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Jennifer is in the fifth grade and reads at the second grade level. She has excellent oral language skills and was able to perform at grade-level in math—until "story problems" came along. Despite efforts to teach her, the struggle with reading and spelling continues. Although her parents continue to hope that she will "grow out of it," the academic achievement gap between Jennifer and her peers grows larger every year. Frustrated and humiliated, Jenny sees her classmates reading and spelling with ease, making her wonder if she is "really stupid." Her teachers wonder if she is "really trying." Jennifer is far from alone. She is among the estimated 20% of the general population with some level of Auditory Conceptual Dysfunction — the inability to discern the sequence, identity and the number of sounds within words. Although they see the correct letters in the correct order, individuals with this dysfunction have no way to verify if their responses match the words they see. This inability to judge "matching" is the cause of their weak reading and spelling. This issue is unrelated to intelligence, motivation or attention issues. The best way to help Jennifer is to provide her with an additional way to verify what she reads. We do this by using oral-motor reinforcement and a highly structured process that teaches students the code. This has proven to be highly effective for even the most severe cases of Auditory Conceptual Dysfunction.
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