Article Advise

submitted: Jun 11th 2008 | by: DavidMorgan | Total views: 1 | Word Count: 451 | |

It is something that every teacher will have seen.

There will often be several bright children in the class, who can do most things well and have a good attitude, but fall behind in reading.

Initially everything can seem OK. But, while other children's reading progresses steadily, these children will hit a plateau at around 6. As the text they are expected to read gets more complicated, they will get more and more confused, often guessing wildly.

In the end their reading will go into reverse as their confidence implodes. They can feel the worry of their teacher and parents, but don't know what to do.

Sometimes this leads to a diagnosis of dyslexia, which is quite wrong.

Dyslexia suggests there is some underlying problem that cannot be overcome.

But trying to read the wrong way is not dyslexia. And that is what is happening.

Let me explain what's happening.

A child will always approach a problem in what seems the easiest way. To a visual child, memorising the alphabet and simple words seems easy. People praise their achievement. So they think that they are reading. And early reader books encourage this with a very limited vocabulary.

So all seems well.

But this approach implodes on them as the text gets more complicated. Some children will be able to switch to decoding words phonetically, because they also have a strong natural auditory ability. They can see how the sounds within the speech relate to the text.

Others cannot naturally distinguish the sounds within the words (phonemes) and so cannot relate them to the letter patterns that represent them in text (graphemes). At least not without quite a bit of careful instruction.

And these are the ones that have major problems.

They become more and more addicted to wild guessing, using the context and the first letter of the word as cues.

They are frustrated and puzzled by their situation and don't know the way out of it. They can sense the frustration of their teacher and parents, but have actually been doing their best.

Of the one in five children who reach the age of 11 unable to read properly, around 80% are in this group. It virtually destroys their chances of a good academic career and severely limits their working options.

And what a tragedy. We routinely watch them become confident readers in just a few weeks. They only need to be guided back onto the right path.

I hate children being labelled dyslexic because it reduces the sense of urgency to actually finding the solution. Acceptance creeps in, consigning the child to a much harder track through life.

About the Author

For more information on helping every child learn to read visit our site. There is a range of information on techniques to cure almost every form of dyslexia. There is usually a solution!

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