How Long Does EBLI Tutoring Take? What to Expect from Assessment to Progress

One of the most common questions we hear from parents considering tutoring is simple: how long is this going to take?

It's a fair question. Committing to tutoring means committing time, money, and, maybe hardest of all, hope. You want to know it's going to work, and you want to know roughly what the road looks like before you start.

So let's answer it, using real data from our own students.

The Short Answer: About 30 Lessons

Our average student completes the EBLI program scope and sequence in 31 lessons. With sessions once or twice a week, that typically works out to a few months of tutoring, though pace always depends on the individual student.

We don't just estimate this, we track it. In a longitudinal case study of 76 students tutored online with EBLI between 2024 and 2025, here's what we found:

• Average of 31 lessons to complete the program

• Average of 3.7 grade levels of reading progress

• Students started at an average reading level of 1.18 and progressed to 4.91

Students in the study ranged from entering 1st grade to 10th grade age, and results were measured using the San Diego Quick Assessment, an objective, standardized way to track decoding ability at the start and end of tutoring.

What Progress Actually Looks Like, Step by Step

Parents often ask why they don't see every skill improve at once. That's normal and expected. Literacy skills build on each other in a predictable order, and understanding that order helps you know what to look for and when.

1. Decoding improves first. This is the first thing we measure and the first thing that moves. As students learn to recognize the sound patterns and their spellings, their ability to sound out words accurately improves.

2. Reading fluency comes next. Once decoding is more automatic, students start reading faster. Fluency is simply the speed at which a student can read, and it improves most noticeably once accuracy is in place.

3. Comprehension follows. This one makes sense once you think about it: a student can't focus on understanding a story if all their mental energy is going toward sounding out each word. Once reading is accurate and fluent, comprehension has room to grow.

4. Spelling improves last and takes the longest. Spelling requires the most repetition of all, because English spelling patterns are varied and inconsistent. It takes more practice for these patterns to become ingrained, which is why spelling is typically the last skill to catch up, even after reading has clearly improved.

Knowing this order helps set realistic expectations. If your child is reading more fluently but still misspelling words, that's not a sign tutoring isn't working. It's exactly the pattern we'd expect to see.

Why We Use EBLI

We use EBLI, a linguistic phonics program that teaches students to recognize the patterns behind the sounds they hear, so they can both read and spell those sounds with confidence.

This is a meaningfully different approach than Orton-Gillingham-based programs, which are common in dyslexia tutoring but rely heavily on rule memorization. That approach can be a real obstacle for dyslexic students, particularly those with working memory or processing speed challenges, which are common among dyslexic learners. Asking a student to memorize and apply a long list of rules works against the very challenges that made reading difficult in the first place.

EBLI doesn't require that kind of rule memorization. Instead, it teaches students to recognize patterns directly, which makes it effective and efficient even for students who struggle with working memory or processing speed.

What Happens After the 30 Lessons?

Most students are decoding at grade level by the end of the program. For students who still need additional work on fluency, we offer extended tutoring based on assessment data, so lessons stay tailored to what each student actually needs, not a one-size-fits-all timeline.

That's also why we don't just assess at the end. We assess at the beginning, midpoint, and end of the program, so we can track growth along the way and adjust instruction as needed rather than waiting until the finish line to find out how things went.

Every student is different, and pace can vary based on attention and individual profile. But if you're planning ahead, for your calendar, your budget, or just your own peace of mind, here's what the data tells us: most students complete the EBLI program in about 30 lessons, and see meaningful, measurable progress along the way.

If you'd like to talk through what this might look like for your child, reach out to us —

we're happy to help you plan the path forward.

Growing Through Dyslexia provides literacy tutoring, dyslexia testing, and math support for all students. Contact Taylor Gaikema at tgaikema@umich.edu or 989-538-8309.