Yesterday a call came from someone who indicated he didn't struggle with reading or dyslexia, but had big trouble with spelling. He was frustrated that he couldn't put his thoughts on paper in any real form because his spelling was so limited. Since spelling is a mirror process of reading---we blend the sounds when we read and we should be segmenting the sounds to spell---I told him that the language learning weakness he had could definitely be helped by our systematic reading program.

The concept of a mirror process reminded me of a conversation with a friend recently who composes music. He said that music teachers don't always understand the importance of teaching music theory, resulting in the disservice of limiting the students' ability to create their own works, which is a huge part of the joy of music. So the music student ends up being able to read music even to the level of, say, a concert pianist, but can't begin to play something as simple as "Happy Birthday', for lack of understanding how music is "built", i.e. that individual tones move up and down in relationships and patterns.

I now will think of tones as phonemes! With a love of music, and a goal during the past few years to learn music theory, (it didn't seem important earlier in life), I can see it makes a big difference to systematically learn how to construct chords, chord progressions, and so on.

The caller who ordered yesterday will find his spelling skills increasing very soon, and I can relate to how it will feel to create his own written "chords".