**Per an August 2016 study by the US Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults, or 14%, can't read. The percent of high school graduates who can't read is 19%.
Why?
Can you read this sentence in Morse code? . - -- . - - . . - . . - - .
Or this one in Chinese characters? 
Now this sentence will be easy for you: A man ran.
The letters of the English alphabet are just like Morse code or Chinese characters. The barrier to reading is that letters are, in fact, a code. One must decode them instantly, one after another, quickly enough to read.
Children need to read at 120 words per minute by grade 2 in order to keep up. That's two words per second. Each word has five letters, on average. This means that a reader must figure out ten letters per second!
Then one must immediately decode another ten letters in the next second, over and over. This need to constantly decode the letters, quickly, creates the problem.
The Thor reading lessons help learners to jump this barrier, as they practice with our own-speed system.
**http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/education-building-blocks/literacy/resources/statistics
The Thor Solution
Thor is a mastery-based reading system which allows everyone to learn at his or her own speed.
Repetition, self-pacing, and mastery learning all work to make the Thor system s uccessful. Each keystroke must be made correctly. Also, students must complete each lesson correctly, before they move onto the next one. After a small group of lessons is completed, the student's progress is further tested for mastery of that section.
Our system allows students to work at their own speed. So they are able to benefit from as many repetitions as they need, in order to be successful. They can also move ahead as fast as their skill allows.
With Thor, success is not optional; success is natural.
The barrier to reading is that letters are a code. One must decode them instantly, one after another, quickly enough to read. This needs a huge amount of practice.
Thor is a mastery-based reading system which allows everyone to learn at his or her own speed. The Thor lessons start with learning the alphabet, and end with students reading at a sixth grade level.
Each lesson has almost ten words, and these average around five letters.
Each letter must be tapped, to show the learner has understood, in several different contexts. This creates a video game feel.
This explains the focus and enjoyment by the student users. Everyone can relate to the interactive nature of this learning.
Thor is cost-effective, too. In developed countries, effective coaching by a teacher would cost hundreds of dollars per year per student. Even in less developed countries, a teacher would cost $100 per year. We offer the Thor reading lessons to anyone, for $9 per year or less.
Thor runs on any Android device. We invite you to try Thor for yourself. Click on the button below from your Android device to download and install Thor. Use the code website1 for your free trial when registering.
Thor's Potential Impact On Society
- Students become more engaged. They are then able to learn English better, and to develop 21st century skills.
- Teachers can have a more positive attitude toward work, and provide more personalized learning. The Thor reading lessons will be a great help in a classroom. Teachers can supervise, while children learn at their own pace.
- Family interaction and parental involvement may increase. Parents can help students to learn from our mobile system.
- Society benefits from bridging the digital divide. Economically disadvantaged students and children with disabilities benefit particularly.
- Economic progress and a better educated workforce offer a higher return on investment than anything else. (Forbes, 2015)
- A number of studies suggest that a wide array of social benefits are associated with improved education. These include reduced criminal activity, reduced reliance on welfare and other programs, increased charitable giving and volunteer activity. Attainment of desired family size and improved health have been documented. (Riddell, Global)
Reading is the most important of all skills. Writing is improved by reading. Studying math involves reading as well. Even self-esteem is affected. And persistence is required for learning almost everything!
Yet reading is the most difficult of the basic skills. There are 26 symbols in the English alphabet. Worse, they can have over 40 different sounds. And still worse, the sounds depend on which letters come before or after each letter.
So reading is both the most important skill to learn - and the most difficult to teach!
The interactive Thor reading steps, on Android smartphones and tablets and computers, will help people everywhere to read English. We are working to help a billion people read much better, at a fraction of the expense required for normal classroom teaching.
Thor History & Timeline
The lessons composing the Thor reading system were created by Thorwald Esbensen. His career as a teacher and administrator was long and distinguished. In 1980, Executive Educator Magazine named him one of the top 100 educational administrators in North America. He taught at all grade levels, from kindergarten through university graduate school, before becoming superintendent of schools in Duluth, MN. Thorwald created educational software for the earliest home computer systems. His life's work became the Thor reading system.
His system was used in Duluth, MN to teach over 100 first and second grade youngsters better reading skills. As measured by the Scott, Foresman Reading Placement Tests, the average of their median scores was at the 56th percentile at the beginning of the school year.
Their reading improved greatly, with under two hours per week of using Thor. The average of their median scores was at the 89th percentile at the end of that school year.
Even a 20% gain is considered a satisfactory result. A 60% gain is highly significant. Two other classes were tested, with very similar results.
Thor Test Results
Daniel Esbensen with children using Thor
All the children spoke well. They just couldn't recognize and interpret the letters fast enough to read. Ten letters per second just to read at a grade 2 level, is tough.
Finally he identified the solution: teach students to recognize and decode the letters instantly. Of course, this was not easy!
He spent ten years, building and refining a system that allows students to develop this ability, while learning at their own speed.
1992 - 2002: His son Daniel had become a virtuoso programmer and software architect. He programmed these lessons for use on computers. The system was tested with three classes of first and second graders, with excellent results, in the mid-1990s. This is described in the section, "Thor's Solution" on our website.
2016: Daniel Esbensen contributed these copyrighted lessons to LearnOnMobile LLC, and became its CTO. Douglas Makepeace agreed to help build this company, as CEO. Each owns half of the equity. Daniel then oversaw the conversion of the system, to allow its use in a mobile application.
The mobile app was then tested, first on a small group of children in San Jose CA. Later, a group of Indian children at a Hyderabad orphanage tried the lessons.
With little instruction, the children enjoyed the interactive lessons in this "game" as one girl called it. Short videos were made. Links to these are at the bottom of "Thor's Solution" on our website.
June 2017: Ten children in East Palo Alto were given small tablets, and their progress is being tracked. Another 50 children at the same after-school program will be using Thor over the summer, starting July 3. A software system, built under Daniel's supervision, will track the use by each student. Measurements of many kinds will help us evaluate the children's progress, and make improvements.
By the end of 2017, we plan to have many more users, as the cost of providing the lessons through cloud services is small. We could allow a million people to use Thor for free, without increasing our budget for cloud services.
Going Forward: There are about 25 countries, each with over 25 million people who are illiterate in English. Notable are India, with over 500 million, and the US with 35 million. We are working hard on both already. Douglas spent almost two months in India in 2016.
We have people in mind to help us bring our English reading lessons to five other countries (English illiterates in parentheses): Turkey (40 million people), Iran (42 million), Russia (68 million), Brazil (100 million), and China (675 million).
Financing: We currently have two full-time employees, Douglas and his long-time research analyst, Tim Chan. Neither is paid by LEARN! To make more rapid progress, we need to hire some people, and use consultants more. We have three sources of support in mind.
First, we are looking for users. These could come through the Google PlayStore (starting in August 2017) and pay $1 per month or $10 per year. Those with student IDs could pay half that. At the other extreme, some multi-billion-dollar businesses are based on teaching English as a foreign language. A license for our software would be logical for them.
Second, we welcome buyers of Thor for groups of users. As an example, a foundation has paid for the translation of Khan Academy's lessons into Portuguese, for use by the founder's fellow Brazilians. A Turkish investor might pay us $500,000 per year for one million users. Over five years, this would be .5% of his wealth.
Third, we welcome investors that we admire. Current plans are to offer a five-year balloon note, with 40% interest, subject to revenues allowing payment.
Really ideal are people like Bill and Melinda Gates, who are well-known for investing in ed tech, and donating to education, and paying for services that governments should supply but don't. We have a few others like this in mind.
Our Long-Term Vision: a first-class basic education for anyone, anywhere, for less than $10 per year - possibly much less.
First we need to reach one million users of Thor, providing pre-tax income of $2 - $4 million per year. We can then expand the lessons from K-6, to K-12.
Fairly quickly we will create links to Khan Academy. Reading and math are the two toughest subjects. Khan Academy plans to provide free courses for the next 100 years!
Also, we will combine the best of the many free apps for writing, grammar, vocabulary, literature, etc, in a 'wrapper' with Thor. Then all can be used without exiting Thor.
We will then be able to offer a first-class basic education, of reading and writing and arithmetic, to anyone, anywhere, for less than ten dollars per year. We could easily have 100 million users in five years, with pre-tax income greater than $100 million.