My guest today is Sharon Hillestad, the most passionate advocate I’ve ever met for helping children learn to read. Today we’ll be talking about how important it is to be able to read to protect yourself and your family from toxic chemicals in consumer products, why we need to reform how reading is taught in schools, and what you can do right now to help someone you might know learn to read using the time-tested method of phonics. Sharon is the Director of Tutors at the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida, a literacy organization formed to service children who need more phonics education that they are getting in school. She earned her elementary education degree in 1966 and was a classroom teacher in Wisconsin and Minnesota. From 1977-1986, Sharon was a leader in the Home Schooling Movement. She joined the Reading Reform Foundation in 1980 and was its Minnesota Representative for five years; now she is the Florida State Representative for The National Right to Read Foundation, which continues the work of the earlier foundation. Sharon is “the mother of three wonderful adult children and 12 brilliant grandchildren.” www.communitylearningcentertutoring.com | www.nrrf.org
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Someone Who Can’t Read, Can’t Read a Toxics Warning Label
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Sharon Hillestad
Date of Broadcast: February 24, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. And it is a toxic world. There are many, many toxic chemicals. But not everything is toxic. And that’s what we learn about on this show, how to identify what’s toxic and learn about how it can affect us, but also learn how to do the things to eliminate toxic exposures from our lives and to remove toxic chemicals from our bodies.
It is Monday, February 24th. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And my guest today is a friend of mine, Sharon Hillestad. And she is one of the most passionate advocates I’ve ever met for helping children learn how to read.
Now, why are we doing a show about helping children how to read? It’s because if someone can’t read, they can’t read a toxics warning label. They can’t read my website. They can’t read my book. They can’t any kind of information on a label that might tell them that something is toxic.
And so, I think that in addition to having everybody know how to read—this is kind of off the subject, but related—I think we also need to be looking at the fact that toxics warning information is in words (and I was thinking about this this morning). And if people can’t read them, they can’t find out it’s a toxic product. We need to have visual (like there’s the skull and crossbones). But our warning label system actually has a few different levels. And there’s only a visual for the most dangerous. So in addition to skull and crossbones, we should maybe have a yellow and red and green patch or something on the label, so that people can tell at a glance, visually if this product is safe or has some degree of toxic exposure.
But for now, since we don’t have that, today we’re going to talk about reading. And we’re going to talk about what the problems are about why children can’t read. Did you know that we have so many children who are going through school, and they don’t know how to read? We’re going to talk about that. And we’re going to also talk about what you can do to help children who are not reading—or even adults who are not reading—because we all need to learn how to read. We all need to know how to read.
I’ll tell you that my parents taught me how to read when I was four years old. They didn’t leave it to the school systems. They taught me how to read. So when I went to kindergarten, I already knew how to read (and my other classmates didn’t). And they actually thought I was so precocious that they took me out of kindergarten, and they put me in first grade because I knew how to read.
Anyway… hi, Sharon!
SHARON HILLESTAD: Thanks, Debra.
DEBRA: Thanks so much for being here. Sharon, how did you become interested in the problem of reading?
SHARON HILLESTAD: Well, I was always curious because even when I was going to grade school in a country school in Wisconsin, all 8th grade—you kind of get a view on a lot of things that way—there were two boys in my school that did not learn how to read. The teacher was still working with them when one of them was in eighth grade and trying still to learn how to read.
And then, I went to teacher’s college, and then I taught school in Minnesota and Wisconsin (not so very many years, the first two years in the ‘60s). And I found that there would be two or three children in each class that I taught that were in the lower reading group, struggling to learn how to read. And I realized I had really [inaudible 03:48] to teach them.
And then, later, when I had my own children, then it really hit me, that if this child that I had, if he goes to school, he’s going to be taught like the way I was teaching, and he’s going to be at the bottom of the class.
So, that’s when I got super interested. I read a book called Why Johnny Can’t Read. And it made all the difference in how I taught my own child and how I’ve been teaching other children since then.
DEBRA: Well, what does that book say?
SHARON HILLESTAD: That book reveals the fact that—it’s called Why Johnny Can’t Read. Johnny can’t read because Johnny hasn’t been taught all the English language words. The book was published in 1955. And it became a bestseller. Parents were reading it all over the place. I even heard about it as a child.
The book exposed the fact that how first graders were being taught to read had changed. For a thousand years or so, children had been taught to learn the sounds of the letters, and then blends those sounds to words. They then learned grammar and saw how the words get organized so that you can have a comprehensive sentence.
Well, that all changed.
By the time I was trained as a teacher—and this is by the book. It was so pertinent to me because this was exactly how I had been taught to teach kids to read, with whole words: up, down, Dick, Jane, […]—you know, flash card words rather than phonic drills. And in fact, I had been taught not to teach phonics. That drilling was detrimental to a student. And of course, there are some children that are not going to learn to read unless they do learn phonics.
Anyway, what was also pointed out is how dyslexia gets established. It’s a child who doesn’t learn to read easily.
Some people learn to read very easily. I think you must’ve at age four?
DEBRA: I think I must have. And I also think that I must’ve been taught with phonics because even today, if I come up against a word that I don’t know, I will just sound it out by each syllable. I never learned to just recognize a word as a word. I learned each syllable and putting those syllables together. And I still use that today. And I never had problems reading—never, never, never—once I learned it.
I know that you’re writing a book that hasn’t been published yet. I was looking through your book, but I was also looking through some websites that you gave me the URL’s of. And one of them was talking about how there’s—and we’ll talk more about the cider. But one of them has 44 parts of the language. And if you know that there’s only 44, and you learn them, and you put them together, then it’s so easy. It’s like a puzzle. You just put the pieces together and it forms a word. You can read that word, and then you can know what it sounds like. You can get the definition of that word, and you have a word. It’s just so easy.
But when that is not learned by a child, then I can see great difficulties—great difficulties.
We’ll talk more about that later. But you read the book, and then what happened? Tell us more about how you went from there to where you are today.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Oh, wow! When I read the book, I realized that what I had been taught to teach them in my teacher’s college was actually a toxic curriculum. So it’s not just chemicals that are toxic, but this curriculum was toxic.
Anyway, it changed everything for me. And I homeschooled my son. Reading did not come natural for him. So it had to be done step by step, little by little, and work on getting a win. Get a gain, “Oh, we know this. We can read this small book, now we can read a bigger one.” And he ended up being a scientist. He works as a scientist at the Mayo Clinic. He’s wonderful. He can write scientific papers. He got his PhD.
Well, I didn’t think that was ever going to happen when the child was seven years old and wasn’t reading. My only goal was to make sure that he could handle his life as a literate person. I didn’t know he was going to go away past me, you know? But he did!
And so that’s what happens when we just do things correctly.
See, there’s a new label. We’re quite used to the label “ADD” which is “attention deficiency disorder.” Well, there’s another label that is more appropriate—and it’s NBT. NBT stands for “never been taught.” So there are children who had never been taught the sounds of the letters or how the vowels make the various sounds.
DEBRA: I need to interrupt you for a minute because we need to go to break. But we’ll talk more about this when we come back.
My guest today is Sharon Hillestad. She’s an advocate for reading. She’s the Director of Tutors at the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida. She’s a friend of mine. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. And we’ll be right back!
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Sharon Hillestad. She’s an advocate for helping children to read by using phonics and the Director of Tutors at the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida.
She’s also the Florida State Representative for the National Right to Read Foundation. They also help children learn to read through phonics.
If you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, you can get the website address for her Community Learning Center and also for the National Right to Read Foundation (which has a lot of resources on it).
So Sharon, tell us more. Before the break, you were talking about not taught children (hasn’t been taught). So tell us more about that. But also, tell us what are the problems that are going on today with why children aren’t learning to read.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Oh, there are some huge problems that result from that because when children are in class, and they’re unable to comprehend what’s happening, they can’t keep up with the other students or do the worksheets, then they may act up. It’s actually pretty certain that they’re going to act out.
So then they get in trouble. They become fidgety, and they can’t focus. And so then we end up with them being on drugs.
The recent statistic I heard is like one in seven children are now diagnosed ADD or ADHD (hyperactive thrown in there). And then, of course, the remedy is not to give them an easier gradient, like teach them the sounds of the letters and so forth and teach them to blend.
So, it’s not just how the child in here that knew all the sounds of the letters, but he didn’t have enough practice in blending the sounds.
DEBRA: Give us an example of what blending would be.
SHARON HILLESTAD: So, the letter A, the most common sound that it makes is ă as in “apple.” So to learn how to blend B and A together, he actually needs to have someone model it for him like going “ba… ba, ra, ca, da, fa…” So, he’s using the blending. And he knew the individual sounds.
So, that’s the problem. Putting him on drugs is not going to assist him. And even flunking him in first grade, and then doing the same program the next year is not going to assist him. So I was able to set his mother up so that she can teach him. She’ll do the blending the exercises that he needs.
Our English language have almost like 15 vowel sounds. So those five vowels like A can make three different sounds, and it depends upon the pattern of words that it’s done.
So, when you study the subject, well then you know how to teach it […] And there are plenty of ways to study the subject now. There are lots of books on it. And it doesn’t take very long to be able to teach someone else how to read.
It took 60 years to really teach all the teachers how not to teach correctly. It took that long because the teachers that were in the classroom that knew how to do it refused to just Dick & Jane flash cards. But they were often teaching in secret. They weren’t supervised so closely. Now they are supervised so closely that even if they know how to do this, they probably won’t be allowed to do it.
I mean, this seems to be pretty incredible, but it’s true.
DEBRA: It does seem incredible.
So, tell us how children are taught to read today supposedly—how they’re being taught, but not reading. How are they being taught that ends up with them not reading?
SHARON HILLESTAD: There’s something called the DOLCH word. Your audience can google that, and they can download all the DOLCHE word.
Well, the kindergarten children have to learn a set number of DOLCHE words, 40 of them I think. And for instance, they will have all the sounds of A in those words without seeing the same sound several times. They will see it in different ways. They’ll get the word “wall.” So these are “wall” words. They’re stuck up on the wall.” Well here, the A has the third sound the “au” sound. And they’ll have the word like “ate”, and now it has what they call the long A sound. Then they’ll have the word “at” which has the short A sound.
And this happens with every single vowel. So then, the children, they have to memorize these words. So then they’re just memorizing them as pictures (like the word becomes a symbol).
And then, if they get phonics later, for some, alright, they’ll now be able to go back and sound out that first sound.
They have the first thing that they learned—did you ever try to re-learn something. Just as an older person, learning the computer, there are some things I still do by hand rather than computers just because learning can be kind of painful and you’d just rather do it the old way.
So, if we teach children, first of all, to memorize whole words, and now we’re going to teach them some phonics—seldom do they teach them enough of it actually or drill it enough—there’s going to be a certain number of kids kind of fall to the bottom. And I noticed that even when I was teaching in the ‘60s, I didn’t have too many classrooms, but in my third grade classroom, every single classroom I had had two to three kids that were struggling with reading, about a year behind. Well, that counts up if every classroom has that. That kind of statistic, we end up with 90 million adults who cannot read above the fourth grade level.
DEBRA: Ninety million adults? Like rig ht now, there are 90 million adults who can’t read in the world or in the United States?
SHARON HILLESTAD: Right! That’s called functionally illiterate. Literate means you can read and write. Illiterate you cannot read and write. And we can expect that we’re going to have illiterate people that have never been taught to read and write. But functionally illiterate, that label came only after people were—oh, I’ll get off. Is this break time again?
DEBRA: It’s time to go to the break. But we’ll talk about this when we come back.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Okay, good.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Sharon Hillestad. And we’re talking about reading and the necessity of being literate because, if you can’t read, you can’t read a toxics warning label. You can’t read about toxic chemicals and safer alternatives. So we need to know how to read.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Sharon Hillestad.
She’s from the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida. And she’s also the Florida State Representative for the National Right to Read Foundation. So, she’s one of the most passionate advocates I’ve ever met for helping children learn to read. And we’re talking about this today because if a person can’t read, they can’t read a toxics warning label. They can’t read any of the information needed to educate themselves about what’s toxic and what’s not.
We could do things like put visual warning labels on products. I can make more videos, things like that. But people need to read.
Sharon, tell us more reasons why people need to read.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Well, wouldn’t you want the truck driver in front of you able to read?
DEBRA: Yes! Yes, it’s kind of crazy when you think about how many people don’t know how to read. They can’t read street signs. They can’t read instructions on a cake mix. They can’t read a magazine. They can’t read the deposit slip at the bank.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Yes. And this is a new label that we didn’t use to have. It’s called “functional illiterate.” So a person who’s functionally illiterate is one who has been to school. You’re an illiterate if you haven’t been taught.
But you’re a functional illiterate if you’ve been taught, but you haven’t learned.
DEBRA: Oh, my God!
SHARON HILLESTAD: So that’s why it’s called “functional illiterate.” It’s reading at a fourth grader below level.
And it’s determined that if you read at this level, you cannot handle many of the words.
I had a 22-year old woman who came in here about five years ago. And she wanted to do better on her job. She was a nursing assistant. She actually couldn’t get to be a nursing assistant. She was kind of just stuck in the kitchen or some place. And it was because she could not read the words on the test that would allow her to move up in her job.
She was a very smart girl, but she never caught on to the phonics. So at 11th grade, she quit school. She didn’t graduate. And her reading level was a little over second grade as far as the tests that I could give her. She did not know how to work with the vowels at all.
And so, in just a very few lessons, her reading started to improve because she knew her short vowel sounds.
Then we worked on the letter teams, the ea and all the letter team type things, ou. She called me up near Christmas time that year, “Sharon, I just read the word ‘ornament’” she says, “Dang! I didn’t think I could ever do that.”
Anyway, eventually, that girl was able to take the test and get the job that she wanted to get, move up. She was able to get more money. And I saw her out in public one time. She stopped me and told me, “You see that car over there? I was just able to buy that because of you.” It was really because of her, because she had the nerve to just call up and demand to learn to read. She told me over the phone, she says, “Well, yeah, I can read, but I can’t read all the words on the back of my driver’s license.”
She couldn’t read all the words. She thought she had to memorize all of them.
Anyway, two years later, I’m tutoring her kindergartener and her second grader. And they’re sounding out words like “cat” and “cut” and “bat” and “bit.” She’s watching them, and she said, “Sharon, I didn’t know how to do that when I was their age, did I?” “You sure didn’t. You had to wait until you were 22 years old before somebody,” which was me at that time, “taught you how to do that.”
And so that’s the miracle that can be done by people who just know the phonics method, have a program. And by all means, I encourage all your listeners to go to your website because they can download a phonics program.
DEBRA: Yeah, just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and you’ll see Sharon’s description of the show today. It has the website address for the Community Learning Center, but also for the National Right to Read Foundation because they have so many materials there. You can just download them, and you can start helping your child to read. You can start helping an adult that you know who doesn’t know how to read or who is functionally illiterate.
You can help them learn how to read.
Sharon, when did they start not teaching phonics? I think I must’ve slipped in right under the edge there because I did have phonics and that’s what my parents knew to do. When did they stop teaching that?
SHARON HILLESTAD: Yeah, some school districts have thrown out all the phonics materials and muzzled their phonics teachers as early as the ‘30s.
DEBRA: Wow!
SHARON HILLESTAD: And so then students that needed that direction weren’t getting it starting in the ‘30s.
Well now teachers kept teaching it anyway (including my teacher). So I had Dick & Jane books, but I also had a phonics workbook. Well, it would be better not to have to have Dick & Jane and just do the phonics for a while, so that when you learn that A says ă, you’ll learn a whole bunch of words where it says ă. And if you learn I says ĭ, you’ll learn a whole bunch of words.
In fact, if the children just learns the short vowel sounds—ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ (these are the short vowels of the five vowels)—they would be able to read over 1500 words without memorization (i.e. fast, mop, sit). Look at the confidence then that they would have in that. So then you can teach them what the E does to the vowel, then you can teach them the double vowels and the reason why the vowels change their sounds. And it’s a big game.
Instead of that, we’re just making it a total drudgery for the children because they have to memorize words like their pictures. And children will do that. But you know what? It adds up. By the time they get in fourth grade, they can’t memorize more words. And if they haven’t realized themselves that they can find out words or somebody hasn’t taught them, then they will be a very low level reader. They won’t read books. They just won’t read books, then they won’t write books. And they won’t write letters to the editor.
DEBRA: They just won’t communicate. And communication is so fundamental to life. I think the most important thing in life at all is communication. If you can’t communicate—I mean, a lot of people can communicate verbally, but the written word is so important as well in today’s world to get your message out, whatever it is that you have to say.
And just having that confidence that you know that you can communicate I think makes a big difference for people.
We need to take the next break, but we’ll be right back. My guest is Sharon Hillestad. She’s the Director of Tutors at the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida, and also the Florida representative for the National Right to Read Foundation. Actually, we do have the right to be able to read.
So, you can go to my website, find out how to get to her websites at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And we’ll be back that. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’ll be back in a minute.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Sharon Hillestad.
She’s the Director of Tutoring at the Community Learning Center in Clearwater, Florida. And we’re talking about reading today because if you can’t read, you can’t read a toxics warning label.
There are so much information that we need to have in order to protect ourselves from toxic chemicals in consumer products today that we need to be able to read and get that information because not all of it is on radio, not all of it is visual. You need to be able to read.
And if you know somebody who doesn’t read or is functionally illiterate, then there’s something you can do. You can help them learn to read with phonics.
You know, Sharon, I was just thinking over the break that, in the dictionary—and I even looked it up to make sure I was right—the words are spelled out in syllables.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Yeah!
DEBRA: And so we haven’t lost that in the dictionary.
SHARON HILLESTAD: No, right. And so if the child can find out these small words, then all the syllables are, they can find both up three or four letters at a time. And of course, each syllable has one vowel sound. And so they just go from vowel sound to vowel sound.
I think there’s something perhaps the listeners might be interested in—and that is the definition of dyslexia.
DEBRA: Oh, please tell us.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Well, during the ‘20s, parents thought that something had to be wrong with their children’s brains because their children weren’t learning to read. And so they took their kids to Dr. Samuel Orton.
Now, Dr. Samuel Orton was a neurosurgeon and one of the very first brain doctors.
Now, Dr. Orton looked over the kids’ brains and couldn’t find anything wrong with them. So then he started to look over how they were being taught to read. And he found, one for one, every children brought to him had been taught to read with the new method at that time which was whole word.
So, what he did is he got phonics teachers. And there were a bunch of them around since this was during the ‘20s. He got these phonics teachers to work with the kids and put them through a phonics program. And every single one recovered and became able to read.
He concluded that they would never have had a reading problem if they had been taught with phonics in the first place. He’s the one that named this brain problem “dyslexia.” And the symptoms of dyslexia are a lot of reversals, […], and misunderstanding in reading. And the cure was teach them how the language works.
The English language does have a complex phonics system. It’s not a one for one. Some of our letters make more than one sound. And some of our sounds are made in two or three different ways. So, to not teach it step by step and carefully is criminal as far as I’m concerned. I just consider it absolutely criminal.
So, that’s what we’re trying to handle here. Any teacher who wants to learn how to do it right can come here and we’ll show them how.
DEBRA: I was thinking about how this applies to so many different things. I’m a very good reader, but I’m not good at math. And I think that I was taught well to read by being taught through phonics, but I wasn’t taught in whatever the equivalent is of phonics about how to understand numbers and how to understand math.
It actually wasn’t until maybe 10 years ago that I read a book (the name of it escapes me at the moment). It was all about numbers. It was just about the numbers one through ten. And it showed how the number appeared in nature and different characteristics of the number.
And so it wasn’t just an abstract thought that this is a one or a three. It really had meaning. There was like poetry and mythology and all these things. It’s like the numbers became real to me.
And I think that one can be taught any subject by breaking it down into those essential pieces, and then you can put it together. Like I’m a really good cook. I learned how to cook when I was six years old. But a lot of people who would be like “cooking illiterate,” they could pick up a cookbook, and it could say, “Beat the egg, and sauté the mushrooms,” and they would have no idea if that meant if they could read it. They would not understand what those terms meant because they haven’t learned the bits and pieces.
But once you learn how to boil water and beat an egg and those kinds of things, you can put that together to make all kinds of food.
And I think that’s true for probably any subject.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Sure, you got to learn it step by step and learn the essentials and learn the easiest things first.
DEBRA: Yes!
SHARON HILLESTAD: Boiling water is like the foundation. If we taught the children the sounds of B, A and T, and then taught them that B and A together would blend out “ba” and then help them to blend out the whole world—you know, you just teach the easiest thing first.
I had this little first grader that was in here Friday night. One of his words was penguin. Now, he’ll remember that word because it’s the longest word in the book. It starts with a P. Okay, so that’s “penguin.” But that’s the way a lot of kids are learning to read. What’s the first letter? Then they guess it from the context of the sentence.
So, I had a mother recently bring in three children that we’re helping. I checked out the mom, and she’s reading under a third grade level, and she didn’t even know it. She knew she was a bad speller, but she didn’t know she was that bad of a reader because she would guess words. She’d just guess, “Oh, if it starts with a D, it must be blah.” Anyway…
DEBRA: Wow! It’s just so unnecessary. In some ways, what you’re talking about is as unnecessary as people being exposed to toxic chemicals because we know what the answer is. We know that the way to teach children how to read is use phonics. We know that there are non-toxic products available for every toxic product that there is. It’s just a matter of knowing these things.
And it’s so unnecessary for people to not read. It’s so unnecessary for people to be made ill by toxic chemical exposure. It’s just making that choice, you know?
SHARON HILLESTAD: Yeah, it’s solving problems. And the inability to solve problems starts with an unwillingness to confess to the problem.
So, the simplest thing is to just look, and then evaluate. Now, what’s wrong with this? What’s right with this? And then, do something about it.
And so, I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing in your field of expertise. And I hope I help as many people as you do.
DEBRA: Well, I’m sure you do, Sharon, because it’s just so fundamental. I mean, I think what each of us are doing is just one of those fundamental things of life.
We’re almost getting to the end of the show. There was one more thing that I wanted to mention that I know you work with too—and that is looking up words in the dictionary.
I mean, you can read, you could write, and then the next step is about understanding and being able to communicate to another person and have that person understand what you’re saying, have that other person’s communication have you understand what it’s saying. And as a writer, I look up a lot of words. I just look up a lot of words. I try to use the correct word for what it is that I’m wanting to say. And if I’m ever uncertain, I look up the words.
And to look up words in the dictionary, you need to be able to read. You need to be able to see those syllables and put them together as a word.
I would just encourage anybody who hasn’t been using a dictionary to get a dictionary. You even have to get a paper one because they’re online. I use online dictionaries all the time. I have one built into my computer. It came with my computer. It’s actually my paper dictionary. And so you have that comprehension.
In the field of toxics, there are so many words that are new words that people don’t know what those words even mean. And so it’s something that you have to learn. You need to learn what formaldehyde is and how it affects you if you’re going to understand what people are talking about when they’re discussing this subject.
And unfortunately, this is a subject that people need to know something about.
So, I just wanted to get that in on this show.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Oh, we’re very big on dictionary too. And in fact, we give dictionaries away to families to make sure that they have a dictionary in their home because a lot of families don’t. It’s good if they can get online and get it, but there are families that don’t have computers or maybe it’s just not handy. I think it’s handy sometimes just to look it up on a regular dictionary.
DEBRA: I think so too. I have several regular dictionaries in my house. I have one next to the bed. So if I’m reading in bed, I’m not going to jump out of bed and go look in the computer.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Right, yeah, yeah.
DEBRA: But also, I’m happy that I have a dictionary in my cellphone, so that if I’m out some place, I can just look up a word.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Oh, yeah. There’s no excuse these days. There’s just no excuse not to understand what you’re talking about and what you’re hearing.
Do you know, also, when we talk about illiteracy, being able to read what other people write, and then being able to write what you want to write—
I read two months ago that people would put ads on the Internet to sell things, and they would misspell the term.
One guy caught on to that. He was looking through the ads for a whole bunch of machines. And he saw one that was spelled very oddly. And he thought, “I wonder if they mean something else.” And he got something that should’ve cost him about $150 for $25.
DEBRA: Wow! I need to interrupt you now because the show is over.
SHARON HILLESTAD: Okay!
DEBRA: The music is going to come on in about five seconds. So thank you so much for being with me, Sharon.
This is Sharon Hillestad. Please go to Toxic Free Talk Radio. Find out how to get to her website. And find out more about how you can help people learn how to read with phonics.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
