Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 31, 1991                   TAG: 9103280201
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAVID JACOBSON/ THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

READING COURSE IS SWEET MUSIC TO THE ILLITERATE

It seems that every time you turn on the radio or television, there is Richard Martinik, 55, of Simsbury, Conn., Hooked's national network poster boy, confiding: "For 48 years, I had a secret: I could not read."

But, he adds, "After listening to an 18-minute cassette, I was then able to read a 120-page book." And then you get the pitch for the $149.95 kit - "Call 1-800-ABCDEFG!"

Martinik's story is great and moving. And phonics are fine for kids. But some question a home-study reading product, especially given the free tutoring available to America's 27 million adult illiterates. We'll get to that.

First, you have to ask: How does Hooked on Phonics, a vinyl-boxed eight-tape collection of upbeat funk and read-along vowel reviews, compare with recent retrospectives by, say, Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin?

To start with, the Dylan and Zep sets don't have decks of color-coded flash cards and five read-aloud companion books.

Nor do they have the ecstatically encouraging vocal delivery of Los Angeles disc jockey Randy Thomas, doling out rhyming instructions over a snaky bass backbeat and a shimmering synthesizer.

The tapes' producer, Gateway Educational Products Ltd. of Orange, Calif., has received calls from parents who don't want their kids getting hard rock with their hard consonants. Not to worry on that score; Hooked on Phonics is a far cry from "Addicted To Love" (the Robert Palmer tune).

In fact, there's a practicality to Hooked's lyrics that few hot-selling pop records can match (Gateway says it has sold 300,000 tape sets since the debut five years ago): "Now let's learn these 12 words; I tell you what they'll do; they'll help you learn to read book one; they're also in book two."

There is an essential optimism to the Yellow Tape's assertion: "Push on through; the more you do it, and review it, the quicker it comes to you."

But even as the later tapes build to bigger words and more complex vowel combinations, there comes the repeated, haunting refrain: "A,E,I,O,U are vowels; and sometimes . . . Y." Anyone who has ever experienced shaky love can identify with Y's on-again, off-again status.

And in the later, more mature tapes - Green, Blue - the rules get more complex: "REMEMBER e-r, a-r and i-r and o-r and u-r, too; may all say "er," as in mother; don't let those `ers' fool you."

Martinik, the Simsbury parks and recreation worker who has become the tapes' best-known fan, says he could have done without the upbeat music altogether. It only reminded him that the product is mainly used by kids.

(Gateway says 65 percent of sales go to children and learning-disabled students, and about 35 percent to illiterate adults. The company says a new, slower-beat version of the tapes with "less saccharine" voiceovers is now out, but one hardly expects Hooked on Phonics to bear Cowboy Junkies' lugubrious style.)

For Martinik, the best thing about Hooked was simply that he could head down to the basement by himself and learn to sound out words with only a Radio Shack tape recorder to witness his repeated mistakes.

He tried the literacy-tutor approach, he says, but found his intense shame and the tension it evoked made it hard for him to learn with another person.

"I couldn't get those sounds to blend for me," he says.

Three years back, Martinik first heard of Hooked on a radio ad. (Gateway has so far eschewed print advertising in order to reach its illiterate market.)

"I often said, `If someone would only put something on tape so I could do it all by myself,' " Martinik recalls.

He spent a year with the tapes in his basement before telling the company how pleased he was with his progress. (Gateway paid Martinik's expenses to attend the commercial tapings, but he does not get ad royalties.)

Now, after years of taking applications and memos home to his wife, after not being able to spell his middle name, after having to pretend on his 50th birthday that he was too choked up to read his cards aloud, he can now read something like this article on his own.

The 120-page book he could read, after an 18-minute taped lesson, by the way, is dense with monosyllabic words. But the last Hooked booklet does include sentences like, "Playing the guitar is not as easy as it looks."

Some involved in teaching reading would argue that learning to read is not as easy as it looks, either, and phonics tapes are not the best way to do it.

"As one technique, as far as it goes, it's valid," says Julie Stone, executive director of Literacy Volunteers of America's state affiliate. But "the learning of reading at any level is far more complex."

And Chuck Harns, the group's director of field services, says the latest research and practice "points away from phonics as an approach to reaching."

Believing people need tutors and not just tapes, Stone stresses, "We will travel great length to avoid [embarrassment] for our adult learners."

Gateway does not have problems with adding teachers to its tapes, says marketing director Therese Droste. But she says people can learn to read on their own using the tapes.

Some buyers ordering Hooked on Phonics say phonics have been too de-emphasized in teaching reading, she says. Hooked's high sales and low rate of returns (30-day full refund) show that people find it useful, she says.