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.