Skill in reading long words is prerequisite to dyslexics' literacy. Instant recognition of printed symbols is easy for those readers with photographic memories, but dyslexics often fail to recognize visually many long words which are actually familiar to them auditorially. Scientific, automatic, multisensory procedures for dividing longer words into easily read syllables can enable students to translate visual symbols rapidly and thereby to read, write, or spell accurately words of any length.Over one thousand dyslexics, aged seven to fifteen, guided the interdisciplinary team at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas to develop, observe results, and test specific structured, sequential steps in working out longer words. The ten-year study (1965-1975) in the Language Laboratory of the Hospital established the Alphabetic Phonics curriculum which is now used successfully, not only in remedial groups but in regular classes of any size or age, in public and private schools in 45 states and six foreign countries.The newly-established Aylett Royall Cox Institute in Dallas prepares teachers and Master Instructors to train both students and other teachers. Comparable Alphabetic Phonics Teacher Training Centers are already established in Houston and Lubbock, Texas, in Oklahoma City, and at Columbia University Teachers College in New York.

Alphabetic Phonics is a sequential language curriculum designed to assure that all students can achieve literacy. This curriculum is a 1980's organization and extension of the Orton-Gillingham-Childs multisensory teaching of the structure of English. Alphabetic Phonics allows 95 percent of the auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners in a regular classroom to master written English. The curriculum includes modern behavioral, psychological, and educational theories and practice. Developed initially as remediation for dyslexics, Alphabetic Phonics is succeeding both with small groups of severely blocked dyslexics and as prevention in regular classrooms in the primary grades. Administrators, classroom teachers, clinicians, remedial, and resource room specialists, as well as speech and language therapists representing small and large schools (public and private; remedial and accelerated) have traveled to Texas from forty states and six foreign countries during the past ten years to earn graduate credit in one or more of the four month-long Introductory Courses held each year. Teachers report that cultural minority students and those learning English as a second language benefit especially from reading instruction which emphasizes the foundations of English and time-on-task activities to effect mastery. Outreach programs and multimedia tools are being developed and implemented to broaden the programs availability to groups with varied needs.

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