How to Increase Your Child's Verbal Intelligence: The Language Wise Method

I think that Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness have hit the nail on the head when it comes to both teaching decoding skills and verbal intelligence. These books have been a great help teaching my dyslexic son to read and comprehend. I finally found a system that worked!But, the "Language Wise Support Manual" that goes with this book is pricey (about 3 times the price of the book) and unnecessary. While it might help a classroom teacher who needs worksheets that he/she can send home for the student to work on, a parent can just use notebook paper to do the activities. For example, to go with "Using Elaboration in Writing" page 234 in the book, the workbook simply as a sentence at the top of the page that says "Fill both pages on the topic of________", followed by two pages of lined paper. A great number of the pages are like this.

Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness have added the perfect complement to their first book, "Reading Reflex." I have previously believed that there are two components for reading, decoding and comprehension. I now believe that they should be decoding and language development. Through my already extensive involvement with the "Language Wise Method", I am convinced that comprehension is a byproduct of verbal intelligence. I have witnessed it with my own eyes. Understanding what one reads proliferates when syntax (the categorical and functional relationship of words), vocabulary, attention, memory, logical reasoning and creativity improve. But verbal intelligence is not limited to producing comprehension, but has manufactured writing skills, communcation skills, memory and much more. The comprehensive presentation concerning what verbal intelligence is, human motivation, the nature of language, vocabulary, comprehension, attention challenges, memory, logical reasoning and creativity, make up the first section of the book and supplies the reader with a solid foundation of knowledge about the real issues. Section two presents an aggregate of about forty activities that all team-up to produce the end result, verbal intelligence or making one language wise. Having read, studied and applied this book to numerous children, I have obtained outstanding results to date. One example is a tenth-grade girl, comprehending at first-grade level who reached grade-level in 15 one-hour sessions with me. The efficacy of this program is due, in part, to the way in which children are taught. Most of us are aware that when a child discovers something, the likelyhood that she has learned it increases. Through implicit/discovery learning, children are engaged in problem solving, connecting words, analyzing, metacognition, increasing their own vocabulary, and more. I give "How To Increase Your Chid's Verbal Intelligence" a five star rating. It works and it's a blast. Swen Nater

Having this volume dedicated to me, one might think that a review would have biased leanings. With that in mind, I will be as objective as possible. Having implemented this program into one-on-one and small group tutoring, I can say, from experience and from a pragmatic point of view, that it works. Personally, I have had the priviledge of testing it on a 10th grader who was comprehending at a second grade level, and with astonishment, watched her reach grade level in just 15 one-hour sessions. In addition, this young lady, who was cursed with detachment syndrome, due to being left on a Korean doorstep by her mother when she was an infant, blossomed in her communication and writing skills. Her liberation from the shackles of her, then supposed, doom, has made an incredible difference in her life, as you might well imagine. But that is only one child. I have perfomed small group instruction and witnessed similar growth, proportionally. My assessment of Verbal Intelligence is that it is a masterpiece. Discovery learning has always been a great teacher, and this program allows a child (or a person of any age) to implicitly learn the English language. This volume majors on this type of learning, allowing children to uncover and grab for themselves, the valuable syntax, vocabulary, and other components of verbal intelligence. I have seen children grow wings as they learn a strategy for learning the meaning of a new word, based on the rest of a sentence, or group of sentences. And, as they learn to tackle those words, I have witnessed an atrophy in the intimidation of new words and in the strategy of skipping over them. I have seen prodigious smiles as children compose an interesting, informative and complex paragraph through the caveman activity. I have seen excitement and incredible improvement as children engage in connecting words and deduction activities. It is my opinion that Verbal Intelligence is the exact thing that parents should be doing with their children all through school, and, I would go so far as to say that if parents engage their children in this, before kindergarten, they, and the school, will be amazed. It is not optional, but should be original equipment for our preschoolers. In short, I believe that Verbal Intelligence should not be simply "added" to a library, or integrated into a curriculum. It should have preeminence when language is taught. Swen Nater

With a plethora of ways to address reading comprehension, it is difficult as a teacher and parent to know which are really effective and why. As with Reading Reflex, the McGuinesses have led me to a deeper understanding of the familiar. The book's activites are simple and powerful and often ones that I have used before but without the accompanying understanding of why they are effective. The book is divided into two sections, the first explains the underlying theory. The second describes the activities. So many times we see activities without theory and theory without activites... here the twain have met. Understanding the logic of the activities makes them adaptable to the classroom setting. For example, there is an activity "Connections" where children are asked to relate not obviously related things. I used this as a prereading activity with a Native American myth, introducing some key elements of the story. The children generated connections and virtually predicted the story as they established relationships between a flute, a blanket and a branch. This is how understanding brain research can enlighten and strengthen our teaching practice, giving our students powerful experiences with written and spoken language. I highly recommend this book.

I am a recent graduate with a teaching degree who started teaching in a second grade class. I bought How To Increase Your Child's Verbal Intelligence, The Language Wise Method because of the author's first book, Reading Reflex. I wanted to improve my students' writing and language skills. I found the book informative and motivating. I have used several of the lessons from the book in my classroom. My students love the lessons and are eager to participate in them. I have noticed a dramatic increase in my students' writing and speaking vocabulary. Every lesson is taught in context and is meaningful to my students. I believe everyone who works with children should read about the Language Wise method, it has given me a better understanding of the learning process.