Coping With Dyslexia

 

I am writing this short article to share with you the wisdom that I've gained about dyslexia and how to cope with it.  Not only as a developmental/education psychologist, but also as an individual with severe dyslexia, I believe my experiences can help you in coping with dyslexia.

 

Do I have dyslexia?

 

1)     Dyslexia is most noted for being a reading, writing, and spelling disorder. Individuals with dyslexia have major problems in learning and using these skills. People simply want to see dyslexia as a problem in learning "to read". Dyslexia is much more. Dyslexia is a form of "learning-processing disorder". Here I am talking about well-defined specific learning difficulties.

2)     For example, dyslexia is more than lack of “phonological awareness.” In phonological awareness, dyslexics lack the mapping between speech sounds and printed symbols making reading and spelling difficult. Dyslexia is often accompanied by difficulties in the short-term (storage) and long-term (retrieval) memory processes. These memory processes are often not talked about at all, but in fact actuality impact a person with dyslexia more than the “much-to-do” about reading difficulties. In my experience the difficulty with reading is the more obvious aspect to dyslexia. The learning-processing aspects are the more hidden part of dyslexia.

3)     If you believe you have dyslexia, contact your local dyslexia association for a good diagnostician or go to an outside reading consultant in your community. If you live near a university, which has a reading clinic, I highly recommend that you use their services.

 

How can my school help?

 

1)     As a person who has dealt with the public schools and special education for some years, I wish that the picture could be a totally positive one. Don't expect your public schools or special education to be the answer to all your problems. Use what ever helped your school is willing to give, but look more broadly into your community for additional help. Your school means well but they simply cannot be the total answer in helping your child with dyslexia.

2)     If your school is fortunate enough to have a specialized reading teacher, you should take advantage of their services. Most teachers of reading have now had specialized training which allows them to deal with dyslexia.

3)     Amazingly, there are still many educators who still deny the existence of dyslexia. Especially in the United States, the educational establishment likes the term "specific learning disabilities".

4)     Unfortunately many special education teachers do not received enough training in the teaching of reading. If I could wave a magic wand, I would have all special education teachers obtain a master's degree in the teaching of reading.

5)     If your child is referred to special education and is not reading well, my advice is to take all the help you can get. Dyslexia is a long-term disability and your child will need help even when he/she learns how to read.

6)     Work with your school to establish a computerized reading station that allows students to scan any book that can be read aloud to them. (see description below)

 

Tutoring:

 

1)     Students with reading difficulties or dyslexia should receiving tutoring and help.

2)     In fact one of the best places to get help is from your local association for dyslexia. Often these associations provide a multi-modal approach to learning to read. They often provide help in study skills and tutoring with specific subjects. If you have read the other areas of my website you know that I strongly believe in tutoring especially in specific subjects.

3)     If the student can read at all, they must not have dyslexia. Not so, many students with dyslexia learn to read at a low level. Many dyslexic students learn to “decode words”, but they still need assistance with recorded books to succeed academically.

4)     Parents frequently want to believe that dyslexia will go way if their child simply learns “to read”. The truth is dyslexia is a lifelong disability. Even after one learns how “to decode words” most dyslexic students will have learning difficulties.

 

Learning to read and better learning:

 

1)        Reading instruction for students with dyslexia or other reading problems needs to go beyond regular classroom instruction. In many schools today regular classroom instruction focuses on the whole language approach to reading.

2)        In whole language approach to reading the students are exposed to language as a unit and as whole words. Many students make the connection between sounds and printed words.  For any students this is in natural process. However, many students with reading difficulties and dyslexia do not make the connection between sound and print. This is called a lack of phonological awareness.

3)        Instruction in phonological awareness is a key element in helping dyslexic children learned to read. In this method of instruction children are taught the specific relationships between the sounds and the parts of printed words.

4)        Beyond instruction in phonological awareness, I highly recommend that students with reading difficulties and dyslexia be read to on a daily basis. Dr. Barbara Swaby, at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, in her teaching of reading to graduate students emphasizes daily sessions of been read to a in every school subject from kindergarten to 12th grade.

5)        Dr. Swaby believes that normal readers need to be read to daily for them to be, proficient readers who are curious about the world of information. How much more true, this is for students with reading difficulties.

6)        Many educators, even special education teachers, do not encourage students to use recorded books. They still believe that if the student uses recorded books, they will not learn to read on their own (sic). If the student could read on their own, they wouldn’t be in special education in the first place.

7)        There are several things wrong with the logic opposing recorded books: (1) “being read to” increases one's interest in books, (2) one of the best ways to learn to read is to be read to and (3) in long run “being read to” is an example which leads to more proficient reading by oneself.

8)        Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D). When I was going to school I received a number of books from Recording For The Blind (RFB). Originally this service was only for the blind. Today, RFB&D serves students with reading difficulties. In fact 75% of the barrowers are students with learning disabilities and dyslexia. Most of these students are attending college! Dyslexic students attending college need recorded books to learn, pass their classes and earn a college degree. If this is true of college students then how much more true it is of students in the K-12 system!!

9)        When a child enters fourth grade a major shift occurs for parents and students. At fourth grade students now read well enough to use reading as the major way to learn new information. But if students have a reading problem, reading stands in the way of learning new things.

10)   At this time parents often make a student’s assignments into reading lessons. This is often a laborious task and a bad idea that the leaves both student and parent frustrated. The reason this is a bad idea is that the point of the assignment is to gain new information. The goal of the parent in helping the student with the assignment should be to learning the new information.

11)   If your child is having difficulty reading the assignment, the best way to get through the assignment is to read it aloud to them. Once the material is familiar then the task of learning how to read the material will make much more sense.

12)   In fact after a while I found that by reading aloud to my daughter, she wanted to take turns reading the assignment aloud. Hence, without making a big deal of it assignments turned into mini-reading lessons naturally without making a big point of it.

 

Using recorded books and computers

 

1)     Recording for the Blind And Dyslexia (RFB&D). RFB&D provides recorded books for students from kindergarten through college. I recommend you apply for this free service as soon as possible. It is a good idea to get your child use to following the printed page while someone else reads the material aloud. Two sensory channels “hearing” and “seeing” add up to better comprehension.

2)     Using your computer has a reading machine can help in reading a lot of materials that are not recorded. For example, your computer can read encyclopedias like Encarta.

 

Using a Computer:

1)     Using a computer as a reading machine can take a lot of time and effort. I have found the computer helpful in reading things that are already on the internet. Computers can turn text into speech. Even though these programs that greatly improved they still sound a little bit mechanical. Some students accept this reading even though it is a bit mechanical. Others students reject this form of reading. So start out small.

2)     Windows 2000 or Windows XP, your computer has a build narrator that turns text into speech.

3)     In the long run when trying to simply read an assignment, it is often much easier to sit down for 20 minutes and read the assignment aloud to the student.

4)     Need a Computer: You need an inexpensive PC computer. Sorry Mac users. There just isn’t any decent text-to-speech software to help with reading on the Macintosh. .

5)     Text-to-speech software. I recommend using TextAssist. It gives a very good voice quality when rendering text into speech. It is also easy to use and can read any text that is on a computer.

6)     Make yourself a recorded book. “i-speak” is a very good text-to-speech program that turns text into an audio mp3 file. So you can make a recorded book out of any text.

7)     Sound card: You need a sound card like Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live or compatible sound card.

8)     Scanners: For the very brave you can actually scanned textbooks or printed articles into your computer.  My warning is that this takes a lot of time. You might spend 2 to 3 times the amount of time preparing material as to actually reading the material. But things are improving in this area; I do spend some time actually scanning materials that I need. You need a scanner to get the printed materials into your computer. Epson Perfection scanners seem to work well with most required software.

9)     OCR software. OCR stands for the optical character recognition. This process turns a scanned picture image of a page into text. I recommend the FineReader scanning software. The Kurzweil 1000, which cost $2,000, uses the FineReader as the OCR engine in their software. The important point in using this software is that it can capture a page and make look just like the page in the book with pictures and all.

 

Reading Station and Reading Laboratory:

 

Lastly, I highly recommend working with your school to obtain a computer with the Kurzweil 3000 software to make a Reading Station for students with reading disabilities. Kurzweil 3000 software costs $2,000, but it is worth it! Kurzweil 3000 is exceptionally easy to use. You scanned directly into this software. It maintains the exact image of the page in the book. The OCR is almost flawless, so the text-to-speech reading is exceptional. The school might not be willing to create such a station for you as an individual. However working with other parents you could do to a fund-raiser and provide such a Reading Station for your school.  There is absolutely no reason for every school building not to have a Reading Station and a Reading Laboratory. Upwards to 5% to 10% of students in public schools today are diagnosed with a learning disability. The primary reason for this diagnosis is a persistent problem in reading. These students should have access to Reading Stations and Reading Laboratories.