COMBINING READING THEORY
AND PROCESS LEARNING THEORY

Reading Theory: understanding text using an appropriate mix of information and reading strategies.

Process Learning Theory: experiencing a new process competently while experimenting with appropriate interventions in order to build a solid, correct neural pathway for the process being learned.

Applying these theories to teaching struggling readers will cause the reader to become competent. Rethinking reading (implicitly) is needed when the neural pathway for reading is completed, but is less than 100% correct.

To understand how these two theories work together, imagine that you have a new cookbook with a prize-winning cake recipe you can’t wait to try out. However, no matter how many times you bake it, it just doesn’t come out right. Out of desperation you call the cookbook publisher and find that while the recipe did indeed give you the right amounts of each ingredient, the mixing directions were incorrect. You’ve been mixing the dry and wet materials too soon. You’ve been vigorously beating when you should have been gently folding and so on.
The subtleties of mixing a complex recipe are an essential part of success.

For a person with reading difficulties, reading is like trying to produce that prize-winning cake without the correct mix and no publisher to call. Having enough of the right ingredients isn’t sufficient. The subtleties of mixing the complex reading process are an essential part of successful reading.

People struggle with reading even when they have more than enough of the right ingredients:

Vocabulary (Semantics: the words we use for the concepts we know)

Language Structure (Syntax: grammar, conventions, & cadence)

Automaticity (*Visual cues into meaning)

Grapho-phonics (*Visual cues to sound to meaning)

*Visual cueing includes letters, numbers, puncuation marks, and empty spaces

The recipe for reading tells the brain how to mix the above ingredients. The success in eliminating reading problems is in structuring tutoring sessions so that the incorrect mix is the focus for change. The tutoring sessions are like phone calls to the cookbook publisher that the student did not have access to previously. During the tutoring session the student is compelled to use a correct mix and then is given an opportunity to take responsibility for changing the part of the recipe that is incorrect.