My first encounter with the Audiblox program was through one of the pupils in my After Care Centre. She was a Grade 2 pupil who had from Grade 1 shown serious problems in especially reading, spelling, and the recognition of both letters and figures. With great patience I devoted much attention to these problems — without, however, achieving long-term success. It was only when her mother put her on the Audiblox program that we started seeing a noticeable difference in her comprehension and perception as well as basic skills.
At school I was also not a top achiever, to the amazement and frustration of the teachers and my parents. As I had an above-average IQ everybody regarded me as lazy. The fact is that since I became more and more interested in the learning problems and especially reading problems of children, and after reading many books, articles and after much research, I realized that I was one of millions who suffered from dyslexia. Being otherwise completely normal, I taught myself to cope with my problem.
I don’t think people realise what a big problem this can be for an individual. You have to work much harder to score well in especially the learning subjects; because we have difficulties with reading, our concentration and comprehension are weak, which means that we cannot remember what we have read. We realise these things only too well, but do not know what to do about them, therefore eventually we just accept them. You cannot remember what was written on the board during a Maths exam, which means that it takes you so much longer to do the sum — IF you wrote it down correctly in the first place. One has great difficulties filling out forms, not to mention when writing letters. Even the simplest letter to a bank or medical fund seems like a mountain, because it takes you so much longer, because you have to look up so many words in the dictionary, to make sure that you spell them correctly. Most heartbreaking of all is the fact that so much research has already been done about the problem. And yes, they hit the nail on the head with some of their findings: people with learning problems have this or that deficit and they have difficulties with this or with that. Well and good that people try one solution or theory after the other to see whether it works. At the end of the day we remain no more than statistics on paper and the people out there have no idea of how frustrated you are or how hard you try just to cope. There is very little understanding; you are labelled as ADD, or as lazy, or as slow in the uptake, or simply as stupid. And we certainly are none of these. I don’t want to tread on any toes but psychologists, remedial teachers, speech therapists and other educationists are casting about, from one theory to the other and one program to the other and they all lose sight of the cause of the problem.
At the end of last year we moved to Cape Town. There I phoned all over in an effort to find out more about this Audiblox. In December 2001 I did a teacher training course. I had a little over two months before the schools re-opened and in this time I read up a lot more on learning problems. The more I read about the program, the more I realised that my own philosophy on learning problems was actually shared by another educator.
Only for a short while now have I been conducting classes and I can really say that IT WORKS. The program is fantastic. I knew beforehand that it was supposed to help children because the theories are absolutely sensible. However, not in my wildest dreams could I have known that the results could have such an effect on the lives of the learners. They have self-confidence and even when they still battle a little or have not reached their full potential yet they know that they will, and there is somebody who cares. It makes a world of a difference.
An unexpected bonus is that my own ‘INABILITY,’ which in reality never was a ‘DISABILITY,’ is also improving slowly but surely. For that reason I wish to say thank you for this phenomenal program which has given me the opportunity to fulfil my passion, my ambitions and philosophies and to share them with others.
Luani Oosthuizen
Tyger Valley, South Africa
July 2002
(Letter translated)
Luani Oosthuizen Tutor
