The Process of Teaching for Slow Learners

The ability to read is indispensable for students to complete whole of their education. They must have to read in order to get succeed in all areas of the school and college curriculum and to function wholly in the after school world, viz., society, culture, work place, home and all walks of life. But reading is not so simple for many of the children. For almost one-third of the children, reading is a very complex and integrated activity, which scares away them.

As Shakespeare wrote that “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” So many children are good readers and they don’t need too much effort of parents to make them read and learn. But, there a many children who are slow learners, and parents have to put down too much effort to make them read. Getting over the following components of the reading process is necessary if students are to become expert readers.

Appreciation and enthusiasm for reading

There is no denying the fact that the children who are fervent about reading are more adroit readers. Reading is more stimulating to students when they are allowed to read frequently, liberty to choose their reading material, and exposure to an extensive range of interesting reading materials.

Phonemic awareness

The base of the successful reading is relied on the understanding of the individual sound and how they constitute a word together. Children require direction of their parents and teachers to enhance the skills of breaking words into their constitutive sounds and in combining individual sounds together into proper words.  Reading and having the phonemic awareness in the early stages of a child development is one of the basic and most significant skills. Those who have poor awareness of the phonemic are at greater risk of becoming poor readers. So parents and teachers should try to make their children aware of the phonemic. There are many good books, puzzles, flash card games, etc., available through which you can help your child build his skills in phonemic.

Phonics and Decoding

Letters of the alphabet are symbols representing the sounds in words. In reading man decodes or translates the written words in their spoken equivalents. The emphasis is made on correspondence between individual letters or pairs of letters and the sounds they represent in the early stage of decoding instruction. In the next stage emphasis is put on rapid identification of larger units such as syllables. A student can become a proficient decoder and correspondingly a proficient reader once he or she understands the correspondence between sounds and print.

Fluent, Automatic Reading of Text

The decoding process must be fast and accurate in order to be an efficient reader. Once a child becomes efficient enough in decoding his attention and memory processes are strong enough to comprehend what is being read. However, the training of fluency is imperative in order to strengthen the comprehension skills of a student. Children should be given enough practice material which they can decode without much difficulty. At a child’s independent level, where child reads himself, frequent reading and supporting reading material builds automatic word recognition and unblocks a child’s mental abilities for comprehension.

Background Knowledge

However, it is a fact worth considering that a child’s ability of comprehension is heavily dependent on his worldly knowledge. So it is obvious that the reading comprehension skill in a child begins long before he starts going to school. Children those who have more worldly knowledge are likely to have good in reading and understanding of the written material. Even when the children visit to parks, museums, or store they learn something new.  In order to stockpile of information that will facilitate children reading comprehension parents and teachers should read to them. The students learn to access background knowledge while reading when they are taught with best reading instructions.

Vocabulary

The children who have a good bank of vocabulary are good at comprehension as comprehension is dependent on vocabulary. Children who are in habit of reading widely use to learn more word meaning speedily than those who read limited for example, just reading their textbooks. Children must learn thousand of new words every year through various sources like textbooks, comics, novels, newspapers, story books, etc., during their school years. It helps them build a strong vocabulary.

Written Expression

As it is a widely known fact that reading and writing are two faces of the same coin.  So parents and teachers should always keep in mind that effective reading instructions must be included while training the child in expressing his thoughts in writing. Children must be brought in practice of organizing and expressing their knowledge through writing on daily basis. Through this they become able to decode and comprehend the thoughts of other writers.

In order to help children who experience difficulty in learning to read the basic formula is to identify the child’s specific reading problems and to tailor programs which focus on enhancing a student’s unique learning strengths. So devising and preparing a curriculum that specifically focuses on appropriate and practical learning strategies will best help children in slow learning become proficient and efficient readers.