Clues to Dyslexia

Clues to Dyslexia

Preschool Years

• Trouble learning common nursery Rhymes such as “Jack and Jill”
• A lack of appreciation of rhymes
• Mispronounce words; persistent baby talk
• Difficulty in learning (and remembering) names of letters
• Failure to know the letters in his own name

Kindergarten and First Grade

• Failure to understand that word come apart; for example, that batboy can be pulled apart into bat and boy, and , later on, that the word bat can be broken down still further and sounded out as:  “b” “aaaa” “t”
• Inability to learn to associate letters with sounds, such as being unable to connect the letter b with the “b” sound
• Reading errors that show no connection to the sounds of the letters; for example, the word big is read as goat
• The inability to read common one-syllable words or to sound out even the simplest of words, such as mat, cat, hop, nap
• Complaints about how hard reading is, or running and hiding when it is time to read
• A history of reading problems in parents or siblings

In addition to the problems of speaking and reading, you should be looking for these indications of strengths in higher-level thinking processes:

•  Curiosity
• A great imagination
• The ability to figure things out
• Eager embrace of new ideas
• Getting the gist of things
• A good understanding of new concepts
• Surprising maturity
• A large vocabulary for age group
• Enjoyment in solving puzzles
• Talent at building models
• Excellent comprehension of stories read or told to him

Second Grade On

Problems in Speaking

• Mispronunciation of long, unfamiliar, or complicated words; the fracturing of words-leaving out parts of words or confusing the order of parts of words; for example, aluminum becomes amulium
• Speech that is not fluent-pausing or hesitating often when speaking, lots of um’s during speech, no glibness
• The use of imprecise language, such as vague references to stuff or things instead of the proper name of an object
• Not being able to find the exact word; such as confusing words that sound alike:  saying tornado instead of volcano; substituting lotion for ocean, or humanity for humidity
• The need to summon an oral response or the inability to come up with a verbal response quickly when questioned
• Difficulty in remembering isolated pieces of verbal information (rote memory)-trouble remembering dates, names, telephone numbers, random lists

Problems in Reading

• Very slow progress in acquiring reading skills
• The lack of strategy to read new words
• Trouble reading unknown (new, unfamiliar) words that must be sounded out; making wild stabs or guesses at reading a word; failure to systematically sound out words
• The inability to read small “function” words such as that, an in
• Stumbling on reading multisyllable words, or failure to come close to sounding out the full word
• Omitting parts of words when reading; the failure to decode parts within a word; as if someone had chewed a hole in the middle of the word, such as conible for convertible
• A terrific fear of reading out loud; the avoidance of oral reading
• Oral reading filled with substitutions, omissions, and mispronunciation
• Oral reading that is choppy and labored, not smooth or fluent
• Oral reading that lack inflection and sounds like the reading of a foreign language
• A reliance on context to discern the meaning of what is read
• A better ability to understand words in context than to read isolated words
• Disproportionately poor performance on multiple choice tests
• The inability to finish tests on time
• The substitution of words with the same meaning for words in the text he can’t pronounce, such as car for automobile
• Disastrous spelling, with words not resembling true spelling; some spellings may be missed by spell check
• Trouble reading mathematics word problems
• Reading that is slow and tiring
• Homework that never seems to end, or with parents often recruited as readers
• Messy handwriting despite what may be an excellent facility at word processing-nimble fingers
• Extreme difficulty learning a foreign language
• A lack of enjoyment in reading, and the avoidance of reading books or even a sentence
• The avoidance of reading for pleasure, which seems too exhausting
• Reading whose accuracy improves over time, although it continues to lack fluency and is laborious
• Lowered self-esteem, with pain that is not always visible to others
• A history of reading, spelling, and foreign language problems in family members

In addition to signs of phonological weakness, there are signs of strengths in higher-level thinking processes:

• Excellent thinking skills: conceptualization, reasoning, imagination, abstraction
• Learning that is accomplished through meaning rather than rote memorization
• Ability to get the big picture
• A high level of understanding of what is read to him
• The ability to read and to understand at a high level overlearned (that is, highly practiced)  words in a special area  of interest; for example, if his hobby is restoring cars, he may be able to read auto mechanics magazines
• Improvement as an area of interest becomes more specialized and focused, when he develops a miniature vocabulary that he can read
• A surprisingly sophisticated listening vocabulary
• Excellence in areas not dependent on reading, such as math, computers, and visual arts, or excellence in more conceptual (verses factoid-driven) subjects such as philosophy, biology, social studies, neuroscience, and creative writing

(Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003)