Dr. Schlagal RE5540 Cathy Marlow December 2, 2003

Dyslexia manifests itself in the form of acute problems with reading, writing, and spelling. In addition, many dyslexics have associated difficulties. Describe at least two of these problem areas and the way that they are expressed.

Reading:

Reading problems for dyslexics are expressed in different ways. The two main deficits are in phonological awareness and rapid naming. Some children may have one or the other and have a better chance at being successful at overcoming their disability. If a student has both of these deficits (double deficit), they have a greater challenge at becoming a successful reader. These are the most impaired readers. Dyslexic readers need a lot more effort to read. Reading is very labor intensive. You may hear complaints about how hard reading is, and they may think of excuses not to read. They will probably avoid reading for pleasure because it is too exhausting.

A student that has trouble naming familiar stimuli has a weakness in rapid naming. They are slow in extracting letters, objects or words from their memory. This deficit is harder to help than phonemic problems. Wolf provides evidence that shows how slow naming speed has proven to be an extraordinary predictor of reading disabilities across many ages, languages, and reader subtypes. Their short-term auditory memory and auditory processing is very weak. This weakness can disrupt fluency and comprehension because it takes a long time for them to recognize the words. High frequency words are difficult and they have to spend a lot of time sounding out words. The Look, Say Method is not appropriate for these students because their visual memories are not good. This problem can be expressed by having difficulty in remembering isolated pieces of verbal information such as; remembering dates, names, telephone numbers, and random lists.

A weakness in phonological awareness is another roadblock to reading. They have to be taught how to hear sounds. They may be unable to associate letters with sounds, such as being able to connect the letter b with the /b/ sound. The will have trouble understanding that words come apart; for example, that batboy can be pulled apart into bat and boy, and later that the word bat can be broken down still further and sounded out as: /b/ /a/ /t/. Co-articulation is especially hard because the sounds of letters are influenced by the sounds around them. They wouldn’t think that the /a/ in can is the same as the /a/ in cat. They may have reading errors that show no connection to the sounds of the letters: big for goat. These students would have a lot of trouble reading nonsense words. Their oral reading may be filled with substitutions, omissions, and mispronunciations. They will rely on context to get the meaning of what is read, therefore they will perform better reading in context than isolated word lists.

Writing:

Rapid naming also creates a problem in writing for dyslexic students. High frequency words are difficult to remember and the students have to spend a lot of time sounding out words. Dyslexic writers will memorize words in lists and then have trouble transferring the words to context. Spelling is usually disastrous for them and they will choose less complicated words that are easier to spell. They have to think more when working in context. They do not have automatic processing and have trouble maintaining a whole sentence in their head as they write. They process differently and have a harder time with short and long term memory (Willows and Scott).

Dyslexics can show fine motor weaknesses in their handwriting. Even though they may have nimble fingers their handwriting can be messy. They have to think of the letters and draw them from a rough visual memory. They don’t always make the letter with consistent movements because they don’t have motor memory. They are not forming permanent pictures in their minds. Reversals are common, but not limited to dyslexic students.

What is reading fluency, and why is it an important area of exploration when considering both dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers? What do we know about improving reading fluency?

Reading fluency is the freedom from word identification problems that might hinder comprehension. It involves speed, accuracy, and proper expression. A fluent reader no longer reads word by word, but in phrases and will also self-correct. Children must have automaticity with words in order to be fluent readers.

Fluency is important because it bridges the gap between word recognition skills and comprehension. The ability to read connected text rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly, and automatically with little conscious attention to the mechanics of reading, such as decoding, will allow the reader to attend to the meaning of the text (Meyer & Felton). Fluent readers can concentrate on comprehension because they are not spending a lot of time and resources decoding words.

Dysfluent readers with a deficit in retrieval or naming speed have difficulty rapidly and accurately retrieving the names of familiar high frequency words (Meyer & Felton). They will use context clues to figure out words since they don’t remember the words. This won’t lead to fluency. They have to learn to read words rapidly and automatic. Poor readers take much longer and require more exposures to recognize individual words than do normally reading children (Meyer & Felton). Contextual reading at an easy level will help poor readers become more automatic (Levy). Levy writes that words read in “word drills” won’t be as beneficial to later contextual reading because words read in texts and from single work displays are processed differently. I think she is meaning- don’t teach from word lists. She later states that improving word recognition speed will improve fluency and that reading practice with words in or out of a text context, is beneficial in automating word recognition. I agree that word card games can be very beneficial if they are done in a quick, fun, positive way.

Fluency can be improved through activities that involve rereading texts such as: echo reading, choral reading, teacher modeling, and timed readings. Studies found that repeated reading in context did more good than reading words in isolation. Poor readers showed significant declines in reading rate, accuracy, and fluency (phrasing, oral expressiveness) with each increase in text difficulty (Meyer & Felton). So, teachers need to use materials that poor readers can read accurately when they are working on fluency.

Reading practice is a great contributor to the development of accurate, fluent reading (Allington). Allington says dysfluent readers spend less time reading than their better reading peers. By practicing reading, a child will become more automatic in word recognition skills. Reading requires so much more work for a dyslexic reader, and so they may choose not to read. This is why it is so important to put them in books that are their appropriate reading levels. Poor readers fall apart more than good readers do in the frustration level. Students with reading difficulties need to feel successful so they will want to read.

It is easy for poor readers to forget words if they don’t learn the concepts. Teaching word patterns helps teach these concepts. Word sorting is a great activity to teach the concept of letter chunks. Levy states that repeated word card games helped and were more fun than repeating readings over and over. By sorting words the students are able to analyze the words and internalize these concepts. Then they have a better chance at remembering these words. And automaticity leads to fluency.