What makes Mentava different
Sometimes people ask “What makes Mentava different? How are you teaching 3-year-olds to read so quickly?”
And the short answer is that we just pay more attention to the details than anybody else.
It seems like reading should be easy:
learn the spoken sounds of a language
learn the written letters that represent those sounds
learn to blend those sounds together into words
But the details really, really matter. For example:
There are 26 letters in the English language, but there are 44 sounds. Most of those sounds are written with more than one letter (like sh, oi, oo, etc) and alphabet books just ignore them. So we had to make our own book.
Most people pronounce letter sounds wrong. They tell kids “m says muh”, “f says fuh”, “p says puh”. But f-u-n isn’t pronounced “fuh-uh-nuh”, it’s pronounced “fffuuunnn”. Letter sounds need to be taught and practiced in isolation.
Most people start by teaching kids letter names, i.e. the “ayy bee sees”. A is ay, B is bee, C is see. But “cat” isn’t pronounced “seeaytee”. To learn to read, kids need to know letter sounds, not letter names.
Alphabet books teach kids capital letters. But 99% of the letters they read will be lowercase! Kids should learn lowercase letters first, because that’s what they’ll be reading.
And that’s just the obvious stuff. Kids learn to write "ɑ" but books make them read “a”. They learn to write "ɡ" but books make them read “ℊ”. Many letters have more than one sound (like “a” in cat, can, cane, car, call, many, father) and many sounds are written in more than one way (like “i” in I, eye, pie, mine, my, high). Some letter combinations are completely ambiguous, like “oo” in “foot” and “food”.
But the most difficult reading skill is unquestionably blending separate sounds together into a single word.
Blending is difficult for two reasons. The first reason blending is difficult is because it’s not just memorization, it’s an actual new skill to be learned. And second, blending is difficult for kids because it’s usually taught badly.
Even professional reading instructors do this wrong. You can go on YouTube and see professional instructors with millions of views teaching kids to incorrectly pause between letter sounds. Don’t do this!
Even worse, people will often change letter sounds during the blending process without noticing. One of the top-rated reading programs starts by having kids blend the letters “a” and “s” into the word “as”. But “as” is irregular! The “s” changes to a “z” sound! How is a child supposed to learn to blend if you’re changing the rules on them?
What makes Mentava so effective is our attention to detail. We say letter sounds correctly, every single time. We write letters correctly, every single time. We don’t change the sounds of letters during the blending process. And we use audio, visual, and tactile feedback to train kids to blend sounds together without pausing between them.
In contrast to the limitations of a human tutor, our software allows us to use more effective teaching techniques, like visually animating the blending process, displaying the child’s vocal waveform so that they can visually see the difference between pausing and blending, and gamifying the experience with a flying chick that drops down to the ground if kids accidentally pause between sounds.
Occasionally our customers will ask us why we don’t offer a discounted yearly subscription. We tell them, “Because we don’t expect it will take that long for your child to learn to read.”
It’s hard to appreciate how much of an impact it has when a teacher gets all the details right, which is why we offer a 7-day free trial. If you’re not convinced that your preschooler will be reading at a 2nd grade level within months, then just cancel.
We want you to see what the next generation of educational software looks like. Try it today, totally free.
