Dyslexia

Dyslexia is the most common learning disability. It is about five times more prevalent in males than in females and is more likely to affect left-handed individuals.

Many people with dyslexia will be very good at visual-spatial tasks such as puzzles and map-reading and mechanical type of activities but significantly poorer in learning to read and spell. Whilst no two people with Dyslexia are exactly alike, most dyslexics will display a good number of the following characteristics.

Signs of dyslexia include:

• Reading

  • Can read a word on one page, but won't recognise it on the next page.

  • May know phonics, but resists "working out" an unknown word.

  • Slow, laboured, inaccurate reading of single words in isolation (when there is no story line or pictures to provide clues).

  • When they misread, they often say a word that has the same first and last letters, and the same shape, such as house-horse or beach-bench.

  • They may insert or leave out letters, such as could–cold or star–stair.

  • They may say a word that has the same letters, but in a different sequence, such as who–how, lots–lost, saw–was, or girl–grill.

  • When reading aloud, reads in a slow, choppy way (not in smooth phrases), and often ignores punctuation.

  • Becomes visibly tired after reading for only a short time.

  • Reading comprehension may be low due to spending so much energy trying to figure out the words. Listening comprehension is usually significantly higher than reading comprehension.

  • However, reading comprehension may be higher than predicted given the level of decoding inaccuracy.

  • Directionality confusion shows up when reading and when writing.

  • Substitutes similar-looking words, even if it changes the meaning of the sentence, such as sunrise for surprise, house for horse, while for white, wanting for walking.

  • When reading a story or a sentence, substitutes a word that means the same thing but doesn't look at all similar, such as trip for journey, fast for speed, or cry for weep.

  • Misreads, omits, or even adds small function words, such as an, a, from, the, to, were, are, of.

  • Omits or changes suffixes, saying need for needed, talks for talking, or late for lately.

• Spelling

  • Their spelling is normally far worse than their reading.

  • They sometimes struggle to even make attempted spelling understandable.

  • They have extreme difficulty with vowel sounds, and often leave them out.

  • With enormous effort, they may be able to “memorise” Monday's spelling list long enough to pass Friday's spelling test, but they can't spell those very same words two hours later when writing them in sentences.

  • Continually misspell high frequency sight words (non phonetic but very common words) such as they, what, where, does and because—despite extensive practice.

  • Misspells even when copying something from the board or from a book.

  • Written work shows signs of spelling uncertainty—numerous erasures, cross outs, etc.