The Language
Enrichment Program
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The Need
Administrators are faced with mounting pressures to produce
results in improved school reading achievement, student attendance, and student
retention. Faced with federal and state mandated annual testing, accountability,
and administrator and school ratings based on measured student improvement,
school administrators desperately need to find a workable solution to the
problem of below grade level student reading achievement.
The Solution
The problem is severe, but the solution is simple: use
The Language Enrichment Program to bring success to the students in your
school.
The Program
The Language Enrichment Program is suitable for use
by students above age eight to adult. The program works with any age or grade
level because it is content centered, not age or grade related, or skill
centered. The program does not replace any current language arts curriculum; it
reinforces your present curriculum, and makes any curriculum more successful.
The Language Enrichment Program was written by the
developer to successfully solve the reading problems of students in his own
classroom. The program is a no-nonsense, no-frills, no games or gimmicks program
that students enjoy. They enjoy it because they experience success from the very
beginning of the program, and realize within themselves that they are actually
learning on their own. This learning translates to improved academic performance
in all subject areas and high student motivation.
The Language Enrichment Program was written with no
reference to the “Reading Wars” involving the Phonics versus Whole Language
controversy. The developer wrote the program before the current Whole Language
movement began. The program is solidly based on scientific principles of
language learning, and is a practical application of language insights derived
from a careful presentation of American English linguistics.
Whether the Reading Wars have been lost or won, the vast
numbers of students who fail to advance their reading level from grade to grade
are still the losers. Tremendous and commendable efforts are underway to have
every child reading successfully on grade level by grade three. Current research
shows, however, that many children fall behind in their reading after grade
three, and the reading achievement gap increases as students enter successively
higher grade levels, particularly if the students belong to any of the ethnic
minorities. The Language Enrichment Program solves this problem for up to
80% of the students who use it, for reading gains produced by this program
appear to be quite permanent.
Program Implementation
The Language Enrichment Program ought to be a
learning tool available to every student in every language arts classroom. The
program is easy to implement: using the program is simplicity itself. Since the
program is self-instructional, and has been professionally validated in the
developer’s own public school classroom during more than three decades of
classroom research, the program is absolutely known to work. It does exactly
what the developer claims it does.
How to Use It
Each student begins at the start of the program and works
each reading step in sequence. The twenty-five chapters are divided into
seventy-nine exercises. Each exercise contains numbered reading steps which
students answer in sequence. The program takes from 24 to 75 clock hours, or
five to fifteen weeks to complete. As students use the program, reading gain is
automatic. Complete the program and the class as a whole will demonstrate up to
two years gain in reading comprehension as measured by any standardized reading
test. Individual students gain one to five years, a very few students even more.
Students may work the program in sessions of fifteen or
more minutes a day. Students progress at their own speed, and should absolutely
not be held back. Students love to work ahead, and sometimes vie with each other
to be the one who has completed the most work. The classroom enthusiasm is
contagious. Students work the program independently for it is
self-instructional. Only rarely will students ask for help from the teacher.
Help is provided for the teacher in the answer key with explanations. Students
may work the program for as long as time permits at any classroom session. Most
students will naturally tire, and become “saturated” after working the program
for an hour, or whole class period. But many students will use the program with
great interest for as long a time as they are permitted. I have had many
students voluntarily come to me during lunch (they weren’t hungry), other
classes when their teacher was absent (the substitute wasn’t doing anything
important), after school and before school to work this program for sometimes
three or four hours in a day.
The program can be used effectively at the end of the class
period whenever students finish regular work early. The Language Enrichment
Program benefits students greatly by increasing students’ time on task. Even
when some students have sporadic attendance, they know to continue with the
program right where they left off. No program instruction needs to be repeated
for students who have been absent, because all instruction is contained in the
program. Within reason, lapse of time between sessions due to student absence
has no negative effect on achievement gains.
The program can be used as a stand alone instructional
package, or it can be used to supplement your current language arts program. No
time in the curriculum, you say, to add anything more into your program? You are
very mistaken. My consistent experience is that when I let students use this
program instead of their regular work, they advance in their reading level so
rapidly and improve so much in their academic ability that they soon return
voluntarily to do the regular work of the class and continue to work The
Language Enrichment Program too. So, no time was lost, and the student has
learned and gained much more than students confined to the stipulated
curriculum. |
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