SCHOOLS SERVICES

IDENTIFYING DYSLEXIA

written jointly by members of the International Dyslexia Association and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Researchers Susan Brady, Hugh Catts, Emerson Dickman, Guinevere Eden, Jack Fletcher, Jeff Gilger, Reid Lyon, Bennett Shaywitz, Sally Shaywitz, Harley Tomey)

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction.

Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.

Dyslexia is also known as Specific Language Disability because it is a disability specifically related to learning language.

Beth H. Slingerland's Definition of Specific Language Disability

Characteristics of specific language disability (dyslexia) range in degree from the very mild to the extremely severe. The key point, however, is that reading and language skills are definitely out of keeping with overall intellectual capacities, and that this difference persists in spite of competent instruction over adequate periods of time with pedagogical methods that are successful for the majority of children. Below are some of the symptoms the SLD child may exhibit:

• may be a very poor reader, failing completely.
• may lose comprehension in the struggle with the mechanics of reading; may insert or omit words, guess, ignore phrasing, punctuation marks.
• may learn to read, or to read well enough to "get by" in elementary school only to collapse when middle school is reached.
• may read at "grade level" but not commensurate with intelligence.
• may avoid reading if possible and not read for pleasure.
• may read, but fail in spelling.
• may learn to spell a "list" of words sufficiently well to pass on weekly tests, but forget them all by Monday to make way for the new list.
• may be unable to spell previously "memorized" words in dictated sentences or in prepositional written expressions.
• may leave out or insert letters, misplace, add, or omit whole syllables.
• may have adequate ability for oral expression, but almost none for written expression.
• may mispronounce, misuse or fail to retain words for verbal use.
• may lose concept by misreading or misunderstanding similarly appearing or sounding words -- country/county; historical/hysterical.
• may have difficulty answering questions or in describing something that carries over into unsatisfactory written work.
• may struggle to recall sequential movement patterns necessary for automatic letter formation, resulting in poor and disordered written work.
• may know how to form the letters, but not to recall which letters to use in spelling so penmanship and neatness suffer.
• may be unable to remember words and phrases as they are dictated.

The above is excerpted from A Multisensory Approach to Language Arts for Specific Language Disability Children, by Beth Slingerland.