| New
Perspectives
- Feb, 1993 Issue #20 |
LINDAMOOD-BELL
LEARNING PROCESSES
Paul Worthington-Research & Development
San Luis Obispo, CA
800-234-6224
Lindamood-Bell
specializes in working with students who have learning based
difficulties. It is a growing organization with centers currently
in Sacramento, Kent City, San Luis Obispo and
San Diego. Their focus is on changing language processing
skills through intensive work in Reading & Oral Language
Comprehension, and in Expressive Language in students. Addressing
psychological, emotional, and/or social/environmental problems
is not part of their specialization, and they often refer
out students who also need emotional growth.
They have developed
procedures to successfully treat two functions basic to literacy:
auditory conceptual (reading and spelling), and concept imagery
(comprehension). As Nanci Bell said in a presentation at the
American Imagery Conference, "The Visualizing and Verbalizing
program develops imagery from one word and extends through
sentence by sentence processing to whole paragraphs and pages
of text."
"Images are used
to create gestalts from language. Individuals are then able
to develop the skills of identifying the main idea, drawing
inferences, predicting, and evaluating. They are able to verbalize
their images using 'structure words' such as size, color,
and background to direct their expressive language.".... "Once
the individual becomes able to image automatically, from both
oral and written language, significant gains occur in reading
comprehension, oral language comprehension, oral language
expression, and paragraph writing."
"This language comprehension/expression
weakness may generate a range of symptoms. Individuals may
exhibit poor auditory memory, difficulty following directions,
or behavior problems. Although not all behavior problems can
be attributed to language comprehension weakness, it is a
factor to consider in many cases. Individuals who cannot grasp
or create gestalts from language generally have difficulty
with the concept of 'cause and effect.' If they are connecting
to parts they are not able to comprehend the whole of a given
situation. They may not appreciate the consequences of their
actions and become frustrated with intervention that usually
begins with language. The 'talking to' by parents or teachers
may often be misunderstood."
Not only are the
Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes expanding their work with
students directly in their four centers, they are available
to help schools and programs develop ways to effectively work
with learning difficulties within academic and/or emotional
growth programs."
Copyright
© 1993, Woodbury Reports, Inc. (This article may be reproduced
without prior approval if the copyright notice and proper
publication and author attribution accompanies the copy.)
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