to determine the most likely underlying
cause of your learning difficulties.Take theLearning Behavior Rating Scale- by
completing this form you will get information about the likelihood and cause of your
learning problem. Take theMental Skills Screening Testto determine if and to pinpoint the specific skills responsible for your learning
difficulties.
The four most commonly given reasons for learning difficulties are:
inadequate or poor instruction, lack of motivation, poor underlying learning skills, and
heredity.
If the difficulty is due to poor or inadequate
instruction, a person will be able to understand and perform as others do with extra
help or tutoring. But if the good performance is achieved only after long hours, sweat, or
many mistakes, then the problem is deeper.
Lack of motivation isalmost never the initial cause,
although it is often associated with learning difficulties. Very few enter school or
a job not wanting to succeed. It is only after they find it difficult, experience failure,
or are ridiculed that they avoid the activities that give them pain. In other words, a
lack of motivation is usually the result of a learning problem — not the cause.
Heredity does play a role in learning difficulties, but it
is generally believed that between 40 and 70% of our mental abilities are learned,
not inherited. Therefore, we can accomplish far more if we stop blaming the problems on
genes, which we can’t change, and help enhance the skills that are learned and can be
changed.
Most often, learning difficulties are due to poor underlying mental
skills. These skills include:
Attention/Concentration: the ability to stay on task or
ignore distractions. For example, continuing to read a book while another group is in a
discussion.
Memory: the ability to recall short or long term
information. For example, copying from a board (short term) or taking a final history exam
(long term).
Comprehension: the ability to understand more easily.
Visualization: the ability to create mental pictures.
For example, seeing "in the mind" a word math problem before trying to solve it.
Phonetic awareness: the ability to sound out and spell
new words.
Simultaneous and sequential processing: the ability to
get meaning from information that is presented either all at once (as in recognizing a
word) or over time (as in understanding a sentence).
Different academic subjects or occupations require
different mental skills. It's possible for someone who has "normal" intelligence
to score high on some mental skill tests and low on others. But if those "low"
scores are in the skills required for reading or for math, then reading or math
achievement will be low even though IQ is "normal."
PACE’s purpose is to help you or your child learn
easier, faster, and more efficiently. To do this, we first determine if any mental skills
are deficient that could cause the learning difficulties. Please contact us and we
will give you the name and telephone number of a provider in
your area who can arrange the free or low cost mental skills screening test.
top
To contact
us
Dr. Ken Gibson (Director of Product Development)
Dr. Keith
Gibson (Director of Research )
Tanya Mitchell (Director of Client Services)
Dean Tenpas (Director of Operations)
8540 Ryewood Trail Colorado Springs, CO. 80919
1-800-535-5441 or 719-264-8808
email:info@pacetutoring.com
