How did Helen begin to learn very fast?
Answers
Learning to read and write
After learning to spell a few words, the next challenge before Anne Sullivan was teaching Helen how to read. For that she would give Helen slips of cardboard which had printed words with raised letters. Helen would touch the slip, learn the word and would understand that each word stood for a new object.
She began writing using grooved board . She wrote on the groove under which a sheet of paper would be placed. She also learned Braille script which helped her a lot to read and write.
Learning to speak
When Helen was ten years old, she came to know about a girl in Norway, deaf and blind like her, but who had been taught to speak. This fired her passion to speak like any other ordinary human being. Anne took her to Sarah Fuller, then the principal of Horace Mann School for Deaf. Sarah would place Helen's hand on her lips, tongue, face and throat while she was talking. Helen would feel the positions of Sarah's lips and tongue and vibrations of her throat. She would place her other hand on her own lips and tongue and would try to imitate the positions of Sarah's lips and tongue. This was exhausting but she uttered her first sentence "It's too warm here" within a few days. Though she learned to speak, she was never able speak with clarity.