PREP  (PASS Reading Enhancement Programme)

developed by Dr. J. P. Das and his colleagues at the University of Alberta.

    The programme is based on the PASS Theory of Intelligence (Planning, Attention, and Simultaneous and Successive Processing).
    Understanding the programmes underlying theory is an important aspect of its use. What follows is a series of questions that have been commonly asked during educational conferences and workshops on PREP. The responses are intended to provide an introduction to understanding reading disabilities and remediation in relation to the PASS Model. Further reading is highly recommended and a list of references is included at the end of this manual. PREP is due for release in October of 1998 and will be published in South Africa and distributed in North America.

What is PREP? What does it do ?

      The PASS Reading Enhancement Programme (PREP) is based on well-accepted theories of child development and cognitive psychology. It aims at improving the information processing strategies namely, simultaneous and successive processing that underlie reading, while at the same time avoiding the direct teaching of word reading skills. PREP is also founded on the premise that the transfer of principles can be facilitated through inductive, rather than deductive inference (Carlson & Das, 1996). Accordingly, the programme is structured so that tacitly acquired strategies are likely to be used in appropriate ways. Attention and planning are also aspects of each task. Specifically, attention is required and used in performing each task, and planning is augmented by encouraging the children to engage in discussions, both during and following their performance.

     An integral part of the structure of each task is to develop strategies such as rehearsal, categorization, monitoring of performance, prediction, revision of prediction, sounding, and sound blending. Thus, children develop their ability to use these strategies through experience with the tasks. Rather than being explicitly taught strategies by the tutor, children are encouraged to become aware of their use of strategies through verbalization. Growth in the ability to use strategies and be aware of appropriate opportunities for their use is expected to develop over the course of remediation.

      The programme consists of ten tasks that vary considerably in content and the requirements of the student. Each task involves both a global training component and a curriculum-related bridging component. The global component includes structured, non-reading tasks that require the application of simultaneous or successive strategies. These tasks also provide children with the opportunity to internalize strategies in their own way, thus facilitating transfer (Das, Mishra, & Pool., 1995). The bridging component involves the same cognitive demands as its matched global component, and provides training in simultaneous and successive processing strategies, which have been closely linked to reading and spelling (Das, Naglieri, & Kirby, 1994).

      The global tasks begin with content that is familiar and non-threatening so that strategy acquisition occurs in small stages (Das, et. al., 1994). Complexity is introduced gradually and only after a return to easier content. Through verbal mediation (occurs through specific discussions of strategies used), the global and bridging components of PREP encourage children to apply their strategies to academic tasks such as word decoding. The global and bridging components are further divided into three levels of difficulty. This allows the child to progress in strategy development and, for those who already have some successful processing strategies in place, to begin at an appropriate level.

      A system of prompts is also integrated into each global and bridging component. The series of prompts creates a scaffolding network that supports and guides the child to ensure that tasks are completed with a minimal amount of assistance and a maximal amount of success. A record of these prompts provides a monitoring system for teachers to determine when material is too difficult for a child or when a child is able to successfully progress to a more difficult level. A criterion of 80% correct responses is required before a child can proceed to the next level of difficulty. If this criterion is not met, an alternate set of tasks, at the same difficulty level, is used to provide the additional training required.

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Summary

      PREP is a reading enhancement program that aims at improving the information processing strategies that underlie reading, while at the same time avoiding the direct teaching of word reading skills.

Who is most likely to benefit from PREP?

     Research has revealed that among children who have reading difficulties despite good motivation, family support, and emotional well-being two types of difficulties are present. The larger group are the "garden variety" poor readers and a much smaller group are the dyslexic readers. Both groups are similar in that neither is able to read at a level that would be expected for their particular grade. We use the word read to mean the ability to identify written words that most other children in the child's grade group can identify. More specifically, when a word is unfamiliar (for example, "analogy") or is a "made-up" word that has no meaning (for example, "pardet"), children with reading difficulties will be unable to read such words

     How do we know which child belongs in each group and why is it important to know this? The "garden variety" poor reader may also be poor in other subjects that do not require a great deal of reading, and he or she may perform poorly on a wide variety of intellectual tasks. In contrast, the dyslexic has specific cognitive processing difficulties that are related to converting spelling to speech (phonological coding). This ability is present in the majority of children, and by age nine, most of them are able to read well.

     Kirby (1988) has argued that the cognitive processing associated with reading progresses through eight distinct levels of abstraction that involve increasing complexity: (1) features (components of letters), (2) letters, (3) sound or syllable units, (4) words, (5) phrases, (6) ideas, (7) main ideas, and (8) themes. At each level, items of information are recognized (simultaneous processing) and ordered (successive processing) so that higher-level units can be comprehended (simultaneous processing). In other words, both simultaneous and successive processing are required at each level of the hierarchy.

     When a young child fails to learn to read, however, the failure is largely due to a deficit in successive processing, which is the process that helps the child to sequence different items or letters and words (Das, 1988). A child cannot read "friend" or "tongue" if he or she cannot remember the exact sequence of letters in each word and then convert these words into speech. Difficulties in successive processing may cause difficulties in acquiring and/or using phonological coding. This may, in turn, lead to an inability to effectively decode words, which ultimately leads to reading failure (Martinussen, 1995).

     Poor performance in either simultaneous or successive processing may be due to (a) a decreased ability to use the process, (b) barriers to the use of the process that can be overcome by training, or (c) an inclination not to use the process when it is the optimal method (Kirby & Williams, 1991). It is important to note, however, that no cognitive task requires one process alone: It is a matter of emphasis. A child may use either process, depending on the task requirements (for example, the use of successive processing in spelling or decoding words phonetically) or his or her habitual mode of information processing. PREP provides (a) alternatives for children who cannot use the processes very well, (b) experience and practice for children who have not developed one or both processes, and (c) specific training in recognizing when the method applied is the most efficient approach (Kirby & Williams, 1991).      

Summary

     Research has shown that most children who have reading difficulties , despite good motivation, family support, and emotional well-being, will benefit from PREP. The programme has been particularly beneficial for children with phonological coding problems.                              

Why do children fail to read?

     For children who are learning to read, the inability to engage in phonological coding has been suggested as the major cause of reading disability (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994). In fact, many reading researchers agree that poor phonological coding skills are the "bottleneck" for children with reading disabilities (Martinussen, 1995; Stanovich, 1988). In one of the most frequently cited articles in the field, Torgesen, Wagner, and Rashotte (1994) argue that phonological coding abilities are causally related to normal acquisition of reading skills. Support for this claim can also be found in the relationship between prereaders' phonological coding scores and their reading development one to three years later (e.g., Bradley & Bryant, 1985). A recent review by Share and Stanovich (1995, p. 9) concluded that "there is virtually unassailable evidence that poor readers, as a group, are impaired in a very wide range of basic cognitive tasks in the phonological domain."                              

Summary

     The inability to engage in phonological coding has been suggested as the major cause of reading difficulties.
                             

What are the cognitive processes that support reading?

     Earlier approaches to remediating learning and reading difficulties often focussed on improving memory through control processes (e.g., rehearsal and chunking). A number of later investigations (Belmont & Butterfield, 1971; Borkowski & Cavenaugh, 1979; Palinscar & Brown, 1984; Paris & Oka, 1986) demonstrated that while specific strategies for children with reading disabilities could be improved through instructional intervention, only marginal gains occurred in children's ability to transfer learning from an original situation to a new one. Problems that are typically displayed by children with reading disabilities include difficulties in recognizing words (Lovett, Ransby, Hardwick, Johns, & Donaldson, 1989), learning incidentally (through experience, without formal instruction), and transferring learning such as phonological coding (Das, et. al., 1994).

     In a review of reading disabilities, Frith (1986) identified four stages in reading development: preschool, pictorial, alphabetic, and orthographic. At the preschool stage the child considers all printed words to have a symbolic quality: "a magical combination of strokes, circles, and lines that somehow results in a word that people read" (Das, 1993, p. 159). A child at the pictorial stage views all letters and words as pictorial representations of sounds. It is at this second stage that sight reading begins. The third stage is referred to as the alphabetic stage. At this stage, the child must develop an understanding of letter-sound correspondences, which is essential to reading printed matter. The final stage in reading development is the orthographic stage. This stage, which continues through adulthood, enables us to understand the intricacies of phonics and spelling, such as in the words bough and tough (Das, 1993).

     According to Frith, it is at the alphabetic stage that many children with reading disabilities experience difficulties. In order to read a printed word, it must be coded in either of two ways: (1) visually, as a pattern, or (2) phonologically, as a speech sound. The cognitive process that is emphasized in visual coding is simultaneous processing, whereas in phonological coding, it is successive processing. To say a word, the speech sounds that correspond with the printed word must by arranged in the proper order. Pronouncing a printed word is predominantly a successive process and this is often one of the most difficult aspects of reading for children with reading disabilities (Das, 1988).

     The majority of studies that have focussed on improving reading by exposing children to letter-sound rules have had limited effects on reading achievement (Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994). This suggests that unlike normally achieving readers, children with reading disabilities do not learn appropriate reading strategies through direct rule learning or incidentally. This may be a primary reason why the direct teaching of reading skills has only been partially successful with children with reading disabilities (Chall & Curtis, 1990; Feitelson, 1988; Share & Stanovich, 1995).

           

Summary

     In order to read a printed word, it must be coded in either of two ways: (1) visually, as a pattern, or (2) phonologically, as a speech sound. The cognitive process that is emphasized in visual coding is simultaneous processing (understanding the relationship among the parts), whereas in phonological coding, it is successive processing (ability to work with things in order). To say a word, the speech sounds that correspond with the printed word must by arranged in the proper order. Pronouncing a printed word is predominantly a successive process and this is often one of the most difficult aspects of reading for children with reading disabilities.

     In our view, children with reading disabilities require a method of instruction that is based on specific elements of information integration that are fundamental to reading and constitute a main source of their reading difficulties. Unless the cognitive processes (simultaneous and successive processing) underlying reading are the focus of remediation, remediation will not be successful (Das, et. al., 1994). In other words, the teaching of basic phonetic skills or general strategies and tricks alone are inadequate for the remediation of children with reading disabilities. The PASS Reading Enhancement Programme (PREP) offers an alternative that has been used successfully to remediate these difficulties.

                       

COGENT

     COGENT (Cognitive Enhancement Training) Cognitive Enhancement Training is designed for the enhancement of cognition, phonological awareness, and language, especially linked to literacy and school learning. Cognitive Enhancement Training(COGENT) is designed for children ages 4 to 7 with normal and atypical developmental histories Limited exposure to literacy, Mild developmental delay, Language impairment, At risk for developing dyslexia and other learning difficulties. Cognitive Enhancement Training can also be used as a continuing activity at home. It provides an alternative route toward the development of reading and associated academic skills.

                             

Math Module

     Modules for Math is designed for children belonging to kindergarten to grade II. The aim is to further develop and expand children’s innate mathematical capacity such as differentiation of size and number, use of working memory, and problem-solving.

     Modules for Math targets basic math skills and includes training programs that are expected to improve them. The conceptual framework of this manual is not the only one that may be valid; consider it as a reasonable approach that gives a rational base for remedial programs. Mathematics and science have come to have an undeniable importance in today’s society. It will be a great pity if a significant amount of children fail to develop an interest and ability due to early experiences of failure. Often, these types of experiences lead to anxiety, fear of punishment and poor self confidence in mathematics.