Samuel L. Blumenfeld discovered the cause of and cure for dyslexia. Indeed, it was Dr. Blumenfeld who coined the term dyslexia.
The cause of dyslexia is the look-say method of reading, otherwise known as whole language reading. In the look-say method of reading, the beginning reader memorizes the appearance of words and associates that word with an object or idea. The words become like pictographs that represent an object or idea in the child’s mind. A young reader can memorize many single-syllable words.
The Dr. Seuss and Dick and Jane books are examples of books that encourage the look-say method of reading. Parents are quite proud of their young child, who demonstrates his early reading skills using the look-say method. Look-say is an easy system to master. That is the problem. It is a shortcut that bypasses the phonics skills required to master the English language. The young reader does well with single-syllable words until about third grade, when he suddenly faces polysyllabic words. The child has no phonetic skills and is thus unable to read the polysyllabic words. Stress causes letter distortion and transposition. The once-strong early reader is diagnosed as being dyslexic. But the educational system has lost the lessons of Dr. Blumenfeld and has come up with all kinds of theories and ineffective remedies to address the dyslexic child. Dr. Blumenfeld explains:
The sight reader associates the printed word with an idea or picture, as if it were a Chinese ideograph. A sight reader may see the word “father” and say “dad,” or see the word “horse” and say “pony.” He or she does not hear the written word because the association is between the printed word and an idea rather than the printed word and the actual speech sounds the letters represent.
Blumenfeld explains that “[a]lphabetic writing is a sound-symbol system in which the basic association is between letters and sounds. Dr. Blumenfeld explains that the cure for dyslexia is retraining the dyslexic sight reader to read words phonetically. That requires intense phonics training. “First, he [the dyslexic reader] must realize that the cure to dyslexia lies in becoming a phonetic reader.”
Dr. Blumenfeld has made free materials available for a dyslexic reader to begin their recovery.
Blumenfeld’s Alpha-Phonics Self-Tutor