Read with Greater Speed
Do you have difficulty reading in class? If so, a special reading programme that helps match(匹配)sounds with letters could speed up your brain.
At least one out of every five elementary school students in the U. S. has trouble learning to read, even when the students are good at other subjects. The biggest challenge for many of these kids, scientists say, is matching sounds with letters.
Researchers from Yale University(耶鲁大学), U. S. , studied a group of children from New York and Connecticut State. As part of the study, 37 struggling readers received special tutoring.
Every day, instructors worked with them on recognizing how written letters represent units of sound called phonemes(音素). The students also practiced reading aloud and spelling.
By the end of the school year, these children could read faster than before. They also made fewer mistakes, and understood more of what they read than they could earlier in the year.
As part of their study, the researchers used a special machine to take action photos of the students' brains.
The pictures showed an increase in activity in the back of the brain on the left side. This is the same part of the brain that becomes active when good readers read. This activated brain area appears to include a structure(结构)that helps people recognize familiar written words quickly. In lower level readers, this structure remains inactive.
A year later, the brain structure was still working in the students who had gone through the special tutoring, and they continued to do well in reading tests. Another group in the study who went through a more traditional reading programme didn't show the same progress. However, some researchers still doubt the study. They believe that reading without making any noise or linking words to sounds is more efficient.
