Testimonies

The case of Patricio Jesus Castro Palominos (49), leatherworker and his wife, Mrs. Rosa Elvira Zúñiga Devia (36), housewife.

Mr. "Duck" and Mrs. Rose, residents of Melipilla, Metropolitan Area, Chile were both illiterate and dyslexic, until the beginning of June, 2000. Both are Chileans, of normal behavior and reasoning. During years that it embraced his whole life, so far signal, a string of Teachers in different Schools, they tried in vain to teach them to read and they were given up as lost cases. For years, they were benefited by Literacy Programs, with teachers that went to their house, but to no avail; they still couldn't learn to read and to write. The last of those teachers, was an official of the Municipality of the Comuna of Melipilla. After six fruitless months, he stopped trying and during that time, before his frustration of not achieving results, his treatment of the couple was openly pejorative, because he didn't call them by name: he referred to them as "the dummies", especially, when referring to Mr. Patrick.

At the end of June, they left their illiteracy behind, after eight effective hours of classes, with two hours of instruction, each Tuesday and Thursday. After 34 classes with Alicia González O., they were already able to read newspapers and write words and short sentences.

Mr. "Duck" he remembers that, at the beginning he repeated three years, in six years that he passed through different Schools. With the time he assumed his illiteracy with resignation. He never forgets a cruel joke that his friends played on him when they sent him with a paper written to a hardware store of Melipilla whose owner was very mean. "Today I know what was written, he said: "give me a kilo of rubber nails", adds Mr. "Duck."

"To me, the truth had entered in the head that I would never learn how to read and my life was hindered a lot", adds Mr. Duck, "since I didn't understand any sign in the streets or on the buses and sometimes when it arrived in Santiago, I memorized where I had to go when shopping and I didn't take buses so I wouldn't get lost, instead I walked many blocks on foot.

When I met Mrs. Alicia (González), I didn't believe at the beginning that she could become trained and a neighbor had me convinced that if in a lifetime she had not learned anything, less I will become trained an age person, but at the end she convinced me that I was intelligent and she gave us some Spelling-books for both and my two children. To my surprise, in a short time I was reading my first words, with a bit of difficulty, but I understood the whole Spelling-book. After two weeks I began to write my first letters.

Today I can almost read all the signs and make out sentences of the newspapers which is something I had never done before. I am no longer afraid of taking a bus in Santiago. I know that I need more practice, but everything I read, I understand and my writing is better and all thanks to Mrs. Alicia's system. She changed our lives", Mr. Patrick concludes.

Mrs. Rose, the wife of Mr. "Duck", it was at the beginning the most enthusiastic and it demonstrated great interest in learning and it was the first one in beginning to read. Today, the same as her couple, reads and she writes with ease, with quite uniform and proportionate handwriting.
"I also went through several Schools in Santiago", she remembers Rose, "and here in Melipilla, they tried to teach us for years, but it was in vain. I sometimes lost hope, but always maintained the interest to learn to read.

When I met Mrs. Alicia., she immediately told me that we would learn. And in a short time I realized that their system is fantastic, because I began to read and shortly after, to write. She has a lot of patience, however we learned quickly with their system. The Spelling-book and some cards with the letters and their sounds are very easy of learning. When the sounds of the letters are already known, once you know the sounds you can read words.
Imagine what I lost of my life for not having known it before. Today I am moved and feel a terrific sensation when reading some poetry from the Spelling-book and I also read in the newspapers. The beautiful thing is that I almost understand all that I read and Mrs. Alicia says that I have pretty handwriting. I know I need to practice more, but after a lot of time, an entire life! I already read and I write and I learned in a very short time."

Now I wonder who the dummy is.

Testimony of Elisa Montecinos, of Cerro Navia Comuna, Santiago, Chile, mother of Felipe Pardo Montecinos who arrived to the fifteen years, to the room house, of Alicia González O., without knowing how to read and to write, in March of 1996.

Their mother tells us that in 1987, her son was seven years old, where they practically expelled him him, according to the teacher in charge, due to problems of slow learning. For eight years, Felipe Pardo M., was sent to Special Schools, where he was mostly taught manual arts, without being able to learn to read.

In the year 1996, their mother responded to the public offer of 30 scholarships of the "Heinrich School", in Comuna of Ñuñoa, Santiago, Chile, to teach to read, but in light of the demand, she was sent by the teacher Annette González G. to Alicia González O. who instructed Felipe an hour a day the first week of individual classes and then, day for half, inside a total cycle of instruction of 45 days. In 30 days, Felipe began to read his first words.

Their mother says "I took to my son where Mrs. Alicia, without much hope, since eight years had passed and he had not learned how to read anything. She gave me his Spelling-book that I cherish to this day. And with that, to my surprise, my son, began to read, more or less after a month of classes and later he also began to write. At the beginning, Mrs. Alicia told me that my son had not learned how to read, because he was dyslexic, but that with her system he would learn.

With all that hr learned in that time, I took to my son, to the Special School of Quillahue, in the Comuna of "Lo Prado", where they reinforced his reading and writing. Today he learned an occupation in that School and he reads and he writes without problems, but it was Mrs. Alicia, with their system that my son began to read and to write his first words."

Testimony from multiple children and their Parents to the public offer of 30 scholarships of the "Heinrich School", 1996, in Commune of Ñuñoa, Santiago, Chile, to teach to read and to write to children with learning difficulties, during a cycle of one month.

Myrna Ortiz Córdoba, Artist.

I met Mrs. Alicia González, together with her daughter Annette, in 1992, in San Salvador, El Salvador, my country, when my son Edward who was her grandson, were both four years old. She visited the family, to meet, both, her grandson and nephew, meet me and be reunited with Nelson, her son and brother respectively. Nelson was waiting for that moment, according to what he had already told me, in order to maintain the family tradition. All of Mrs. Alicia's children and grandsons, had learned how to read at age four and in an incredibly short period of two weeks, something that I always questioned. And convinced that his mother would consent to teach Edward to read, the first day of her stay, Nelson asked her to do it, taking advantage of her two-week long visit. But, to his surprise, she didn't acquiesce, arguing that she came to rest. Instead, she took a book out of her suitcase that I immediately recognized as a Spelling-book. She approached me and told me: "Here, take this, teach him yourself." Then she went to the dining room table, while Nelson and I looked at each other without knowing what to say, and she took out a sheet of paper and began to write on both sides, something that said they were some basic instructions then she handed them to me, with a brief explanation, about how to teach Edward to read.

I listened to all this, taken aback, because I neither was nor am I a teacher and I had always thought that to teach reading, was something complicated, a slow process and exclusively for professionals specialized in the field. However, I listened to it with quite attentively and then, I forgot all about the issue, until both visitors returned to Chile.

After that period, Nelson, convinced of my initial incredulity and of my inability to teach our four year-old son to read, convinced of the many cases that he had seen in the past, of seeing Mrs. Alicia teach so many children, he insisted to me with the basic argument: "What do you have to lose with giving it a try?"

At that time, Edward was attending Pre-School at a school called "Children's", in San Salvador and taking advantage of his friendship with a partner, call "little July", with his mother's authorization, I decided to teach them both, following the instructions left by Mrs. Alicia.

After a week of teaching the children, an hour a day, I verified with total astonishment that both began reading their first words effortlessly and I spent the day wondering how I had been able to do something that seemed incredible. I was finally convinced of the effectiveness of the "Light." System. After a month, both children were already reading with more ease and they began writing without problems.

I remember that the "little July's" father, walked by nearby houses in his neighborhood, saying that his son was a genius, but I knew that my son as well as his friend were normal children that had learned at an early age and in a very short time, thanks to Mrs. Alicia's reading system and not because of anything else. Two months later, Nelson bought Edward a magazine "little Condor", which was very popular in Chile and several other countries and the best way to test how well he had learned how to read, was to listen to his laughs and the explanation that he gave us of those "jokes" that he read. This was proof of his degree of reading comprehension.

In 1998, by that time in Chile, I taught my daughter, Jennifer, to read on my own. Following the family tradition and to three months before she turned five, Nelson and I took her out of Kindergarten for a month, and after three weeks, she began reading. She could have learned in two, but because of her strong personality, so as not to force things, I preferred to extend the process by a week. The above-mentioned allowed my daughter to start the following school year, the First Grade already knowing how to read. She is presently in the Second Grade, and is six years old.

Now I know that learning to read doesn't have to be so slow and complicated and I am always so sorry me to see how many pains that learned professionals have taken, with so few results and not just in Chile.

This is why I'm telling you all of this, to share my successful experience with Mrs. Alicia's method which I find fantastic, because I tried it, as she says that a child alone, can learn to read at age four in a matter of days and the most gratifying thing is that a person of normal intelligence and with enough patience to deal with children, like me though I am not a teacher, can teach reading and writing without great complications and with good results, thanks to the "Light" System that at least for me, was so easy to understand and apply. It would allow for quicker advancement and so many reading problems to be solved that exist in Chile and the rest of countries of the Americas.

Testimony of Nelson Olaf González, son of Alicia González O.

All my siblings and I, four in total, learned to read when we were four years old. My parents said that we learned in about two weeks. These results are quite unbelievable for specialists in traditional systems in the field and for the most other people. I have proved it to them, since I have had the ability of reckoning, that is to say my whole life, from observing my mother with hundreds of children and to my two sisters.

I inherited my mother's good memory, and I distinctly recall with emotion the first word that I read in my life: "mom", which I understood almost immediately, I then stopped to look at my mother's smiling face, acknowledging that I had indeed read. To me, reading became at that time, in a game, because I read the advertisements and signs in the street, helped by the development to the formal and informal reading coming from my parents. Besides a considerable library at home, they never lacked newspapers, such as "The Mercury", "The Latest News", "The Last Hour" and have magazines like "For You", "The Kid", "The Peneca", "Okey", all those which those "we devoured" and we traded them with one another.

The fact that all my children and nephews learned with my mother at four years as well and in a time period that was amazingly short and similar proves that far from us her children and grandsons being "geniuses", it is the "Light" System and the form that one becomes trained to read and to write with it that facilitates learning in record time. However, our family and their respective descendants, with logical differences of aptitudes and habits, in general, we are people of normal intelligence, but with the comparative advantage of having previously cultivated reading and combined during that time the pleasure of practicing it systematically. Aside from my family and loved ones beings, the most what I value most is my personal library, due to the good habit of reading since I was little, before the "established" time. The above-mentioned, has facilitated me a lot, my professional work as a consultant in Chile and abroad.

On a personal note, when writing the book with my mother that describes in detail the teaching methodology of "Light", I took it upon myself to investigate why this system is so effective and efficient, for children who currently do not have learning problems, as I did not. They are misnamed "normal". We learned without effort and in record time. The reason is simple: it is due to how reading is taught. First the letters of the alphabet, through the "magic" of the natural and universal sounds, objectified for figures associated to each letter of the alphabet, so that knowing those "ancestral" sounds, associated to each sign, these that are by nature human, abstract inventions, become concrete in the child's or adult's mind. On the other hand, those associated sounds and letters are all presented in a couple of lessons. From the author's experience, children pick them up very quickly. After those sounds are familiar, one begins to link them, to form the first words and sentences and thus those children or adults begin reading. It's that simple and effective...

I also took upon myself the additional task of explaining to myself why, the "Light" System, besides being so efficient for the segment of students, some without learning problems, was also efficient with those with some type of non-clinical retardation, or a certain dysfunction associated with dyslexia, since her author, affirms that the dyslexia, in children or adults diagnosed with that dysfunction, ceases to manifest itself during the short reading process that "Light." entails. And the answer is invariably the same: it is due to the factor of those "letters experienced" for natural sounds objectified for allusive figures, so that to the dyslexic, first they are introduced as isolated letters, so that he or she observes them and listens to their sounds repeatedly in his or her mind in rapid succession, until he or she identifies them and associates them, almost in the same time of learning that a child would take without the problems described.

Lastly, I can say with great satisfaction, seeing how Myrna, my wife and my smaller children's mother, has been able to teach without any complications or incidents whatsoever, two of our children of normal intelligence who have acquired the habit and pleasure of reading early, which facilitates that many parents in the future can help their children begin reading in advance and with a bigger general understanding and that, also, a legion of literacy crusaders in many Spanish speaking countries, it can achieve more and better results in a shorter time, given the great task of teaching a large group of illiterate, represented Latin America region by two digits.

Comments of the written Press

In Supplement "Magazine of Books" of "The Mercury", December 23 the 2000: "Many parents and educators usually frustrate when a boy takes more than the habitual thing in learning how to read and to write. What to say when one has dyslexia. But this situation can change with alone to apply the system "light" of reading-writing, created by Alicia González Opazo in 1933 and with which educated successfully to more than six thousand students in her extensive teaching career. As she leans on in the "magic" of natural and universal sounds, objectified for allusive figures and associated to each one of the 29 letters of the alphabet, a learning is guaranteed in time record."

In Magazine "Ercilla", N° 3159, of March 19 at April 1° the 2001: "Considering the problem of functional illiteracy that affects a large part of Chileans, it could be a solution the "Light" system of reading-writing, already applied in more than six thousand students, according to their promoters. The author of the method, Teacher Alicia González Opazo, specialist in reading-writing and Nelson Olaf González, specialist in adult training, they have published the book The drama of learning how to read and how to overcome it effortlessly, in the one that explain the system, centered in the natural sounds and objectified by allusive figures and associated to each letter of the alphabet."

Problems & Solutions in Education

Light v/s Traditional Systems