#reading therapy

This is probably the biggest reward a writer can get, when the content is making people feel better. ❤️

Difficulty with reading is relatively common post-stroke, but can often be neglected as individuals and providers tend to more often focus on an individual’s speaking ability and outward language production. Yet, reading is an important aspect of everyday life that is worth addressing with proper treatment tools and strategies. Using reading strategies and intensive reading therapy can help to improve reading ability along with potentially positively impacting other aspects of language in individuals post-stroke. Reading strategies include: finger tracking, using a reading guide, having more white space, incorporating bigger text, looking for key information, controlling reading rate, and rereading pertinent information. Oral Reading for Language in Aphasia (ORLA) and Multiple Oral Rereading (MOR) are two viable options for reading therapy.

Oral Reading for Language in Aphasia (ORLA)

When using ORLA, you read sentences aloud with a speech-language pathologist (SLP) or an available reading partner. The first sentence is read aloud as a model by your reading partner. Then, you read the sentence together aloud with your reading partner. These sentences are typically repeated multiple times to encourage reading fluency and better reading accuracy. Then, you read the sentences independently, if able. Repetition can be lessened if it seems you do not need as much support with reading. As you improve, the sentences or text read should be increased in difficulty to continue the improvement process. There also is a computer version of ORLA for practicing independently. ORLA may not be for everyone, but it is an effective treatment tool that I’ve utilized personally to help improve patients’ reading ability. ORLA can be used with various types of text including books and news’ articles. Due to the oral nature of ORLA, it can also help to better word-finding ability and speaking fluency.

Multiple Oral Re-reading (MOR)

MOR is relatively similar to ORLA; however, it often involves re-reading of the same text repeatedly over time. Daily practice with the same text over a week period allows you to truly strive to improve your reading ability relative to the words in that text. The goal of MOR is to improve reading rate and accuracy. Your reading partner (a SLP or another person) can assist you as needed to help you make appropriate corrections relative to your oral reading of the text. It is ideal to utilize texts including common everyday language, especially if some of that language is difficult for you to produce in conversation. This repetition may also help you to improve word-finding of practiced words. Now, don’t worry as you can change the text you are reading with relative regularity, so that things don’t get too stale. However, just like with ORLA and improvement in other areas of life, repeated effective practice is beneficial and often necessary to achieve progress.

Know that there are additional reading resources and tools out there, but I wanted to highlight ORLA and MOR personally as I’ve used them in my practice to my patient’s observed and reported benefit. So please, keep reading and keep practicing.

So... I’ve never been an avid reader.  I want to be; but...you see... reading physically hurts.  I have Irlen Syndrome and the words, not just the letters, float, spin, and otherwise move around on the page.  I read slowly because of it.  I get headaches from reading.  Which is terrible and not conducive to my studies.

I’d talked about Irlen before with a friend of mine who diagnoses it and she told me that to determine a starting place for my color filter, default to the highlighter color I tend to use most.  For me, that was orange.

So, I went to Amazon and found an inexpensive pair of orange glasses and let me tell you... I’m excited about these things.  So far, I haven’t had problems with the words moving around and I don’t seem to have a headache (though, I’m holding out on this one because it may happen). I’m looking forward to getting back into reading the articles I need for school without getting sick/headaches!