In reading, we gain tons of information.

A person who
knows how to read can educate themselves in any area of
life they see fit. That is why as early as 3 years old, we teach
kids how to read and build their vocabulary, so that later
on, they can discover new things on their own.
 Reading also builds self-esteem. When you are well
read, people will look to you for answers which also builds
self-confidence and self-worth.
It also keeps you from being ignorant and naive from
anyone or anything that tries to deceive you.
 People with low literacy find it hard to do everyday
things that others take for granted such as:

1. Parents may not be able to help their children with

homework, or to understand letters they receive from the
school.

2. People may have difficulty understanding the newspaper,

so they don't find out about important community notices
and other information.
 3. Drivers who get tickets may not be able to understand
the instructions on the ticket. This could cause more legal
problems for them.
4. People who can't understand contracts and due dates
may get into financial and legal difficulties.
5. People who don't read well may avoid reading their mail,
which could lead to problems like getting their electricity
cut off or not attending at court when required.
 6. People, who don't understand instructions from the lawyer,
counselor, or probation officer, can't follow those instructions
properly. As a result, their legal problems get worse instead of
better.
7. People who have poor literacy skills may have trouble
organizing information, following a line of reasoning and keeping
track of a set of instructions.
A. Socio-Economic Factors
B. Technical Factors
C. Cognitive Factors
 A. Socio/Economic Factors
• Parents with little schooling
• Lack of books at home and lack of stimulation as to the
importance of reading
• Doing badly at or dropping out of school—many have
not completed high school
• Difficult living conditions, including poverty
• Inadequate provision of schools
• Inadequate number of properly trained teacher
 A. Socio/Economic Factors
• There must be a program to teach parents how to read.
• Increase Family’s awareness of the importance of early
literacy or how to foster its development.
• Give used books to others who are in need.
• Encourage students to finish their education
• Government and School owners must provide higher
budget and quality services for the school.
• Government must increase salary of teachers and
improve standardization of LET.
 B. Technical Factors
• Guessing short words instead of reading it letter by letter
• Guessing short words instead of reading it letter by letter
First, we take the visual strength of the child and use it to
help guide the child towards proper phonic decoding of the
text. This allows the child to access the phonemes within
each word and then blend them successfully, without
needing outside help.
Second, we create games that can be easily won if the words
are decoded in this way, but are impossible if the child tries
to use the familiar strategies of sight-memorization and
guessing.
 B. Technical Factors
• Struggling to decode long words
 • Struggling to decode long words
Decoding of long words is very difficult. One key element of
learning to read by decoding is that you have to hold various
complex bits of information in your short term auditory
memory. If your capacity for short-term memory gets
overloaded, then you will lose part of what you are trying to
remember and the reading process will fail. The more
practice that you get, the easier it becomes, And then the
more spare declarative capacity you have for processing the
meaning of the text.
 B. Technical Factors
• Skipping words and whole lines of text
 • Skipping words and whole lines of text
If you ask someone to look for something around a room, you will see that
their eyes do not scan smoothly, but jump from spot to spot. An area of the
cerebellum called the flocculus is helping to control that process. If it is not
working well, then scanning text is hard.

First, check that your child is getting the right Omega 3 oil. The reason that
omega oils are important is that your neurons are coated in them and it
affects their speed of operation.
 • Skipping words and whole lines of text

Second, get your child to do a simple exercise to work the

cerebellum:

Sit on a chair, keep your head still put your arm out in front of you
holding a pencil vertically. Then move your hand in a circle (as if you
were drawing a circle on the ceiling) in front of you while following
the pencil steadily with just your eyes. No head movement allowed!
You need to track with your eyes only.
 B. Technical Factors
• Difficulty with blending
sounds
• CVC = dog, lap, sat
• CCVC = Chop, Star, Drip
• CVCC = Bell, Sort, barn
• Etc.
 • Difficulty with blending sounds

Auditory Processing Weakness (APW) is a common cause of reading

difficulty. This weakness can significantly affect a child’s ability to learn how
to read, because it is hard to work out the sounds in words when you have
APW. That then makes phonics very hard to apply as you try to read. First,
provide a visual learning material which has consistent structure for the
sounds. Every time the child sees those words, that child knows the sound
that it is associated with, and that sound never changes. As a result, the
child is able to rely on their visual strengths to learn to read phonetically; a
knowledge which provides a strategy for decoding all unknown words.
 B. Technical Factors
• Very poor fluency
• Some people are quite good at
decoding, but they never start to
read the words effortlessly and
with expression. This can be like
listening to a machine gun of
word sounds making up the
words, using phonic rules, But it
never turns into proper reading.
 • Very poor fluency
Some children develop a good
ability to decode words, but are
always stuck laboriously decoding
them without it becoming fluent.
The reason for this seems to be
that they are building a mapping
of letter patterns to sounds with
the letter patterns stored in their
general visual memory (blue), not
the specialist “letterbox” cortex
(red) normally used by most
readers.
 • Very poor fluency

“Have you ever raed txet liek

this that smeoone has
scarbmled? Amzaignly you are
geenrlaly able to raed it quite
flnuetly.”
 • Very poor fluency
The reason is that we are using the letterbox cortex that is able to
do an instant anagram on the letters of the word. The scrambled
text shows the power of this cortex. And the letterbox is able to do
it so fast with normal text that it feels as if you are identifying the
words by sight.
 • Very poor fluency
Solutions for fluency block
We find that two processes help fix this situation.:

• We always get the children rereading each phrase or sentence

until it is fluent.
• We use an anagram game to get them looking for familiar
patterns in apparent randomness.
 B. Technical Factors
• Battles and meltdowns
• Reading practice can
often turn into a tantrum,
or you may alternatively
see a sullen silence. Both
patterns are caused by
the same thing..
 • Battles and meltdowns
Reading is very much a higher brain function. So it is no surprise
that stress is generally a negative input when learning to read.
However, as anyone knows who has helped someone struggling to
read, stress levels can rise very quickly, sometimes for everyone
involved!

There are various ways to achieve that and avoid these stress
spirals.
 • Battles and meltdowns
• First is to make the process genuine fun. We use silly and
sometimes slightly rude imagery that gets children laughing.

• Second is to make it seem OK to find the whole thing hard. We talk

to the children quite a lot about that.

• Third is to create a path that seems achievable. It gives the learner

the capability to work through difficult words without needing
help. So that moment of failure has been turned into a moment of
triumph. create a scaffolded environment where the learner is
doing tasks that are challenging by doable.
 C. Cognitive Factors

• Letter Box Cortex is not yet fully developed

For young children, the process of getting from print to

meaning is slow and effortful. This is partly because
beginning readers have not yet built up a store of familiar
words that they can recognize by sight, so they must instead
“sound out” each letter or letter sequence.
 • Letter Box Cortex is not yet fully developed
Children must practice decoding words so that they forge new
connections between the visual and spoken language areas of the
brain, gradually adding new letters and words to the brain’s all-
important letterbox. Literacy instruction can support children’s
learning by highlighting the symbolic nature of letters - in other
words, by drawing attention to the relationships between letters
and speech sounds.

Here, evidence from brain imaging research and educational research converge to show
that early phonics instruction can help construct an efficient reading neural network in
the brain.
 C. Cognitive Factors

• Learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, dysorthographia,

etc.

• Reading disorders cannot be cured, but people with these

disorders can overcome specific problems, learn to read,
and improve fluency and comprehension with proper
instruction, especially if they receive help and instruction
early.
 • Learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, dysorthographia, etc.
• Appropriate referrals to a special education (SPED) setting, specialized
tutoring setting, or both can prove important for long-term progress and
improved reading performance. Once the learning disorder of dyslexia or
dysorthographia have been recognized and delineated, various methods
of treatment should be used to assist the child's academic development.
Remedial teachers, speech and language therapists, and occupational
therapists can all be very valuable in the management of children with
learning disorders and may also further refine the spectrum of clinical
findings for the pediatrician. Remedial help has been found to have some
benefit for dyslexic children, although the research is not universally
supportive.
B. Technical Factors = Texts are too small.
SOLUTION = Make the text larger.
References:
http://www.letsread.com.au/About/Why-Is-Reading-Important
https://www.fondationalphabetisation.org/en/causes-of-illiteracy/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/olmstead/why-is-reading-so-
difficult/
https://lblreaders.org/page.aspx?q=consequences-of-low-literacy
http://tiptop10ten.blogspot.com/2012/10/top-10-causes-of-illiteracy-in-
world.html
http://www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?e=d-00000-00---off-0cdl--00-0----0-10-0---0---
0direct-10---4-------0-1l--11-en-50---20-about---00-0-1-00-0--4----0-0-11-10-
0utfZz-8-00&cl=CL2.5&d=HASH013a336658db140e40ed325c.4.4.1.2&gt=1
http://pune.gen.in/india/illiteracy-meaning-causes-effects-consequences-
solutions/5371/
http://www.letsread.com.au/About/Why-Is-Reading-Important
https://www.inspirationboost.com/8-reasons-why-reading-is-so-important