Jenny's Musings August 1, 2007

A few notes from Wednesday, August 1, 2007

“Reading words in isolation is the hardest type of reading for someone with dyslexia, as there is no story line or pictures to help them guess the word. So instead, they will often say a word that starts with the same letter or two and has a similar length and shape (such as like for little, here for horse, fish for first), or a word that has all the same letters but in a different order (such as there for three), or they will look at the first few letters and guess (such as wint for with, was for wish). They will mess up the vowels (such as went for want, love for live) and their d-b-p-q directionality confusion will appear (such as /d/-big for down, /f/-/a/-/s/-/p/ for friends).”

“The inability to sound out an unknown word, despite being taught phonics, is a hallmark of dyslexia.”

Types of Errors made by someone with dyslexia

Reversal (left/right)

flip on a vertical axis

Example: b-d, p-q

Inversion

flip on a horizontal axis may way

Transposition

right letters, out of order

Example: girl gril

Insertion

inserting an unneeded letter

often a Silent-E

inserting a space where it doesn’t belong

Example: stande

Substitution

using a wrong letter, esp. vowels

Example: bug bag

Omission

left out a letter or part of a consonant blend

left out punctuation or forgot to cross t or dot

left out a space

Example: back black

Combination

rarely used-only when it’s impossible to classify see c

using one of the other categories. Homonyms are combos.

Examples: S693 5936, are our, by buy

In the first example, the student changed 5 to an S, the other numbers are out of sequence but not a transposition.

Capitalization

not capitalizing a word

or capitalizing one that doesn’t need it

Example: april

Poor formation

poor legibility

Example: various

Self-Correction

student noticed & corrected error with brackets or

wrote over the top of the original letter

Example: (b) d