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Retraining The Brain

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Our brain is an amazing instrument. Even when damaged or not functioning correctly, it can often be retrained. Retraining the brain involves strengthening the weak areas or developing new pathways to bypass the damaged area. One of the best ways of doing this is by repetition.

This is great news for the many people who suffer from dyslexia. The common idea that people with dyslexia see letters and/or words backwards is not correct. That may be the case with some, but it is rare. The main problem people with dyslexia have is that the part of the brain which connects the letter on the page with the sound it is supposed to make is not functioning correctly. These people are often very smart in other areas.

"The research findings dealt with children who were severely dyslexic and reading well below age level. These children were given up to 80 hours of intervention and after the intervention it was found that their reading levels increased by approximately 2 years in every case. From a brain research perspective their brain scans showed that their brains had been functionally reconstructed." David Halstead M.Ed from www.brainpowerlearning.com

This fits very well with the findings of Dr. Sally Shaywitz, M.D. in her book Overcoming Dyslexia. Dyslexia does not have to stop a person from becoming a good reader. What is very interesting is that many of the ways recommended by Dr. Shaywitz, for helping dyslexic children learn to read are the same ways we, at Academic Associates, use to teach every child - or adult - to read. This may be one reason why Academic Associates has a 98% success rate in teaching people who can speak English, to read. We teach all the phonetic rules in a logical order and allow as much time as necessary for the student to learn to process and apply them. After completing our first lesson, every student will have read 300 words. For some, this is a major accomplishment of which they are justifiably proud.

Academic Associates founder Cliff Ponder deliberately designed his reading program to take advantage of the scientific discoveries of how the brain operates. Training the brain and retraining the brain that has been damaged use the same techniques, so there is no need to have separate programs. The major difference is that retraining the brain may take longer and need greater effort on the part of the learner. Some people with damaged areas of the brain may never become fluent readers, but if they can speak, they can learn to read at least on a basic level. What a joy it is to see people who have struggled with reading or, through an accident, have lost the ability to read to break through in reading accomplishments.

Retraining The Brain

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