Dyslexic students in english language classes

Dyslexia

Literally ‘dyslexia’ means difficulty (dys) with words (lexis), thus implying concepts beyond reading, and is derived from Greek. It may be argued that what has happened in this field is that the term came first, based on a Greek that is more general than intended, and people are still trying to decide what the word means.
Turning to the question of “What is dyslexia?” there are many ways to define this. There are several approaches which we shall analyses to see if they can be improved or modified to provide a more useful definition. We shall look at various definitions including those of the British Psychological Society, the British Dyslexia Association and the International Dyslexia Association.
However, before we discuss the definition, let us ask if the idea of dyslexia is logical. Does it make sense at the neurological level to think that somebody could only have problems with literacy when other functions appear to work perfectly well? We know that people come in all shapes and sizes, and there are average height people, and short people and tall people. And we know that some tall people have little hands, and some small people have big hands. Just because you know their height does not mean that you know their glove size. We do not need researchers to tell us this. Similarly, just because you know the glove size does not mean you know the shoe size. That is, you cannot assume you know about one part of the body just because you have measured another part. So is it so hard to believe that just because we know one part of the brain works in a particular way, it does not mean we know how other parts will work? This is part of what makes everybody unique. However, as we shall see, literacy requires a large number of different skills in order to develop well. Shortcomings in some areas can be overcome by abilities in other areas. However, it is important to remember that those skills are not used only for literacy. Deficits in cognitive skills important in reading, such as short term memory, can cause problems in many different activities. Therefore it would be wrong to suggest that a dyslexic individual will demonstrate difficulties “only” in literacy skills. In reality, the dyslexic individual has many difficulties over and above those of reading and writing, and these are a direct consequence of the cognitive difficulties that affect their literacy development.

Brain scans have confirmed that people’s brains are’ wired’ differently, and these small differences can lead to differences in the ability to acquire reading and writing skills. The differences may have a number of causes, of which a genetic component appears to be very common. This has been shown in studies of twins. It has been suggested that there may be a greater incidence of dyslexia amongst boys, but recent evidence suggests that this is due to methodological errors, rather than a true difference.

There are two main types of definition to consider – symptom and causal. A symptom based definition states the effect of the problem, while the causal based definition suggests the causes of those symptoms.

So now let us consider a proposed definition which includes some "universal" components from recent definitions including the Netherlands Health Council, the British Psychological Society, and the International Dyslexia Association (IDA).

The following is a combination of the definitions provided by those listed above:
"Dyslexia is a difficulty in the acquisition of literacy skills that is neurological in origin. It is evident when accurate and fluent word reading, spelling and writing develops very incompletely or with great difficulty."

There are a number of key components in this. "Neurological" means that it is internal to the individual, and not an external factor such as poor teaching or lack of schooling.

Fluency and accuracy may be considered "universal" measures of literacy ability. Note that in a language where there is a good correspondence between the way a word is spelt and the way it is said, a dyslexic can be very accurate, but lack fluency in their reading.
Since this is suggesting the symptoms of dyslexia, this part may be seen as a symptom based definition.
However, some people prefer to use definitions that include a causal component, and shortly we shall look at our proposed definition which includes a causal component. When including a causal component, it is important to understand why it is there, and its potential impact. For example, the IDA definition states "These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component ..." What about all those dyslexics who do not have a phonological deficit? There is no apparent logic including a statistical probability component in a definition.

So now let us consider what could be the cause of dyslexia. Reading and writing are complicated and involve many processes in different parts of the brain. There are speech based components, including the perception and recall of sounds, as well as their manipulation which have been shown to be important in dyslexia.

Similarly there are visual components, including visual perception and visual memory, which may be more important in some languages such as Chinese. However, they are very important in English spelling as you cannot always use rules to predict how words should be spelled. English has many irregular words for example, have, pear, said. Working memory, that is the ability to process and manipulate information, has been shown to be very important, especially in languages where there is unpredictable sound-to-letter correspondence.

We also have “lexical storage and retrieval” which refers to the access to the written, spoken and meaning based stores of information. These may be referred to as the orthographic lexicon, the phonological lexicon and the

semantic lexicon. Our brains store information as whole or parts orthographic, phonological or semantic components used in the literacy process.

The role of motor skills and in particular handwriting should not be ignored. Many practitioners believe that spelling may be improved if cursive (or joined up) writing is used, since if letters are joined together in words, we have a better chance of remembering the combination due to the motor patterns developed. This is similar to how many people find that spelling becomes automatic when typing, and you know which key to press without thinking about the spelling. This suggests that we have a "motor map" for words, in typing and in handwriting.

Thus we can have the following as the causal component:

"It may be caused by a combination of difficulties in auditory and visual processing, working memory, storage and retrieval in the lexicon (word banks) and motor difficulties."
This reflects the parts discussed earlier. Furthermore, it provides a basis for understanding the various identifiers commonly found in checklists for dyslexia, as well as providing a basis for developing an assessment protocol.

Some definitions say that dyslexia "... can cause unexpected and persistent difficulties in acquiring ... reading, writing, spelling and sometimes numeracy and spoken language." This suggests that dyslexia is not the difficulty but causes the difficulty. Therefore dyslexia is a neurological difference. This would be acceptable if it was possible to trace the cause of dyslexia to a single neurological difference. Consider the difference between "A broken arm is constitutional in origin and can cause difficulties in writing, throwing etc" and "A broken arm is when one or more bones in an arm are broken." The difference is that one is a symptom definition and the other is a causal definition. Symptoms will tell you what areas it affects. Specifying potential causes in the definition helps target diagnostic criteria.

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