Part III--Intervention programs for students with reading disabilities

Annals of Dyslexia, 1998

Numerous studies over the years have documented gains in reading when students receive systematic, sequential instruction in the alphabetic code that makes explicit links between spoken and written language. The intervention studies in the present volume incorporate some or all of the components of these previously successful studies, but were designed to enhance progress in three areas not directly targeted in code emphasis intervention programs.

Chapter 8, by Westervelt and his colleagues, describes efforts to enhance self-esteem in youngsters receiving intensive reading intervention in a summer camp setting. The goal of that study was to incorporate esteem-building activities to accompany the reading instruction; the hypothesis was that students would make progress in both areas and that each would aid the other (i.e., that reading gains would enhance self-esteem and that self-esteem gains would enhance reading performance). The paper offers a detailed account of an intervention that was successful with many students, yields some interesting results worth investigating in future work (e.g., students with attentional deficits did not make self-esteem gains), and introduces measures of self-esteem useful for further study on this topic.

The intervention study described by Joanna Williams in chapter 9 focuses on comprehension, but borrows from code emphasis approaches the insight that students with LD often require explicit, highly structured instruction. The students in her study clearly did not extract thematic structure on their own, but did learn to identify explicitly taught story themes. The study is important as a model for the kind of instruction that may assist students in interpreting texts, but even more so as a demonstration of the tremendous challenge in providing the kind of scaffolding that is effective for improving the comprehension skills of low-achieving students.

The final intervention study in this volume, by Sparks and his colleagues (chapter 10), applies multisensory instructional techniques to foreign language instruction for high school students with learning disabilities. The gains in native and foreign language skill obtained via multisensory-based instruction are impressive, both in absolute terms, and relative to gains obtained by LD students receiving traditional foreign language instruction. My concern about this study is its dependence on a single instructor who has accomplished impressive gains among her students for year after year. It will be important, therefore, to replicate this teaching strategy among many teachers and make it accessible to schools who otherwise might be inclined to give up trying to teach foreign language to students who could benefit greatly.