Dennis Brooks was a senior instructor and curriculum developer for the U.S. army. After retiring, he attended college while working as an assistant teacher. Shortly after starting work, he was put in charge of a third-grade reading program. The workbooks for teaching reading used diacritical marks, which were confusing for both the teachers and students. Also, the students had to refer to a pronunciation key in the back of the book to match the sounds to the symbols before they could pronounce them correctly. This was a slow learning process but it worked for the majority of the students and they made regular progress. Several of the students still needed additional remedial reading. Using his experience as a curriculum developer, Brooks began writing special lessons for those students. Using the dictionary, he carefully wrote out a list of troublesome words with their phonetic versions next to them. This gave the students a ready reference for pronouncing the troublesome words. After a while, the students were tested without the phonetic clues. As time went by, they learned to read all the single syllable words. Then Brooks made lists of common multi-syllable words with their phonetic forms next to them. This helped the students learn to sound out the common words that made up their speaking vocabulary. Some students were still having trouble sounding out some of the multi-syllable words that they understood but did not use in their speaking vocabulary. To solve this problem, Brooks divided the words into syllables and included them as a third form, which made up the say-spell-say profile. Some students had no way of knowing how to vary the tones of the syllables to pronounce the words correctly. They generally read all the syllables with a flat even tone. To solve this problem, Brooks included the stress marks for each syllable in the multi-syllable words and explained how to use them. Note: The high mark (o) is for syllables with high tones, the low mark (.) is for low tones, and the dash (-) or no mark is for even tones. After many more years of research, Brooks developed the Matrix Sequencing model and the Reading Pattern, which he finally used to break through his own reading barrier. This completed the reading program for English speakers, English language learners and, himself. Brooks now reads at about 100 words per minute.
