English, Reading and Spelling Tutor

Problems with basic reading, spelling and other language problems are the main reason students have learning difficulties at school. We provide struggling students of all ages with Specialist English Tutoring in Adelaide at our office, and we also provide live online tutoring over the internet anywhere in Australia or the world.

Why Newspapers and Magazines are Written with a Reading Age of a 12 Year-Old

According to recent Australian Bureau of Statistics and OECD figures, about half the adults in Australia and other English speaking nations are poor readers, and a further third are only just able to cope with the reading demands of their daily lives. This leaves only 1/6 of the population that are rated as good readers or very good readers.
These statistics mean that if your child is only an average reader, then he/she needs help.
What’s more, poor reading skills impact directly on a child’s ability to learn in other areas, especially from grade 5 onwards where reading is used to learn.
As a result, many children are considered to be just average students by their teachers, when really they have the potential to be doing much better at school.

Phonics is the Solution to Basic Reading and Spelling Problems

Research in all the major English-speaking nations (such as USA, UK and Australia) consistently shows that teaching Phonics to beginning or remedial readers is the most successful method of ensuring the child is a good reader and speller. So convincing is this research that it is now government policy in many school districts to teach Phonics. (Phonics involves learning the rules between the letters and sounds in English. There are about 100 main rules, and another 100 minor rules to learn. The alternative approach to Phonics to teach reading teaches memory of whole words rather than the decoding of individual letters in the words.)

Unfortunately, Phonics has not been in favour in schools for many years so many teachers were not taught it when they were young or at University so many of them have great difficulty teaching it to their students. Furthermore, most educational publishing houses are not yet publishing high quality Phonics materials so teachers and parents are forced to rely on sub-standard and confusing materials.

High Performance Learning has its own Phonics Program originally written in 1975 and used very successfully up to the present day. It has been much enhanced in recent years by the inclusion of our BetterThanaBook Multi-Media Font which enables students to see the Phonic Rules by using coloured letters, and to hear the individual sounds of letters by clicking on them with the mouse. This addition to our program has made learning Phonics easier and faster for our students. Sample our interactive multimedia materials by clicking here. Teaching children to spell in colour using our Phonic Colour Code has also significantly decreased the amount of time needed to teach students how to spell.

Reading Without Good Comprehension is Not Really Reading

Do you ever get to the end of a page and can’t remember anything that you read? This is a very common problem because inefficient word decoding skills chew up a lot of your brain power leaving little or none to devote to comprehension.

One of the reasons that Phonics is such a successful way to learn to read is that it is much more efficient to work words out as you go than it is to try to dredge them up out of your memory. Phonics leaves a lot more brain power for comprehension and learning when you read.

Reading without comprehension is not really reading because comprehension is the point of reading! Reading with poor or inaccurate comprehension is a total waste of time so it should not be called reading.

Reading Comprehension Skills Can Be Taught

Mastering just a few simple skills can dramatically improve someone’s ability to comprehend. Unfortunately most teachers expect children to work out how to comprehend themselves by doing lots of practice on comprehension exercises.

At High Performance Learning, we teach appropriate comprehension skills to students at all levels from Kindergarten, right through to University. Teaching comprehension skills is integrated into all our Reading Programs.

The Importance of Reading to Life-Long Learning

At University, many students can’t keep up with the large quantity of reading that their lecturers expect them to do, and they wonder why the lecturers don’t just tell them what they need to know during the lectures. The reason is this – one of the essential aims of tertiary education is to train students to be able to learn independently of their lecturers so they can continue to update their knowledge after they leave university.
After all, would you go to a lawyer, doctor or engineer for assistance who has not kept up to date with changes over the last 10 years?

Making Sure Your Child is A Good Reader and Speller is the Most Valuable Gift You Could Ever Give

Most reading and spelling problems result from a failure to master some key learning or language skills during the early years of education.
Don’t wait for these problems to fix themselves.
Remember that at school your child is just one in a large group. Furthermore, the teacher may not have the specialist knowledge required to deal with such problems.
Our Specialist Individual Tuition is the quickest and easiest way to ensure that your child becomes a proficient reader and speller.

If In Doubt – Find Out

If you are not certain that your child is reading at his or her full potential, we provide Diagnostic Educational Assessments which analyse your child’s style of thinking and learning so we can determine the nature and extent of any Reading, Spelling, Speech, Listening and Maths problems. More importantly, we have Programs that fix any of the Language, Learning or Maths problems we find.

Reading Tutor

Our Specialist Reading Tutors work individually with students and families to overcome basic reading problems at our office (in Adelaide, South Australia) or in your home using the internet. Our Specialist Reading Teachers adapt our reading programs to suit individual needs. Students also get online access to resources and games which speed up the learning process.

Spelling Tutor

Spelling problems are usually a sign of underlying weaknesses in reading. Before planning a program for a person who has spelling problems the Specialist Spelling Tutor would check skills in all language areas (speech, listening, reading and writing). Even though our Specialist Reading and Spelling Teachers are based in Adelaide, we are able to provide detailed Diagnostic Assessments online for people living in other places around the world.