Anna Gill

Mrs Anna Gill, Founder & CEO Kinephonics® Language Learning Technology Pty Limited, B.Ed (Primary) Functional Linguistics 1991, University of Sydney, Teacher, Mentor, Leader, Educational Management 30 years; Published Author, Public Speaker, Newspaper, Radio; Australian College Educational Leaders, Developmental Disorders of Language and Literacy, Society for the Scientific Study of Reading.

“Proprioception: A sense of something new in literacy research”

Proprioception, a literacy mirror concept and a language circuitry technology are all elements of a new way to ensure fluency in reading and writing. This paper will present proprioception as a clue to the formation of a neural pathway that forms during the ‘learn to read’ process. This discovery may be the link between learning, neuroscience and medicine.

Just like a scientist, I was looking for an answer and something else came to light. Proprioception.
My journey started with teaching reading. I wanted a simple way for children to learn the sounds of the alphabet and along the way I discovered that proprioception was an output of the learning experience. Several years later, my approach was recognised by a neuroscientist as “meshing well with their neurological view of learning that stresses the extensive connections between the senses.

“The approach uses several cognitive senses – sight, sound, and proprioception (feel of mouth position) and highlights the centrality of vision in human cognition” – enabling students to visualise spoken symbols in a new way. p.161 From Brain to Mind: Using Neuroscience to Guide Change in Education. Prof. J. Zull, 2011. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

Look at my Mouth was published in 2005. It was a book that enabled children to learn the sounds of the alphabet. I was the author and it used a literacy mirror concept. James Zull was referring to my book when he wrote this statement. It was a new way of visualising spoken symbols and proprioception was being produced. Reading was literally changing lives.

Hi. I’m Anna Gill, the Founder of Kinephonics®, a learning technology for language that uses a literacy mirror concept. 15 years ago, I wrote Look at my Mouth and now I am working with speech pathologists, neuroscientists, neurologists and teachers to ensure that this concept can be of benefit. Proprioception is part of the learn to read process. It is an output of language circuitry and there is early evidence of its connection to the lymphatic system. This could mean that proprioception is a signal of a changing neural pathway. Proprioception could lead us to establish link between learning, neuroscience and medicine.