When the average six-year-old child enters first grade, he or she already knows the meanings of about 26,000 words. They may not use all those words themselves, but they understand what the words mean when they hear them.

The goal of most first grade reading programs is for students to read between 200 and 600 common words by the end of the school year. Sadly, many students can’t even read 100 words by the time they finish first grade. In the United States, at least 40 to 45 percent of school aged children are below level in reading.

In fact, many of them never learn to read well at all and their difficulties continue throughout their time in school, even affecting their adulthood. A landmark study by the federal government found that over half the adults struggle to read material written at the sixth grade level.

Although teachers of today are often blamed, it’s not their fault. Poor reading is the product of a defective reading instruction method. Early in the twentieth century, a small group of influential educators changed the way reading was taught. Prior to that change, nearly everyone who attended school learned to read in a very short time. In our large cities, over 90 percent of the adult population was fully literate. As schools began phasing in the new method, they abandoned the method that had been used successfully to teach reading ever since reading was first invented. As a result, we now have an epidemic of poor reading.

Millions of children and adults are paying a terrible price because of what those early educators did. It causes huge problems throughout our entire society. Parents, schools and colleges spend billions of dollars annually in an effort to bring students up to basic reading levels and the results are just not reflecting those costly investments.

Learning to read is a simple process.  The Academic Associates® Reading Program can help to ease the process and produce better readers through our logical, phonics-based method. By starting with the basic and foundational concepts of letters and phonics, we can building upon that foundation and progress to advanced concepts incrementally, make mastery a step-by-step process.  Our thorough approach helps readers read more expansively and more efficiently, avoiding any unnecessary gaps.

Students are gently led through a series of easy steps. As they respond, they automatically begin to read. It’s so easy they often don’t even realize they’re reading at first. In the very first lesson, every student, even those with severe learning disabilities, will read at least 300 words and be prepared to read thousands more.

Each lesson is taught in simple, step-by-step increments, with every new concept building on all the previous concepts, until students know everything they need to know to sound out nearly all of the words in the language. By the last lesson, most fifth-graders through adults read and spell college-level words, and comprehend material written on their appropriate level or higher.

Each lesson includes reading exercises specific to the concepts learned. While students demonstrate mastery of a lesson in order to move on to the next, a comprehensive review of all past lessons reinforces the all skill continually. Checkpoints are incorporated throughout the program to provide constant updates of a student’s status, while identifying any areas in which he or she needs further reinforcement.

The Academic Associates methodology is not just about phonics. If it were, then reading would be rendered to a slow, monotonous process as words were laboriously and methodically pronounced one-by-one. Although our method may appear at first glance to be similar to some other phonics-based methods, it is a radical departure from every one of them. It develops all the skills of reading.

After learning to read words, students are ready to begin using their skills to accomplish the ultimate goal of reading—rapidly and effectively extracting information and knowledge from written material. They are taught specific techniques for understanding and applying what they read, and reading becomes a pleasant, productive and relatively automatic activity. Students then discover that the more they read, the more they enjoy it and the better readers they become.

Although males have traditionally been labeled as poorer readers than females, boys and men learn as quickly and as well as females with our method. Parents and teachers are often surprised to learn that there is no significant difference in learning to read between males and females with the Academic Associates® Reading Program!

Most students finish the course within 30 to 60 hours, although a few take longer. Most gain at least two grade levels (years) in reading, and very often, more than two levels. Every student is different, and each learns at a different rate, so we progress through the course at the student’s optimum learning speed.

Our program has been found to be very successful with those who have reading disabilities such as dyslexia and dysgraphia. Our method also helps with tracking and fluency.

The course is not just for students who are experiencing difficulty. Those who are average to strong readers will receive a welcome boost.

Thousands of students of all ages and many different ethnic and language backgrounds in the U.S. and several other countries have benefited from our program. It works consistently, even after all other methods have failed. It is unquestionably the most effective reading instruction methodology in the world.