The Kinesthetic Method In Remedial Reading

THE RETARDED READER, the person of normal intelligence who experiences difficulty in learning to read, has been a source of bewilderment and in terest for some time (2, 4, 6). Recently, many in stitutions have been established which specialize in the treatment of persons with reading difficulties. The interest of workers in such centers has led to much theorizing about the causes and treatment of these people, and many hypotheses have been sug gested to account for the phenomenon of an intelli gent adult struggling with desperate intent to un tangle a sentence which might be found in a fourth grade reader (2: Ch.4, 5, 6; 6: Ch. 9, 10). Despite this widespread interest, a review of the literature reveals a dearth of work dealing with the isolation of the pertinent variables responsible for the success or failure of any particular reme dial method. In studies that have been reported, there is, as Gray points out (5, 1957: 401), in many instances an absence of statistical analysis, weak or almost no design, conclusions which are unwarranted, and a general failure to control for intervening variables. One of the methods used in remedial work with retarded readers is described by Grace Fernald in her book (4), and sometimes referred to as the "Kinesthetic Method". Fernald defines the re tarded reader as being one or more years retarded in reading skills, as measured by standardized tests. In general, she holds that persons in such circumstances have not been able to respond to the customary reading approach used in the public schools because they are "kinesthetic learners". Having postulated three types of imagery available to persons in the learning of reading: visual im agery, auditory imagery and kinesthetic imagery, Fernald assumed that children who could not learn to read in the usual visual-auditory manner are those who are so organized physiologically that they must utilize the kinesthetic imagery dimension. It can be shown that children who have made at tempts at reading and failed have, in their efforts, utilized some kinesthetic cues. Observations by the authors have substantiated the commom obser vation that children move their eyes and their heads in reading as they follow the shapes of letters and words. Fernald, it appears, means something more by her method than the utilization of these kinesthetic cues. As dictated by the Fernald method, a person is taught to read by responding to a felt need for a word in a story writing attempt. He asks the teacher for the word he needs but does not know how to write. The teacher writes the word on a slip of paper, pronouncing the word as it is written. The student is then asked to trace the word with his finger and pronounce it at the same time. The student traces the word as many times as he needs to before he can write and read it on his own. He uses the word in his story and may refer to it at any future time. I The authors know of cases where, as an adjunct to the Fernald method, and stemming from a belief in the crucial role played by the tactual -kinesthetic cues, words were cut out of sandpaper and finger traced by students, thus increasing the tactual components involved. The experimental evidence evaluating the effects of the addition of motor-tactual cues is sparse, though generally favorable. Early studies byBer j man (1) indicated that the tracing of syllables on : cards by his subjects did not aid in the learning of nonsense syllables, but in a later experiment he did find that the addition of motor cues helped in the learning of geometric figures. Pulliam (7) in attempting to evaluate the effectiveness of the ad dition of a tracing method in vocabulary building, I had a group of retarded readers trace words on indented cardboard. His results indicated that the tracing method facilitated the acquisition of vocabulary in retarded readers. In a recent and pertinent study by Roberts and Coleman (8), several of Fernald's (4) assumptions relative to the kinesthetic method were tested.