Struggling reader
A struggling reader is an individual who faces challenges in learning to read, with many of these individuals being children, although adults can also experience reading difficulties. Research highlights that failure to acquire reading skills at an early age can lead to long-term setbacks, including being held back in school or placed in special education programs. Struggling readers often exhibit weak reading fluency, limited vocabulary, and underdeveloped phonics and comprehension skills. Various factors contribute to these challenges, such as a lack of literacy role models at home or insufficient exposure to language-rich experiences. Issues like vision problems, learning disabilities such as dyslexia, and attention difficulties can further complicate reading acquisition.
To support struggling readers, numerous programs and initiatives focus on enhancing literacy skills, emphasizing phonics and comprehension through engaging teaching methods. Individual tutoring and take-home reading assignments are particularly beneficial, allowing for personalized attention and practice. Encouraging parental involvement is also critical in fostering a positive reading environment at home. Overall, addressing the needs of struggling readers is essential for their academic success and lifelong learning.
Struggling reader
A struggling reader is a person who has difficulty learning to read. Most struggling readers are children, but adults can also have trouble reading. Research indicates that people who do not learn to read correctly at an early age will have trouble catching up for the rest of their lives. Struggling readers often experience setbacks. They may be held back in school, placed in special education classrooms, or assigned to long-term remedial programs. Struggling readers often have weak reading fluency skills, stunted vocabularies, and underdeveloped phonics and reading comprehension abilities.
Reasons for Reading Struggles
Several factors lead to underachievement in reading. Young readers may lack the necessary role models and life experiences that encourage reading skills. Without role models who encourage literacy and model proper grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, students may lose their capacity to absorb reading instruction. Role models can be found in and out of the classroom. Parents and guardians play important roles in developing children's reading abilities. Children who come from homes that encourage reading and writing usually have better literacy skills. Students who lack literacy role models outside the classroom can still benefit from in-class encouragement. Teachers supplementing their reading and writing lessons may utilize audiobooks and design other oral activities to expose struggling readers to proper reading and language skills. However, progress is often made when teachers encourage parents and guardians to be more proactive in supporting their children's literary development.
Students who lack phonics and reading comprehension skills may also struggle with reading. Phonics teaches children to sound out words by their syllables and identify letters with sounds. Phonics also helps struggling readers with compound words. Many compound words have two or more smaller words within them, and phonics skills help students deconstruct these larger words. A lack of phonics skills can impede a student's ability to understand difficult words.
Reading comprehension is another important part of reading. Students who cannot comprehend the information in a story will often struggle with reading. If a child does not know what a train is, then a story about a train will make little sense. Real-world experiences and conversations about everyday events and objects can help struggling readers improve their comprehension skills. Struggling readers may also have a difficult time understanding the main idea of a story and using context clues while reading. This is mainly due to insufficient vocabulary skills. If a child does not understand a word, it limits his or her ability to comprehend key details that can help reveal the story's main idea.
Vision problems such as double vision, eye tracking issues, and eye coordination dysfunction can also lead to reading problems. Eye movement affects how a student tracks letters and sentences. Eye movement troubles can impair a student's ability to communicate what he or she has read. Studies have shown that many students who have trouble reading often have some sort of vision problem.
Some struggling readers may have learning or behavioral disabilities, such as dyslexia or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Dyslexia affects reading and language processing skills. Individuals with dyslexia have difficulty with reading fluency, comprehension, recall, writing, and spelling. ADHD affects a person's ability to stay focused. Many people with ADHD may also have another type of learning disability that can impact reading skills.
Sometimes a student of above-average intelligence has trouble reading. Research shows this is due to insufficient phonemic awareness, or the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual units of speech in spoken words. Before children learn to read, they learn to speak and listen. Failure to learn proper phonemic skills contributes to reading difficulties, as children will be less proficient at matching sounds to letters of the alphabet.
Programs and Initiatives for Struggling Readers
Many programs exist to help struggling readers improve their literacy skills in school and at home. These include the Success for All Foundation, the Reading Recovery Council of North America, and the Writing Road to Reading program. These programs consist of teaching methods that have proven most effective in helping underachieving readers. Remedial reading programs tend to focus on enhancing phonics skills and building listening comprehension. This can be achieved by reading a story aloud to students and then discussing what happened directly after. During this activity, students learn to pay attention and to connect words with sounds, which helps them identify these sounds and words in other texts.
Additionally, many educators find individual tutoring sessions especially effective in helping struggling readers improve their skills. One-on-one settings often prove most helpful for students who have trouble reading. Individual instruction allows a tutor to concentrate on a child's specific needs and create the most beneficial program for him or her. Educators also encourage programs that assign take-home reading. Reading at home can help emphasize what the student has learned in the classroom. Home reading is even more beneficial when parents and guardians become involved and encourage their children's literary pursuits.
Bibliography
Lyon, G. Reid. "Why Reading Is Not a Natural Process." ASCD. Mar. 1998, www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar98/vol55/num06/Why-Reading-Is-Not-a-Natural-Process.aspx. Accessed 27 Oct. 2024.
National Institute for Literacy. "Key Literacy Component: Fluency." All about Adolescent Literacy. WETA, 2007, www.adlit.org/article/27878/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2024.
"Learning Disabilities." Learning Disabilities Foundation of America, ldaamerica.org/types-of-learning-disabilities/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2024.
"What Is Phonemic Awareness?" Begin to Read, www.begintoread.com/articles/phonemic-awareness.html. Accessed 27 Oct. 2024.
Will, Madeline. "What Teachers Can Do to Help Struggling Readers Who Feel Ashamed." Education Week, 4 Jan. 2024, www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/what-teachers-can-do-to-help-struggling-readers-who-feel-ashamed/2022/01. Accessed 27 Oct. 2024.