Successful reading involves the greatest number of visual skills. Reading ability is affected when students have underdeveloped visual skills; thus, reading is one of the more difficult academic subjects to improve.

There is a wide variety of opinions on the best way to teach students to be good readers with good comprehension. No two students are exactly alike, and one style of teaching does not work for everyone. When a student has been behind his age group in reading for several years and only one approach is used over and over with little success, it is no surprise that the student, teacher, and parents are frustrated. Some teaching techniques cause high anxiety, and a big “I hate to read” switch goes off in a student’s head every time he is required to read. To overcome this attitude toward reading, the environment, the approach, and the materials used need to be fun, exciting, and easy so the student can build confidence and feel good about reading (and about himself).

Changing the desire to read can happen at any age. A very bright young man who did well in school disliked reading and never read for pleasure. His girlfriend wrote a novel and asked him to read it. His desire to please his girlfriend led him to read and become interested in the story. After reading her book, he began to enjoy reading for pleasure. It seems he took extra interest in what his girlfriend’s book was about. This type of interested focus helped him enjoy the experience of reading the story. Her novel had created curiosity about the plot. The outcome for him was a positive attitude while reading the story. For some students, it can take reading up to four books with the “I want to know what happens” attitude before the joy of reading takes hold and becomes automatic.

It is extremely important for a child to like what he is reading in order to create a desire to know the end of the story. Curiosity, interest and fun overcome the negative response to reading. Dull and boring topics reinforce the feeling that reading is horrible and should be avoided whenever possible. Students having difficulty learning to read are repeatedly given basic, non-interesting, easy to read material that increases the boredom.