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Comment by trane_project | Hacker News Reader

So direct instruction (the philosophy behind this book) has been shown to only have modest gains compared to the best interventions, which have more than double the effect size.

It works fine (not the best) for kids with no reading difficulties, but it completely lacks the understanding and the tasks that fix phonemic deficits, the actual source of most reading difficulties.

It's not entirely a bad book, but won't be of too much use for kids with reading difficulties. Since it's only a few bucks, it's not a bad investment. Just be aware of its limitations. If your kid is not developing fluent and effortless reading (not just decoding), you will need to use a method that is aware of how to fix phonemic deficits.

See my other comments in this page for more.

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trane_project is selling a $20/mo subscription or $1000 perpetual license to their own reading program and folks should read this and their other comments aware of that context. It's disappointing to tell a personal story, come back, and see it was someone's jumping-off point for just slightly indirect self-promotion.

Sure, no problem in pointing it out. I did not hide the fact and I invite anyone to do their own research. The comments mostly draw from David Kilpatrick’s book “Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties”.

It’s a very academic book and I didn’t see anyone in the comments aware of orthographic mapping. The critique of direct instruction can also be found there. No intervention that does not train phonemic awareness to the advanced level had the massive results of those which do. That also applies to OG, which was mentioned in the thread.

Not selling anything yet, that page is a placeholder. But I will have a free and untimed version that should be enough to fix most reading difficulties caused by phonemic deficits.

Which I can do without worrying about cannibalizing my own business because I am not selling a reading app, but a complete path to mastery of reading and writing to college level and beyond. That hopefully helps clarify the difference in price.

Why? Obviously the person who replied to you has experience and a POV. I think that's a useful addition to the conversation.

Plus, I wouldn't have even thought to check out the profile if you hadn't mentioned it. It's not slightly indirect self-promotion, it's not self-promotion at all.

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