About

The Mission--Develop Proficient Readers

The mission of SoundEnglish is to develop proficient readers. I believe reading and language skills are the foundation for academic achievement. Although these skills are not the only way to acquire knowledge, they are the most efficient. Reading well is the best means of consuming large or complicated quantities of information.

Unfortunately, the results of reading instruction in our schools are weak and stagnant. The recent results of the National Assessment for Education  that only about 33 percent of fourth graders read at a proficient level nationally. As a result, more than 65 percent of our students are struggling to get beyond simple information in their reading. These students will struggle every day. They will experience frustration and failure. They may never achieve their potential.

It is our mission to help students of all ages and backgrounds become better readers, better thinkers, and better speakers through our free programs, beginning with 7 Sound Steps to Reading.

The Vision--Free Online Lessons for Students and Parents

We hope these free, online lessons will be the "on ramp" for parents who want to improve the reading skills of their children. We also hope some of those parents will find their own reading skill improving as they help their children go through the lessons. This program can be just as helpful for adults who want to improve, since they can view the lessons in the privacy of their homes, each at his or her own pace. We know from experience that that this free, structured phonics program can even benefit those with learning disabilities and English language learners.

Plus, learning to read phonetically improves spelling as well as reading. Each success builds the foundation for the next. When students know they can read, they don't just become better students, they become more productive people.

The History

I will try to keep this short, but it won't be easy.

I got my B.S. in English Education from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1972 (I will leave it to you to do the math. Yes, I am that old.). I wanted nothing more than to teach high school English for the rest of my life. I love language (I've been known to correct someone's grammar from time to time, lovingly, of course.). At the time I graduated, there was an overabundance of English teachers. Over the course of decades, I have had a number of temporary teaching assignments. As a part-time and substitute teacher, I have observed the struggles of students in reading, writing, spelling, and speaking.

At some point, my husband came home one night with a book for me. As he gave it to me, he said, "I saw this today, and I thought you would be interested in it." It was Why Johnny Can't Read--and What You Can Do about It. The book was first published in 1955 by Rudolf Flesch. It detailed the shift in reading instruction from phonics to "look and say," which was a whole word approach. The results have been disastrous. I read in a few days, and it lit a fire that is still burning.

I started teaching the "bare bones" of my program in the late 1990s. I ran a couple of ads in my local paper and borrowed a small classroom at my church. I had two classes at first: one was  a group of about six third- and fourth-graders, and the other was a group of six seventh-grade boys. Over the course of this trial period, I taught students ranging from four years old through middle school. I also had Christie, a failing third-grader who was my biggest challenge and my greatest reward. If you are interested in her story, I have included it here.

As we worked through the lessons, it was obvious that the students were improving. They read with more speed and accuracy and could explain what they had read. And, in the class of seventh-grade boys, the better they read, the better they behaved. I also noticed that my preschool student learned at the same speed as the older students. For weeks after those classes, I would see parents on errands in town, mostly at the grocery store. They would stop me to tell me about the improvement in the children's grades or how much their reading test scores had improved. They were thrilled, and so was I.

My next opportunity was a couple of years later at a local suburban high school. It was a summer job, teaching English to a class of about 30 entering freshmen students who needed extra help before the start of school in the fall. They were described as "students who were not likely to pass freshman English." I don't remember the specifics of the grammar and literature that we covered. However, I can tell you that we spent the opening 20 minutes of each 90-minute meeting learning phonics.

After the class ended and school had started, the principal called me to ask what I had done to improve the students' reading. He said that he was getting calls from parents who were both grateful and angry. They were grateful for the improvement but were upset that no one had paid attention sooner.

Finally, several years later, I approached the administrators of the Juvenile Justice Center in St. Charles, IL, where I lived at the time. They agreed to arrange a class of eight inmates for 20 sessions at no cost to them. I can't say that this was as successful as my first class of boys, but you can judge for yourself. I received a letter of recommendation from the head administrator, which I have posted here.

You might wonder why it has taken my so many years to get to this point, and I must tell you that I really can't say. Life distracts and time passes. I can tell you that the passion is real. If it were not, I wouldn't have gotten to this point.

I've continued researching and putting plans together. I settled on the name SoundEnglish and incorporated it in 2010 in Illinois. I began constructing this website in 2018 and published my first post in 2019. I have revised continually, and I started over from scratch in early 2022 because of a number of factors, including Vimeo and YouTube.

Some may say this method is tedious, requiring repetition and memorization. To others, it may see old fashioned. I agree that it doesn’t have the trendy appeal of new methodology and shiny new textbooks. On the other hand, it offers students a reliable key to reading success, since almost 85 percent of our English words are phonetic. If there actually are the estimated 600,000 words in English, then more than 500,000 are phonetic. All it takes is some practice!

Our national reading scores haven’t changed significantly since the NAEP began testing in 1969, and our international status has continued to sink. As a nation, we have a lot to lose by turning a blind eye to this mediocrity. Closer to home, if you have a child who is struggling to read, he or she has even more to lose.

Please get started now to teach your children to read and to be a better reader yourself.