Dyslexia
Dyslexia is an umbrella term that generally means that "the
inability to read and write is not due to lack of schooling
or experience with the language or to other disabilities
such as mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or sensory
impairments." (from How to Become a Better Reading
Teacher, Strategies for Assessment and Intervention edited
by Lillian R. Putnam). Recent findings suggest that dyslexia
is linked to phonological processing difficulties and problems
with written language acquisition. These deficits are linked
to neurological problems — a short circuit, so to speak--instead
of laziness, stupidity, or a poor home environment.
Phonological processing — the ability to connect visual symbols
and their sounds and process them — is essential to reading. The
phonemic development program that we use is the only specific
program mentioned in the November 22, 1999 Newsweek article, "Dyslexia
and the New Science of Reading" as an effective program
to remediate dyslexia.
These characteristics describe the person with dyslexia
and the person with poor phonemic awareness:
- Has problems learning letter sounds, especially vowel
sounds
- Has difficulty sounding out and blending letters of
words and syllables
- Reads slowly as if seeing each word for the first time
- Reads too fast making many mistakes
- Has difficulty remembering common words and sight words
- Relies too much on context clues to identify new words
- Tends to guess a word by using the first or first and
last letters only
- Reverses letter order when reading
- Substitutes a word that is close in meaning such as "small" for "little"
- Misreads sight words such as "to", "the", "some",
"was"
- Has difficulty remembering letter order when spelling
Adults and children do not need to spend their lives
dealing with dyslexia. Call Stategic Education to begin lifelong
changes now.
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