Nalepka Students of Disability Speed Reading? Why Not?

23/Th 1:00 PM White

Type_Presentation: 60-minute Concurrent Session

PresentationTitle: Students of Disability Speed Reading? Why not?

ProgramStrand_Primary: College Reading

ProgramStrand_Secondary: Learning Disabilities

Presentation_description:

A speed reading course isn’t a place most people would expect students with disabilities to excel. As higher education institutions accept more students with disabilities, curricular programming needs to accommodate them. With the use of in-class exercises and the Ultimate Speed Reader software, students with a disability can show an increase of reading speed and comprehension as well.

Session_summary:

When someone thinks about increasing reading rate, the last thing they think about is including students of disability. As higher education institutions accept more and more students of disability, their respective curricular programming needs to accommodate them. Still, what DSS provider would encourage a dyslexic to enroll in a speed reading course? This has been done at Adrian College, successfully, for a number of years now. Through the use of in-class exercises and software, students of disability who have earnestly completed the exercises have been pleasantly surprised by both an increase in reading rate and in comprehension.

The purpose of this proposal is to demonstrate that a speed reading course is a viable contribution to the higher education curriculum, especially for students of disability. Not only do the students do well in the course itself, but the skills learned transition across disciplines thus the “Multiple Intersections” agenda. This benefits not only the students, but also the professors, as the students are more capable of class discussion and intelligent discourse.

In a review of the literature on reading courses at the four-year college/university level, there is barely a mention of instruction in speed reading. In the search, no study was cited that examined the role of speed reading instruction in increasing the reading rate or comprehension of dyslexics or students of disability. Thus the topic of this proposal has no timely research for comparison; there can be no improvement on the issue. The issue itself, one of increasing the rate and comprehension of students of disability, is therefore unique.

Eight plus years ago when I first began teaching the speed reading course at Adrian College, I encountered students of disability that were eager to enroll, and I committed myself to finding a way to help them. I discovered that most students, whether they knew it or not, were perpetuating old primary school bad reading habits of word-for-word reading, regressions, and physical movements that hindered their rate. This was not only affecting their success in college courses, but also affecting their self esteem. Many community colleges have established speed reading courses that enable students to improve in rate and comprehension areas, but most four-year colleges do not, except for the occasional workshop in reading fluency they do not address the issue. How, then can intelligent students of disability who are hampered by slow reading rate and resulting comprehension problems be helped by their disability services department or college curriculum?

A simple semester course dedicated to the diagnosis and remediation of reading difficulties is the answer, with, of course, the addition of a class of students willing to work to improve their reading competencies. The students’ placement reading rates and first day selections serve as a base line measurement, helping an accurate rate. The first three weeks of the course are dedicated to building speed, at the end of the third week, a software program is introduced, and at mid-term, a concentrated effort is begun to increase comprehension. The end result is both increased speed and comprehension with a 190 average gain in words per minute, and a 13% increase in comprehension for the students of disability over the last four years of recordkeeping.

The average gains may not seem like much, but when students enter with average rates of 84 or 123 words per minute, and passage comprehension averaging 30-50% of what they have read, the increases in both loom large in terms of time spent on reading exposition and comprehension of concepts. In my experience, very few of the students of disability who perform well in the speed reading course, regret enrolling. Can these ideas help your students of disability also? I think it is worth your time to give a hard look at what you can do to help them be more successful and faster readers. Speed reading workshops do work also, of course on a more limited scale. If bad reading habits can be pointed out individually, and the student is motivated to eliminate them, they can greatly benefit from the few hours that staff may have invested in planning the session.

This session will cover the general dos and don’ts of fluent reading with an emphasis on the small changes that can be made to enhance reading speed. I plan to use the attendees as examples of bad and good habits, and do some on-the-spot diagnosis of fluency problems with suggestions of how they can read more speedily. The session attendees can generalize these pointers to their own disability population. A Power Point presentation will present points emphasized in the demonstration.

PresenterBio:

I’m a certified Reading Specialist with 11 years experience with special education students in public school settings, and 17 years in higher education working with students of disability and the general traditional and non-traditional college population. I am presently a Learning Specialist, serving on the staff of a Student Support Services grant-funded program at Adrian College, Adrian, MI.