Struggling readers, dyslexia and the power of immersion reading technology
My son has always struggled with reading. Primary school suggested it was due to him being a summer born boy but, as his friends moved onto Harry Potter whilst we were still reading Horrid Henry, I started to think there was more to it. He knew his phonic sounds and could recognise high frequency words however when reading books he read slowly, tired easily and was unable to recall any of the stories afterwards. Aged 10, we had him assessed by an Educational Psychologist who diagnosed dyslexia, poor working memory and extremely slow processing — his processing speed score of 66 placed him in the lowest 1 percent of his age equivalent peers. It was a huge relief to know that there was a reason for his difficulties but now the challenge was on to understand how best to help him.
Whilst working part-time as a software developer, I studied for a diploma in teaching learners with Dyslexia and Specific Learning Difficulties. It was a busy year, switching context from coding to lesson planning and essay writing but I loved it. My teaching placements demonstrated the challenges of teaching older learners who often had low self-esteem and resented being singled out for extra support. Although I agreed that teaching spelling rules and strategies for reading comprehension were extremely important, I could also see that technology could play a vital part in giving a struggling learner independence.
One evening I re-read our Educational Psychologist’s report and came across across a recommendation towards the end which I had skimmed over previously.. “explore the Whispersync app … [to gain a] multi-sensory reading experience”. After some research, I discovered that this referred to a technique called immersion reading where the text in a Kindle eBook is highlighted as the professionally narrated companion Audiobook plays. Thinking I had nothing to lose, I downloaded the Kindle version of David Walliams’ Demon Dentist along with the associated Audiobook to my iPad, gave my son some headphones and asked him to read a chapter as we drove down to the south coast to see family. Within a few minutes he started giggling.. “Mum this book is hilarious!”. What! Hang on! A positive comment from reading a book, this has never happened before! Ten minutes later, “Mum this dentist is so mean to the children, you’ll never believe what she does”. I was shocked, not only was he understanding what he was reading but he was enjoying it! For the next hour he continued to read, without any prompting, only pausing occasionally to tell us more amusing extracts.
Two weeks later, all 441 pages had been read. I asked my son why it was so much easier to read like this and he explained that with the sound added, he could imagine the characters and create pictures of the story, a skill that for him, is missing when viewing text alone. The audio also removed the burden of constantly performing the complex process of matching written characters to known words and from words to voice output, translations that for someone with very slow processing are extremely draining.
After witnessing this success, I considered what our next steps were. For a number of years, our local school has participated in the Accelerated Reader (AR) programme, intended to motivate children to read and enabling teachers to identify children who may need literacy intervention. For some parents it can be an exciting opportunity to see their children become word “millionaires”, for others, like me, it highlights even more starkly how far behind your child is from his peers who are natural readers. That said, I fully support the idea of AR and we are lucky enough to have an amazing school librarian who understands that many children are reluctant or struggling readers and ensures that the library is stocked with graphic novels, Hi-Lo readers and publications from Barrington Stoke so the children are able to quiz and gain points on these more accessible readers. The problem was though that every physical book seemed “effortful” for my son to read and the more I pushed him to read, the more he rebelled. Now in Year 8 and sitting at the bottom of the class in terms of AR points, I could see his lack of reading was limiting his vocabulary and significantly affecting his ability to access many areas of the curriculum.
I decided it was time to download teenage level books and use immersion technology to get him reading again. We made a deal, if he read 300,000 words before his next birthday we would buy him a mobile phone. This gave him seven months and equated to about eight books of around 300 pages each. I then downloaded ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ (age range 14+) and we agreed a schedule of twenty minutes reading per day. Each evening we’d talk about the chapter he had read and use Post-its to created a summary of the characters and the plot so far. Two weeks later the book was finished and he took the AR quiz. Passed! 46797 words read! But most importantly, he’d told me how much he was enjoying the book and some evenings had even asked to read for longer! One month on and he has read and quizzed on “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” and is half way through “The Boy at the Back of the Class”, books he could never have read in solely written form. He has even pointed out discrepancies between the audio commentary and the eBook indicating he is scanning the text and not solely listening to the story.
Immersion reading requires both the audio and eBook to be purchased as well as access to a suitable device. Not all titles support immersion reading, the easiest way to check this is to select the Kindle Edition and see whether an option to “Add Audible narration” appears as shown in the screenshot below.
Alternatives to immersion reading include the Text to Speech feature on the Amazon Fire or the Voiceover feature on iOS. These are definitely worth trialling however the computer voices do not provide the expression that professional narration gives and the text is not highlighted as it is spoken. Our local library loans Audiobooks for free but these are not synced to the text and only run on specific devices.
As well as developing educational software, I am now working as a Dyslexia Tutor in a state senior school and have trialled immersion reading in a 1:1 setting with other children with very low reading ages and seen the same positive results. The children love the fact they can access texts independently and adjust the reading rate, text size and background to suit them. The teachers benefit from having English Literature texts made accessible. My next challenge is how we fund the purchase of more devices and content to make immersion reading technology the norm for all struggling readers in the classroom.
A very special thanks to our Educational Psychologist Julia Busch Hansen for her diagnosis and for her suggestion to trial immersion reading.
