Teacher Discussion Forums

I currently teach an adult how to read and spell. The problem is that he is not making progress the way I expected; besides, he has a busy schedule. What method should i adopt to facilitate the process?

I think that the best place to start is by building a collection of sight words. No matter what your age is, there are certain words students should learn to recognize without sounding out the letters.

These are called sight words. For example, "the", "very" and "this" you see all the time. Basically, on sight, once you see them, you have to be able to recognize them. And there are tons of flash cards available for free where you can print off and practice. Just do a quick search.

Once they build a nice collection of sight words, it's time to put them into practice. Start off with basic books that use these sight words you've been practicing. From there, go into something a little more difficult. Try to recognize your students stage of development. Stay in that zone of proximal of development until they've built enough confidence where they want to do it themselves.

My son is the top student in his class. I owe it because of how much we've practiced rigorously sight words.

I would suggest to make them read articles and books of their interest. I once thought a Chinese shop owner to read by tapping into her interest of establishing a business in Canada. We read several business development related articles and she made great progress in a matter of few days.