- w-ll b- -ble to und-rsta-d th-s s-ntenc-, although more than 25 percent of the letters have been omitted. The mind is quite able to bridge the gaps that were left in the sentence. The idea of closure is, however, more than just seeing parts of a word and amplifying them. It also entails the amplification of the author's message. No author can put all his thoughts into words. This stresses the importance of foreknowledge. If it were possible for an author to put everything related to the subject he is dealing with on paper, the possession of foreknowledge would not have been necessary. That, however, is impossible, as an author can at most present a very limited cross-section of reality and the reader must be able to expand on this before comprehension becomes possible. Poetry is a good example of the importance of foreknowledge. Any person, who is unfamiliar with the Arthurian legend, will probably derive little meaning from a reading of Morte d'Arthur by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Lastly, imagination plays a role in decoding. It is doubtful whether a person really understands something unless he is able to think about it in terms of pictures. When we read or hear a message, the words and thoughts comprising the message call up images in our mind's eye. If this does not occur, the message will not make any sense. If you read or hear a sentence in an unfamiliar language, it will not make any sense to you, simply because none of the words will call up any pictures in your mind's eye. This ability plays a very important role in the decoding of the message. Furthermore, by using one's imagination while reading, one's emotions can be addressed during the reading act.

Learning

Only after a person has decoded a message can learning take place. To learn, a person must be able to store something that he has perceived and decoded, so that he will be able to recall this information at a later stage. It is the ability to recall to memory or to remember that makes learning possible.

Memory is one of the foundational skills of learning that is of special importance in the so-called learning subjects at school or university, where information is presented to the learner, and it is expected that he be able to reproduce it as accurately as possible. However, memory is a skill that is also of great importance to the reading act. For example, recognizing the shapes of the different letters comprising a particular word is an act of memory. Every word also consists of letters in a particular sequence, and one has to remember what word is represented by the sequence of letters in question. Simply by changing the sequence of the letters in name, it can become mean or amen.

It is widely accepted that LD students have poor memories. Scruggs and Mastropieri state, “One of the most commonly described characteristics of learning-disabled students is their failure to remember important information.”¹¹ The problem with LD experts, however, is that they view memory as a “fafrotsky.” For a long time it was firmly believed that IQ was biologically determined. In the same way, it is widely believed that biology decides whether a person has a good memory or a bad, and those who believe that memory can be improved are ridiculed:

Frankly, when we know that we are right, we do not mind at all being laughed at. The important question is, who laughs last?

In an article published in the Learning Disabilities Quarterly Scruggs and Mastropieri evaluated the results of mnemonic instruction in learning disabilities intervention, and concluded, “mnemonic instruction delivers the greatest learning increases seen in the history of learning disabilities intervention research.”¹³

Defined in broad terms, a mnemonic is a device, procedure, or operation that is used to improve memory. Defined in narrow terms — and what Scruggs and Mastropieri mean by the word — a mnemonic is a specific reconstruction of target content intended to tie new information more closely to the learner's existing knowledge base and, therefore, facilitate retrieval. Mnemonics have been used for thousands of years. Having limited access to writing materials, the Ancient Greeks developed complex mnemonic systems for remembering stories, poems, plays and lectures. Many of the Ancient Greek techniques were revived in the Middle Ages, where they were sometimes associated with mysticism and the occult.¹⁴ However, with the invention of the printing press these ancient arts became lost as more and more people relied — sometimes exclusively — on note-taking and on the printed page.

There are a variety of mnemonic techniques, including keywords, pegwords, acronyms, loci methods, spelling mnemonics, phonetic mnemonics, number-sound mnemonics, and Japanese “Yodai” methods. An example of an acronym is to remember the word HOMES to recall the names of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. The purpose of number-sound mnemonics is to recall strings of numbers, such as telephone numbers, addresses, locker combinations or historical dates. To use them, learners must first learn the number-sound relationships: 0=s; 1=t; 2=n; 3=m; 4=r; 5=l; 6=sh, ch, or soft g, 7=k, hard c, or hard g; 8=f or v; and 9=p. To remember the date 1439, for example, the learner uses the associated consonant sounds, t, r, m and p, and will insert vowels to create a meaningful word or words. In this case, the word “tramp” can be used. Spelling mnemonics is intended to help us remember the spelling of words. In order to remember that the word “cemetery” is spelled with three e's, for example, one can picture a lady screaming 'E-E-E' as she walks past the cemetery.

In their research Scruggs and Mastropieri synthesized the results of twenty-four experimental investigations of mnemonic instruction in special education settings. They found that the overall effect size of these combined investigations was 1.62 standard deviation units. According to them this was the highest measure of treatment effectiveness reported at the time.¹⁵ For comparison, Kavale and Forness reviewed previous quantitative syntheses of special education interventions, reporting overall effect sizes ranging from -0.12 to +0.58, for such interventions as reduced class size, special class placement, psycholinguistic training, perceptual-motor training, stimulant and psychotropic drugs, and diet interventions.¹⁶

Scruggs and Mastropieri demonstrate, first of all, that memory can be trained, and second, the importance of memory training in helping LD children. There are, however, at least two problems in improving memory by means of mnemonic instruction. The first problem is that it overlooks the sequential fashion of learning. Mnemonics instruction is, to a large extent, instruction in memory techniques, which should be taught only after the skill of memory has been learned. It can be compared to a child being taught soccer tactics, such as the “wall pass,” while he has not yet adequately mastered the skill of passing the ball. As stated in Knowabout Soccer, “No matter how good your passing technique, if the quality of your passing is poor, your technique will not be effective.”¹⁷ The second problem is that by teaching the child to use memory crutches, the result is, as Scruggs and Mastropieri acknowledge, “On more complex applications, generalization attempts have been less successful.”¹⁸ If the skill of memory is taught, however, the child can apply it in any situation.

The Role of Language

Di dunia kini kita, tiap orang harus dapat membaca…

If one accepts the theory of a so-called “attention deficit disorder” or ADD, lately a very popular idea in the LD field, then those who are unable to read the above sentence all suffer from IRDD, or an “Indonesian reading deficit disorder.” Of course this is a ridiculous idea, but then, as already stated earlier, the idea of ADD, and a learning disability too, must be equally ridiculous. Unless one has first learned to speak Bahasa Indonesia, there is no way that one will be able to read the above Indonesian sentence.

Language plays a vital role in reading. Its role in reading can be compared to the role of running in the game of soccer or ice-skating in the game of ice hockey. One cannot play soccer if one cannot run, and one cannot play ice hockey if one cannot skate. One cannot read a book in a language unless one knows that particular language. If a child's knowledge of English is poor, then his reading will also be poor. This means that the cause of a reading problem can go even deeper than merely that the foundational skills of reading have not been adequately mastered.

If a child's grasp of the English language is inadequate, the only way through which his reading could be improved, would be by not only teaching the skills foundational to reading, but by also improving his command of English. Without effectively working at improving his English, the reading ability of the child will not improve. Let us refer to this kind of problem as a “language problem.” Comprehensive reviews of the evidence that links reading problems and language problems have been extensively presented in the literature. The following are just a few examples:

1. A study in 1970 of Doctor Renate Valtin of Germany, based on one hundred pairs of dyslexic and normal children, found indications of backwardness in speech development and a greater frequency of speech disturbances among dyslexics than among normal children.¹⁹

2. According to Doctor Beve Hornsby it has been stated that about 60 percent of dyslexics were late talkers.²⁰

3. According to Janet Lerner, “language problems of one form or another are the underlying basis for many learning disabilities. Oral language disorders include poor phonological awareness, delayed speech, disorders of grammar or syntax, deficiencies in vocabulary acquisition, and poor understanding of oral language.”²¹

Preschool children suffering temporary deafness over a period of time due to infections of the ear, or children, who have been diagnosed as hard of hearing at a late stage, will often have a language problem. However, the most common indication of a language problem is that the child started talking late, or is language delayed,²² as this problem is referred to in the literature.

In most cases, a baby should be able to understand simple words and commands from the age of nine months. From around a year, he should start saying his first words. From about two years, he should be able to use simple phrases, and by three he should be able to use full sentences. By four, he should be fully able to talk, although he may still make grammatical errors. By five, he should have acquired basic language.

If a child talks immaturely, or still makes unexpected grammatical errors in his speech when he is five years old, this should alert the parents to probable later reading problems. The parents should immediately take steps to improve the child's language. Even when a child is older already, but has a history of late talking, the parents should also follow the advice given in part two of this book to improve the child's language. The method that will be explained (in Part Two of this book) has proved to be extremely effective, but it will also be explained to the reader how and why it works.

Let us consider how a child learns language. Remember that it was explained that there is nothing that any human being can do which he has not learned to do. This is especially true of language. One very often encounters the expression “language development” when referring to the child's acquisition of language. By this expression it is often intended to imply that the child's acquisition of language is an automatic process.

This is a completely misguided idea. Language development should not imply that it is an innate and “natural process” or that the child's knowledge of language grows by itself as the child's physical body grows. In fact, his body will also not grow if the child is not fed regularly. Even physical growth then, does not happen by itself.

Parents should start talking to their little baby from the day he is born. Some mothers are by nature quiet and reserved. Others have the unfortunate idea that it is foolish to talk to their babies, knowing that they do not understand. The mother, who does not talk continually while feeding, bathing and dressing her baby, is laying the foundation for a late talker.

The baby learns language in one way only, and that is by hearing language as the parents talk and talk to it. The more a parent can talk to a child, often repeating the same words, the same phrases, the same structures over and over, the sooner the child will learn language.

An important thing to note here is that by the time a baby is about nine months old, as was mentioned above, he should be able to understand simple words and commands. He may perhaps also be able to say a few simple words already. Invariably, however, one finds that the baby understands much more than he is able to say. In fact, this remains so of any person throughout his life. One is always able to understand more of any language, even one's mother tongue, than one is able to use in active speech. This is even more so of any second or third languages that a person is able to speak.

This shows that we have two more or less separate masses of language knowledge, our passive knowledge (also called receptive language) on one hand, and our active (expressive language) on the other. When we listen or read, we make use of our passive vocabulary, and when we speak or write, of our active vocabulary. An important thing to note here is that the child's passive vocabulary came into being through constant repetition of words, phrases or structures. Once a word, phrase or structure has been repeated often enough, it also becomes part of the baby's active vocabulary. As stated by Dr. Beve Hornsby, a child who is just beginning to talk must hear a word about 500 times before it will become part of his active vocabulary.²³ Long before that it will already form part of his passive vocabulary.

This shows that the active vocabulary can only be improved via the passive. The stratified nature of learning therefore also applies here.

Solving Dyslexia

It was already stated in the first chapter that the key to the solution of most problems is that one must know what causes the problem. Consider again the people who died of pellagra during the early part of the twentieth century. Dr. Goldberger discovered that the disease was caused by a diet deficiency. However, by the time of his death in 1929, he still hadn't discovered precisely what was missing from the diets of pellagrins. During the next decade, Conrad A. Elevjhem learned that a deficiency of nicotinic acid, better known as B vitamin niacin or vitamin B3, resulted in canine black tongue disease. In studies conducted in Alabama and Cincinnati, Dr. Tom Spies found that nicotinic acid cured human pellagrins as well. Tulane University scientists discovered that the amino acid tryptophan was a precursor to niacin. When tryptophan was added to commercial foods such as bread to “fortify” them, it prevented the scourge of the South. Thanks to all these efforts that resulted in knowledge of the cause of pellagra, one doesn't hear about it any more, except for infrequent occurrences during times of famine and displacement.²⁴

Problems with reading, or dyslexia, are at present a very common problem in most parts of the world. The reason for this is simply that the cause of dyslexia has so far remained a mystery. The only way in which the seemingly inexorable downward spiral in reading ability could be reversed, would be if the cause of dyslexia could be discovered.

From the explanation in this chapter and in the previous one, the reader should not find it too hard to come to the logical conclusion that the cause of dyslexia is none other than that the foundational skills of reading and spelling — and often language as well — have not been automatized. These foundational skills of reading, as all other human abilities or skills, are not dormant. They need to be taught, and only by building a “pyramid of repetition,” can they be taught successfully. This implies not only that dyslexia can be “fixed” and “cured,” but also that it can be prevented. If all educators — parents and teachers — take this message to heart, we have no doubt that dyslexia, like pellagra, will soon be eradicated.

Notes

1. Mursell, J. L., Successful Teaching (2nd ed.), (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1954), 210-211.
2. Lerner, J., Learning Disabilities. Theories, Diagnosis, and Teaching Strategies (4th ed.), (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988), 211.
3. Sanderson, I. T., Investigating the Unexplained: A Compendium of Disquieting Mysteries of the Natural World (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1972).
4. Dworetzky, J. P., Introduction to Child Development (St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1981), 183.
5. Turnbull, C. M., “Some observations regarding the experiences and behavior of the Bambuti Pygmies,” American Journal of Psychology, 1961, vol. 74, 304-308.
6. Hampshire, S., Every Letter Counts. Winning in Life Despite Dyslexia (London: Corgi Books, 1991), 309.
7. Serfontein, G., The Hidden Handicap (Sydney: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 179.
8. Yap, R L., & Van der Leij, A., “Testing the automatization deficit hypothesis of dyslexia via a dual-task paradigm,” Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1 December 1994, vol. 27, 660.
9. Harris, K. R., Graham, S., & Pressley, M., “Cognitive-behavioral approaches in reading and written language: Developing self-regulated learners,” in N. N. Singh & I. L. Beale (eds.), Learning Disabilities: Nature, Theory, and Treatment (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1992), 423.
10. Ibid., 424.
11. Scruggs, T. E., & Mastropieri, M. A., “Mnemonic instruction for students with learning disabilities: What it is and what is does,” Learning Disability Quarterly, 1990, vol. 13, 271-280.
12. Lyman, D. E., Making the Words Stand Still (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986), 124.
13. Scruggs & Mastropieri, “Mnemonic instruction for students with learning disabilities.”
14. Yates, F., The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), cited in Scruggs & Mastropieri, “Mnemonic instruction for students with learning disabilities.”
15. Scruggs & Mastropieri, “Mnemonic instruction for students with learning disabilities.”
16. Kavale, K. A., & Forness, S. R., The Science of Learning Disabilities (San Diego: College Hill Press, 1985).
17. Spindler, T., & Ward, A., Knowabout Soccer (Hampshire: The Automobile Association, 1990), 48.
18. Scruggs & Mastropieri, “Mnemonic instruction for students with learning disabilities.”
19. Vatlin, R., Legasthenie — Theorien und Untersuchungen (3rd ed.), (Weinheim: Beltz, 1974), cited in R. Valtin, “Dyslexia: Deficit in reading or deficit in research?” Reading Research Quarterly, 1978-1979, no. 2.
20. Hornsby, B., Overcoming Dyslexia (Johannesburg: Juta and Company Ltd., 1984), 32.
21. Lerner, Learning Disabilities, 320.
22. Ibid., 322.
23. Hornsby, Overcoming Dyslexia, 43.
24. Kraut, A., “Dr. Joseph Goldberger and the war on pellagra,” website address: