 Home
Who Is Talking?
Discovery?
How does it work?
How can I use it?
To download
Before you start
Phonics vs Whole Language
Why a Patent?
Is RTR an invention?
Just an experiment?
Plans and Hopes
Shareware Agreement
Final Words
References
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Isn't this just a crude experiment in its early stages?
You don't have any testimonials or data!
True.
My granddaughter is the first person to receive exposure to the Right Time Reader program at the right time, and it will be many months, or even a couple of years, before we will know for certain that she is reading. [She was a 1500g baby born at 32 weeks, and the general medical opinion is that it takes about 2 years for such infants' development to catch up to their chronological age.]
Also, you will see that the reader software and the available books are in the early stages of development.
But Jennifer couldn't wait, and neither can your baby.
There is very good evidence in the research literature that reading ability in the first grade is associated with better academic performance even at the 11th grade level, ten years later.(Cunningham and Stanovich 1997)
It is also clear that the level of ability that students show in reading correlates well with good social adjustment. This correlation holds across the spectrum, with poor reading related to distinct behavioral problems through the school years, and good reading correlated with success.(Denti and Guerin 1999) Of course correlation does not prove causation, and both variables are also related to some other variables such as parental education and socioeconomic status. (Fisch, Smith et al. 1997)
However,
this is one of those times when a parent can't just wait another twenty years
for all the cause-effect relationships to be sorted out definitively. Using Right Time Reader seems a very cheap and low-risk course of action, with benefits enormously outweighing any possible costs.
It was important to me to get this program working
at some level, in time for Jennifer. I couldn't wait the extra year or two to produce a polished and commercially slick package. Between 2 and 6 months of age may be the ideal time to start. That is one of the things we hope to determine. But will your baby wait? Not likely. That is why I have presented this program here as soon as development reached the "better than nothing" stage.
It is clear to anyone that no harm can be done by this program. Giving your baby some daily lap-time in front of the computer is not usually seen as a high-risk activity! At the very worst, you may spend extra time with your baby, yet not see early reading happen. Isn't this a tiny cost, as compared with a potentially great gain?
You can see from the books to be downloaded that my own hand-drawn letters in the alphabet program are about what an early learner might produce. I wanted to show the kids something that looks real and do-able, as well as the perfection of print fonts or the script fonts that are also common. However, this program is not aimed at teaching writing skills. Writing demands a good deal of hand-eye coordination and planning that reading does not require. Reading is relatively easy, and relatively passive, compared with writing, and it is a great mistake to try to teach them together. Reading comes first.
The artwork in the other books is my son-in-law's, and I like it. But being a university lecturer leaves him with very limited time to be an artist and writer of children's literature. So
I am hoping to attract some talented people with fun ideas who will enjoy adding their books to the collection here as their shareware contribution. People whose contributions are made available here will be given full credit and retain full rights to their work.
Also, I hope that users of RTR will personalize the books. Substitute your own cat's name for Scipio. Put in the names your baby will recognize for mom and dad. Put in baby's own name whenever possible. There is good evidence that this increases interest and the motivation to learn in older learners, and it seems reasonable that it will work for the pre-speech infant also.
(Ashton-Warner 1964; Wheeler 1999)
You can even use your own scanned or digital-camera photographs as the *.jpg files that RTR will show, to bring familiar scenes and people onto the screen.
Home
The current URL is http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~parsonst/experiment.html
This file was last modified 18-Nov-2001
To get in touch, email me:
 parsonst@ihug.co.nz
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