Welcome and Introduce Yourself!

Greetings!

Welcome to the Reading and Writing group in the LINCS Community! 

So glad to see you have found your way to this space where we can meet to discuss, learn, and share with each other. Please post an introduction about yourself in response to this thread and let everyone know what you would like to gain from your experience in our group.  Also, feel free to post any questions or discussion topics you'd like to engage in exploring with your colleagues.  Remember to check out the redesigned LINCS website resources at http://lincs.ed.gov

Looking forward to the discussions...

Michelle Carson

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Comments

When I started a discussion about Phonics, Spelling & Dyslexia, and then asked "What is a phonics?" I wanted to eventually describe the relationship between Phonics, Spelling & Dyslexia. My intention was to show that the inconsistency in the way we spell the English sounds we call phonics causes poor spelling and that poor spelling causes dyslexia.

 

I had no idea that the discussion was going to deviate from the original subject of Phonics, Spelling & Dyslexia and get caught up in defining, useless to the learners, linguistic terms like "phonemes." A "phoneme" is the smallest segment of a sound and it add no value to what I am trying to describe.

 

I urge all to define what they think a word means and not to define it using a dictionary or google. In fact, I've alienated many terms, including phonics, from their traditional meaning and granted them my own new meaning.

 

This was my original message here:

Hello All,

About Camilia: My name is Camilia Sadik. I used to teach ABE and I am now a spelling consultant. I spent 15 years dissecting English and developing a curriculum to learn to spell 20 to 50 words an hour.

 

Camilia's Articles: My views are very different from traditional teaching. For instance, I believe dyslexics and poor spellers do NOT have learning disabilities but others who don't understand them do. Some of the articles I have written are:

1- Why can't we spell?

2- Phonics, Spelling & Dyslexia

3- Uncovering the Mystery of Dyslexia by Camilia Sadik

4- Dyslexia Solutions

 

I wish to engage in focused discussions about phonics, spelling and dyslexia solutions. I'm looking forward to meeting you all.

Camilla,

In order to have an intelligent conversation, there needs to be a common understanding of terms. If I define the large green-skinned fruit that is red and juicy inside as an orange, and you know it as a watermelon, we can't have a converstion about watermelon.To me,a watermelonis a small orange fruit with a large pit inside, known to others as an apricot..

The same is true when talking about spelling, phonics and dyslexia. Dyslexia is a learning disability, one of many different kinds. It has a specific meaning. Much research has been done on dyslexia, albeit in the K-12 realm but research is moving into the adult world. In all the reading I have done in the field of  learning disabilities and dyslexia, I have not found a researcher who maintains that poor spelling is a cause of dyslexia. There are many people, without dyslexia, who are less than perfect spellers. I would appreciate knowing what researchers you have found that maintain that poor spelling causes dyslexia.

Since you define words as you please, what is your definition of phonics, and dyslexia? What, in you point of view, is the difference between dyslexia and a reading problem? Not all people with a reading problem are dyslexic. I would appreciate it if you would clarify your definitions.

 

Thanks,

Shellie

Shellie,

About agreeing on terms, that has to come after focused discussions and I can convince you that we need do away with obsolete traditional terms that kept and have been keeping millions illiterate. Part of the problem is that traditional teaching does not know what these terms mean.

 

Just about everything I do or say is dissimilar and I alone have true solutions to reading phonics, spelling words, and preventing or ending dyslexia. Example: A term I've alienate from its traditional meaning is "semivowels" and I granted it a new meaning. Here is a bit about my semivowels theory:  

 

Semivowels: The semivowels l, m, n, r, and s are consonants yet each one of them has some sound. Standing without vowels, other consonants have no sounds of their own. The semivowels, however, do have some sounds of their own, even when not said with vowels. For example, saying the sound of “s” without a vowel still makes the sound of “s.”

 

The semivowels have various effects on the vowels that precede them. For examples, they can sometimes make the preceding vowels long: The “l” in “cold” makes the “o” long, the “m” in “comb” makes the “o” long, the “n” in “mind” makes the “i” long, the “r” in “port” makes the “o” long, and the “s” in “taste” makes the “a” long. My semivowels theory is in five pages. I am willing to share it with you if you ask me to do so.

 

After dissecting English for 15 years and never failing to teach the spelling of 20 to 50 words an hour and never failing to easily prevent dyslexia before the 3rd grade and never  failing to end dyslexia among those who have it, I consider myself an authority on Phonics, Spelling & Dyslexia. An authority can alienate terms from their traditional meaning and grant them new meaning.

 

In addition, I have discovered over 100 spelling rules that no one had seen or heard of before. I've written nine phonics and spelling books and countless articles about phonics, spelling & dyslexia solutions. I try not to post anything about my books here to keep marketing away from these discussions. Let's keep this site for discussions not for marketing.

 

Shellie,

If you wish for me to prove to you that poor spelling causes dyslexia, the answer is in my eight-page article entitled "Uncovering the Mystery of Dyslexia by Camilia Sadik." Please let me know if you want me to send it to you.

 

Kind regards,

Camilia Sadik

Camilia,

 

As commonly understood, dyslexia is an inherent brain malfunction which shows up in reading and other areas, also.

It is probably caused by ectopias in the developing brain of the fetus.

Spelling cannot cause it.  Teaching can remediate it. 

 

Alienating meaning, by which as I understand  you derive new meanings for the words you use, will cause you difficulties here as we probably don't

understand what you are saying.  Possibly some creative teachers can use methods that enable a person to read more easily.  This does not

mean, however, that dyslexia does not exist, only that some methods are more successful than others.

 

Andrea

 

Andrea,

Dyslexia comes in degrees; we see it in spelling as in the reversed spelling of "hte" for "the" and also we hear it in speech as in saying "aks" for "ask." Please ask me for more details if you wish. Of course, if a person cannot read at all, s/he will at a later stage acquire dyslexia in spelling and may or may not acquire it in speech. Dyslexia is about reversing letters and reversing letters is a result of being forced into speed-reading and speed-spelling before learning to read or spell. It is like forcing a baby to run before she can crawl or walk.

 

English is my third language and I acquired dyslexia only in English but not in my other two languages. Languages like Italian, Austrian, Arabic, and German that use the same letter each time that sound is written do NOT have dyslexia.

 

Analyzers & Memorizers: People any people are not born dyslexics but they are born either memorizers or analyzers. Memorizers can memorize the spelling of English words by simply looking at them; analyzers cannot do that. Analyzers may or may not read "character" and if they can read it, they may not remember how to spell it-they may write "karakter" instead. An analyzer cannot memorize anything without logic first; s/he is so logical that he expects to see "My cat is cute." to be written "Mi kat iz qut."

 

Most other languages do not have remedial reading courses; all learn to read and spell before or by the end of the 3rd grade. The reason we have so many who cannot read or spell in English is that one English sound is spelled in many different ways: action, ocean, expression, cushion, etc. In English, every single word must be memorized independently; this is unheard of in languages that use one symbol to write a sound each time that sound is written.

 

I am trying to start a revolution against what is commonly understood: So far, what is commonly understood is obsolete, got us nowhere, and kept most of us illiterate. It was commonly understood that our earth was flat but then Galileo went against all to prove it was round. Like Galileo, I too have countless proofs too long to list here to support all of my discoveries against what is "commonly understood." There is not one person who read what I have written or listened to me in conferences like the COABE conference that did not agree with me; I mean it not one person. My wish is to be discovered by the rest of the world so illiteracy in English can be rooted out.

 

Thank you,

Camilia Sadik

When I read your claim,

I alone have true solutions to reading phonics, spelling words, and preventing or ending dyslexia

followed by,

After dissecting English for 15 years and never failing to teach the spelling of 20 to 50 words an hour and never failing to easily prevent dyslexia before the 3rd grade and never failing to end dyslexia among those who have it, I consider myself an authority on Phonics, Spelling & Dyslexia.

In addition, I have discovered over 100 spelling rules that no one had seen or heard of before,

my first though was that u are not worth reading or replying to. There are hundreds of literacy experts who make the same claims. There have been for at least a century. They are all equally certain of their originality and their worth. 

Many of your claims about English spelling are also not accurate. Not all but only half of English words need to be individually memorised for spelling. English does have 91 main spelling patterns or rules. Most of them have only handfuls of exceptions (e.g. at least 300 words are spelt on the pattern of 'fat, cat, sat, .. rang, sprang'  – with merely 3 exceptions: plait, plaid, meringue).

Literacy progress is most impeded by the numerous exceptions to just 14 patterns, and among those,  the inconsistent use of just 7 spelling ruless or patterns is chiefly responsible for making learning to read and write English exceptionally difficult and slow.

Like u, I learned English as my third language (after Lithuanian and Russian). I have also been analysing English spelling for nearly two decades, and I agree with most of what u say about English spelling and dyslexia:

Most other languages do not have remedial reading courses; all learn to read and spell before or by the end of the 3rd grade. The reason we have so many who cannot read or spell in English is that one English sound is spelled in many different ways: action, ocean, expression, cushion, etc. In English, every single word must be memorized independently; this is unheard of in languages that use one symbol to write a sound each time that sound is written.

Like u, I am also

trying to start a revolution against what is commonly understood.

I see making some amendments to the irregular spellings as the best and most certain way of reducing English literacy problems.

What is your solution?

 

Dear Andrea

Firstly I must confess to being biased.

I have written quite a bit about the development of English spelling myself, especially in my last book, the ebook 'SPELLING IT OUT: the problems and costs of English spelling' (July 2012), with earlier shorter versions on my website (2006) http://www.englishspellingproblems.co.uk/html/history.html and on my blog http://englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-english-spelling-became-so.html (2010).

Donald Scragg's 'The History of English Spelling' (1974) was the first book on the subject which I perused but found unsatisfactory, just like the latest by David Crystal 'Spell it out: the singular story of English spelling' (Sept 2012). Everything written by others that I have read has dwelt mainly on Old English (pre Chaucer) for which we have very little documentary evidence - because of time, wars, fires and plagues, and after the arrival of printing in 1476, people using old manuscripts for lighting fires or turning them into beer bottle stops (acc. to John Aubrey 1626-07).

Several comments in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language had suggested to me that printers had a far bigger effect on the development of English spelling than anything else, especially the ones who printed Tyndale's New Testament of 1526.

So I started researching the subject myself, mainly by reading old texts in their original spellings, starting with the complete works of Chaucer (ca 1340-1400), More's Utopia (1516), Tyndale's New Testament (1526), the 1611 Bible and many others which I could buy or borrow, and constantly collecting old spellings. This has left me very doubtful about the much claimed effects of the vowel the shifts and mostly just amazed by how haphazard, idiosycratic and indifferent to the needs of learners the development of English spelling has been.

Sorry about the long explanation, but I am becoming more and more convinced that general lack of awareness, or downright misinformation, about the development of English spelling is one of the main reasons for wide-spread reluctance to consider improving it.

For a balanced view, u should probably read Crystal's book and mine, although I (of course) think that mine is much better, despite being much shorter.

Masha

Masha,

I have read some other work by Crystal, and I look forward to reading your book, also, I know it will be useful.

I know that the history of English is rather a hash, I wanted to know if there were any patterns in the hash.

I, too, think that the printing press has had greater effect than is generally acknowledged.

Thank you SO MUCH for your explanation.

Andrea

Few people understand spelling. Masha and Camilla give a perspective all teachers should know.

See also The Book of Spells and Misspells, a funny treasure-house of knowledge.  Buy or get the pdf from http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/spelling.htm

 

Far more people speaking English consider themselves as dyslexic than in other alphabetic languages.

The reason is the task - spelling.  Cut unnecessarily difficult spellings and 'dyslexics' will be fewer.

Most people called dyslexic have not had a neurological examination.

Thank You Camilla. I would be most interested in reading your articles.

I must disagree with some of what you posted about semivowels. In the word cold, the l doesn't make the o a long sound. In old English the word was spelled colde, thus the final e made the o long. The same is true of the word mind. The e at the end of taste makes the a long. In the word port, the o  is not a long sound, at least not in the part of the United States where I am. The r does change the sound of the o, however.

Based on your theory of semivowels, how would you pronounce the words for, doctor, born? In my part of the world, none of these words are pronounced with a long o sound.

Thank you so much for your kind offer to send your article to me. I find your theories quite fascinating.

 

Shellie

Shellie,

This is the link to one of my articles entitled "Uncovering the Mystery of Dyslexia by Camilia Sadik": http://spellingrules.com/free-spelling-rules/uncovering-the-mystery-of-dyslexia/

The final e in taste is too far from the "a" because the final e rule only works when there is one consonant between the two vowels, not two "st" and in one syllable of course.

The "o" in "for" can be considered a long "o" but partially distorted by the controlling "r." The second "o" in doctor is a schwa, the "o" in born is also distorted by the "r."

Best,

Camilia Sadik

Hello, I'm Betsy Rubin, the Adult & Family Literacy Specialist at Literacy Works, a non-profit organization in Chicago that provides training and knowledge-sharing opportunities to literacy programs, parent & family programs, and workforce development programs in Chicago. Each year we train hundreds of volunteer tutors and literacy professionals; we also provide writing workshops and parent workshops to small groups of adult learners.

I look forward to the info and resources to be shared by this group via this new medium - just now venturing in after being a longtime subscriber to the old group.

Betsy

PS Literacy Works' website offers extensive lists of web resources. I invite you to check out our Teaching Adults list, among others. (Over the years, we've gotten lots of ideas from fellow listservers!)

Welcome Betsy.

Your knowledge will be very welcomed on ths list.

Thank you for posting the link to your Teaching Adults list. I just skimmed it and found some additional resources to delve into, both for the trainings I do and for teaching teaching my ESL student.

 

Shellie

Hi,

My name is Arlene Crestuk.  I have been an administrator in adult education for 12 years.  My responsibilities include teacher observations and supporting their professional development.  I hope to hear about strategies I can share with my teachers as they strive to increase their adult students' reading, writing and math skills.  We have ABE/GED classes as well as ESOL classes, and we find students in both having undiagnosed learning disabilities.  I look forward to learning more as I participate in your conversations!

Hello I'm Lorna, I'm from Guatemala, I am a native Spanish speaker, I learned English when I was 16 in NY, then came back to Guatemala and became a ESL teacher.  My experience is tutoring teens.  I also volunteer to adult ESL teaching in my community.  I find difficult to motivate people to read in English.  The process of learning ESL in Guatemala is usually very long so people sometimes just quit.  I hope I can learn a lot from LINCS community, so I can improve my teaching skills.

Lorna Lopez

Greetings everyone! I am Susan Naomi Bernstein, a writer and educator in New York City.  My blog for Bedford/St. Martin's, "Beyond the Basics," can be found here: http://blogs.bedfordstmartins.com/bits/author/devenglish/ and my new blog on living and learning with adult ADHD, "Seriously ADHD" can be found here: http://seriouslyadhd.blogspot.com/2012/10/seriously-adhd.html.  Currently I teach GED language arts prep and first-year college writing.

Hi- My name is Laurie Jerome and I am the director of a small, but dynamic Literacy Volunteers Program in Upstate New York. I also write curriculum and other educational materials. My background is in public school teaching, social work, and program development. I am passionate about the respectful reform and development of adult education in our country. As pioneers in this field, we are in a position of power- and need to collaborate to allow our best to surface. I am really interested in what other adult educators think, feel, know and do. 

 

Thanks for joining me for my "I did it" moment of the day.  With the change in the website, it has taken me several weeks to figure out how to open, read, and then comment on a post.

I am a supervisor for adult education and literacy for the state of Missouri. Just nine months ago, I packed up my twenty-five years of experience as classroom teacher, elementary administrator, and reading specialist to move to Jefferson City to work in adult education.  The LINCS community has been invaluable to me as I am a self-described "PD junkie," as I attempt to find the common ground between my work with children and my new position of leadership in adult education.

I am most often just a creeper in the community, and I try to read posts daily (now that I have figured out how to).  I would guess that for every frequent poster, there are probably dozens of readers.  As you can see from these comments, besides being interested in the content of Reading and Writing, I am also investigating tools of technology, and specifically discussion lists in terms of professional development for our AEL teachers.

I'd like to give a shout out to Kaye Beall who led me through the LINCS door and into this great community of learning.

 

 

 

 

 

Hello to all!  I am glad to be catching up with the rest of you -- making the jump to the new format.  By way of introduction, my professional interests include: reading comprehension instruction; learning differences; the history of reading and readers; the future of reading and readers.  My work has, for well over two decades, been focused on the use of scrolls -- the ancient rolled book -- to reach struggling readers and to teach comprehension skills and course content to all readers.

The unrolled scroll is the only book format that is explicit -- which is to say that it is literally "unrolled" (ex + plicare), and hence fully revealed and wide open to understanding.  No other format does this -- which is why I think that scrolls are such a good fit for teaching and learning.  You'll find more about my work in the following places:

* www.textmapping.org* http://www.textmapping.org/whWorkshopNotes.html* http://www.textmapping.org/comments.html* http://pinterest.com/source/textmapping.org/* http://www.classroom20.com/profiles/blogs/649749:BlogPost:190834 

Hello to all!  I am glad to be catching up with the rest of you -- making the jump to the new format.  By way of introduction, my professional interests include: reading comprehension instruction; learning differences; the history of reading and readers; the future of reading and readers.  My work has, for well over two decades, been focused on the use of scrolls -- the ancient rolled book -- to reach struggling readers and to teach comprehension skills and course content to all readers.

The unrolled scroll is the only book format that is explicit -- which is to say that it is literally "unrolled" (ex + plicare), and hence fully revealed and wide open to understanding.  No other format does this -- which is why I think that scrolls are such a good fit for teaching and learning.  You'll find more about my work in the following places:

* www.textmapping.org* http://www.textmapping.org/whWorkshopNotes.html* http://www.textmapping.org/comments.html* http://pinterest.com/source/textmapping.org/* http://www.classroom20.com/profiles/blogs/649749:BlogPost:190834 

Hello everyone! 

I hope you all weathered the hurricane?

Well, my name is Brenda and I am currently a student at Marywood College- non traditonal (aka "older"). I have worked in the human service field for over 15 years, as well as with pre school children who are ESL and who come from a low SES. I have a son that suffers from dyslexia, and volunteer with an adult literacy program. Readin and writing skills are of the utmost import, and I feel that it is a community responsibility to ensure that everyone has the oppurtunity to learn...(how can you vote if you can't read the ballad or directions on the ballad?, how can you fill out an application, or know which shots your child is required to have, or even how to read your own perscription bottles....?)

I have joined this site in the hopes that I will be able to learn something from the other members, and will hopefully make some connections....

I look forward to meeting everyone, and to "picking each others brains".

Thank you for the welcome!

Sincerely,

Brenda

 

I have been a teacher at all levels, from preschool to adult and migrant literacy, and so saw how disadvantaged students had to work harder than ordinary students, at any stage. Schools psychologist chiefly but not only in disadvantaged schools. Academic positions at Melbourne, Monash and Aberdeen Universities in departments of Psychology and Education; clinical child psychologist at the Royal Children’s Hospitals, Melbourne and Aberdeen. I carried out experiments which showed how much the unnecessarily difficult spellings handicapped the disadvantaged, dyslexic and foreign-born, and how simply removing this difficulty made it possible for most of them to learn more easily.   Unfortunately this was the period of Whole Language, and the establishment was hostile to phonic solutions and experiments in spelling. However I experimented even with the great and good at conferences - http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/spelling.htm#word  (Can you spell?  The best of us may not be perfect.) 

Now my experiments may be replicated by anyone, and my literacy innovations in all areas of literacy may be copied by anyone. 

 

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/literacy.htm

 

 

 

Thank you for welcoming me to the group!  My name is Jennifer DeCoste and I am a teacher and administrator at a local adult education center in Keene, NH.  I work with ABE, ESOL, GED and ADP students and have found that my background as a Reading Specialist really helps.  As a member of this group, I hope to learn more about teaching reading and writing to adult learners; I look forward to future discussions!

Ms. Carson: 

My full name is LORIE C WEEDEN,  but go for lorywee67, from Knoxville, TN.

I work with the Knoxville Senior Aides Program, teaching Reading & Writing (spelling included) for the last seven months.

I hope and look forward that Reading and Writing activities be more comfortable for these adults.

Thanks Ms Carson.

lorywee67

(I'll be out of the country for a couple of months and be back by January/2013, God willing.) 

My name is Carey Reid.  I work with the System for Adult Basic Education Support (SABES), which provides staff development activities for practitioners in state-funded literacy programs in Massachusetts.  Our office is located at World Education, where we help coordinate the activities of five regional training centers around the state.  I get to hobnob with fellow COP members such as Kaye Beall, a great WE colleague, and Wanona Dobbs, a fine teacher who labors in the fields of Western Massachusetts. 

I'm very grateful to Charles MacArthur, Judy Alamprese, and Deborah Knight for producing the full course of reading instruction for adult new readers posted for free at...well, I've just learned that it's hard to cut and paste into these Comment boxes, so you'll have to scroll back to Charles MacArthur's message to find the link. 

Your ever tech-challenged colleague,

 

Carey Reid

Staff Developer for Licensure, Assessment, and Curriculum

SABES @ World Education, Inc.

 

 

The Reading Crisis is a thought-provoking video.  However, as an adult edcuation coordinator at a community college, I find it difficult to share great information like this when, within the first 30 seconds,  a blatant error in word usage jumps out at me:  "Half of all high school freshman..."  ?? 

There really is a literacy crisis in this country. 

 

 

Hola,

I came across the LINCS site through a colleague here at work.The LINCS site has a plethora of information that will be conducive to my job.  I work at Texas A & M International University (TAMIU) in Laredo, Texas. As a member of the bilingual faculty, one of my assignments is to teach a reading class. Actually, in my class, teacher candidates learn how students transfer the knowledge skills they possess in their native language (L1) to the English language (L2). It's a pleasure to be a member of the LINCS Community, and I look forward to learning from all stakeholders that are a member of this particular interest group.

Hello, I am a school improvement specialist working with elementary schools on increasing student achievement through data driven instruction. I also have extensive experience with strategy based instruction with an emphasis in writing. I look forward to reading the blog and learning from each other. 

 

 

Hi everyone, my name is Jenelle and I'm in a Masters of Adult Education program through Oregon State University.  I am currently doing my internship at the library, and was approached by a librarian who wants to start an adult literacy program.  To make a long story short, I am starting the first adult literacy program in our area, which the library has already approved.  I'm startnig on the legwork, hoping to be up and running by September.

What I would really like, is to be able to talk to someone either through email or on the phone, who works for or with an adult literacy program.  I have some questions that I need clarification on, such as whether or not using literacy levels is helpful, and if so, which ones?  I've done so much Googling and found many different "level" systems, but am not sure which one to use, if any.  There's the NAAL system of 4 levels, and others with 3 stages, or 5 stages.  

This topic is entirely new to me and I am in over my head, but determined to keep researching, talking to people, and making a go of it.  If anyone would be willing to take the time to answer a few questions via email or phone, please let me know! 

In the meantime, I'm finding a wealth of information on this site and have been downloading documents to read.  What a great resource!