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Secretary: John Bradford

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(but articles may be printed out for
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Success with the Direct Learning Reading Comprehension Exercise.

The exercise is described at the end of the article.

I've been meaning to write to you for some time to thank you for one of the exercises you suggested I did in the recommendations in your Assessment Report. You suggested reading a sentence slowly and then trying to interpret it out loud. This has really made a difference to my comprehension and confidence about reading.

Although my problems are only slight, over a period of time they have built up. Although I could read, many times when faced with either a large or complicated paragraph of text I would panic and not know how to approach it. It would seem like a block of words coming at me all at once and I would not be able to concentrate and pick the words out one after the other, let alone understand it. I would get impatient with myself, feel I should be able to do it quicker and give up. Many a time at work when faced with difficult text, I would resort to asking someone to help me rather than try to do it myself. Over a period of years this had become quite a mental block.

I used to read some sentences over and over trying to understand them, maybe reading them faster and faster in the hope that the faster I read it the more likely I would be to remember and understand it, but this would just get me more confused.

After a week of doing the exercise each day, I was faced with interpreting and understand a clause in an Industry Standard at work, that previously I would have asked someone to help me with. I felt confident enough to give it a go, and after slowly reading it through, actually understood it! I felt so proud and thrilled and yet couldn't tell anyone because no one is aware of the way I have felt about reading.

Then I hit a bit of a bad patch, got discouraged for some reason, and didn't continue with the exercises for a month or so. Things began to slip back again, although I knew I could do it if only I could motivate myself to do the exercise again.

I needed to find material that really made me WANT to read. Then I found a couple of books a friend had given me, I think they may even be children's books. Each page is a mystery story, which you have to try and solve - the answers are printed separately at the end of the book. I fancied using your exercise to do this, treating it as a bit of a game. Everyday I tried a different mystery and at the end of each page tried to work out the solution. At first I couldn't solve them but soon progressed and was looking for different material to read. Each week I would look forward to get the Sunday papers so that, throughout the following week, I could read the color supplements and articles more thoroughly than I had ever done before.

Then I made a trip to the library, and, after suffering the initial embarrassment of being told in a loud voice that my library card was at least ten years out of date, renewed my membership and had a browse around. However at that time didn't feel I could cope with borrowing books, which would mean a time limit to read them.

Another breakthrough came at work when given some reading material for a training session that previously I would have attempted with feelings of frustrations and hopelessness. I tried to remember the advice you gave in your recommendations about reading a book or report. Without realising it I had picked up the major points written in the text with relatively little effort.

Then I saw a book in a shop that I fancied reading, thought about it for a few days and then went and bought it. I couldn't believe how quickly I read it. I had developed such a mental block towards reading that it had been at least three years since I last attempted reading a book, and even then never finished it.

Now I have become a regular visitor to the Library and have read more books in the last couple of months than in the whole of my adult life. My friends and family are rather baffled by this sudden change, and I still haven't told them why!

I still have to keep doing the exercise, as I notice that things start to slip away if I don't. Some days are better than others, and some sentences easier than others, but generally speaking I am really delighted to be reading, like other people. Now If I don't understand a sentence the first time, rather than reading it over and over, faster and faster, I am trying to discipline myself to go back and do it very slowly to really log the words in my brain.

I haven't found a tutor that could help me with written work, but I am very pleased with the reading situation. It has taken me quite a long time to prepare this and I hope you don't mind me sending you such a lengthy tale, but I just wanted you to know how much the exercise has helped me.

Susan Hawkswood (not her real name).

The Direct Learning Reading Comprehension Exercise
Read one paragraph from a book or magazine really slowly: read the first sentence and then stop and say out loud what it meant to you. Do the same with each sentence, reading back over the sentence until you can say out loud its meaning, or your reaction to it. You may want to say: "That's rubbish!", or "What she means is that . . . ". One paragraph each evening is probably enough. Remember that reading is always twice as hard for dyslexics when you are tired! This will help you with comprehension of what you read.

Read more people's experiences of dyslexia on the following pages:

A social worker writes of her experiences with words.
Finding my own solutions.
Whoa! Major Flashback.