Dyslexia and English

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Dyslexia and English

• Rinie Hoeks

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A agymt

• I went to the sope I nice a mas dareh The wumne
  sow me sehdh frown me ont a wice a tre I went in
  it wos a difrte wumi seh sd get awt I sd aow duw
  it yor slf she sd getont I sde sut it And she sd
  it wos csd I sed onleye if yuwday me a masdare
  (Clemmy)

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An argument

• I went to the shop, I nicked a marsbar.The woman
  saw me. She had thrown me out. A week or three
  ago (?) I went in. It was a different woman. She
  said get out. I said no do it yourself. She said
  get out. I said sod (?) it and she said it was
  closed. I said only if you buy me a
  marsbar.(Clemmy)

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What is dyslexia?

• "a specific learning disability that is
  neurological in origin. It is characterized by
  difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word
  recognition and by poor spelling and decoding
  abilities."

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What is dyslexia?

• 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.

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Phonological deficit

• Problems with distinguishing the individual
  sounds in a word
• Problems with mapping the appropriate letters
  onto their sounds (encoding spelling) and vice
  versa (decoding reading)
• In other words a problem with the orthography
  of the language

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Writing systems

• Alphabetic scripts (English, Dutch, Russian,
  Greek)
• Syllabic scripts (Japanese kana)
• Logographic scripts (Chinese)

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Percentage of dyslexics

• In theory 3.6
• In practice
• Dutch 8 have problems
• German 4 - 5
• Japanese 0.9
• Chinese 1.92
• English 15-20

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Reading research

• Monosyllabic non-words (zoip) in mother tongue
  read correctly by average
• 7-year-olds English 12
• French 53
• Spanish 92
• 9-year- olds English 51
• French 73
• Spanish 92

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The English writing system

• GHOTI

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And more

• Hints on pronunciation for foreigners
• I take it you already know
• Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
• Other may stumble, but not you,
• On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
• Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
• To learn of less familiar traps? See handout

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Why is English so difficult?

• Alphabetic Script
• 44 phonemes
• 26 letters
• More than 250 possible letter combinations
• Spelling was fixed in 17th and 18th C.
  (Printing press and dictionaries)
• Pronunciation keeps changing

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Learn a new script in 3 minutes

• Vowels
• a /o/ as in dog
• á /a/ as in father
• ó as in Dutch zo
• é as in Dutch zee
• i as in Dutch ieder

• Consonants
• v w
• gy dy as in hoedje
• c ts
• sz s

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Apply your decoding skills

• egy vagylat
• nyólc kilenc tisz
• Magyarország
• Imre Nagy
• You have now spoken.?

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In other words

• Dyslexics have problems with recognition of
  individual sounds and with sound-letter
  correspondence.
• English orthography no true consistency in
  sound-letter correspondence .
• .or is there?

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Spellingcategories

• Basic spellings the most common spellings for a
  sound
• /ei/ ltagt (lady)
• /i/ Ø
• Rule-based spellings depend on position
• 1. /ei/ at word-end lt ay gt (say)
• 2. lt aCe gt (late)
• /i/ Ø
• Mnemonic spellings rare spelling variants
• for /ei/ ltaigt wait, lteagt great, lteighgt eight
• for /i/ lteagt team and lteegt week, lteygt
  key, lteogt people

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English orthography some examples

• English words should be made up of at least 3
  letters (except function words) in - inn, to -
  too, add, egg
• tch double ch watch, itching
• ck double c or k clock, hockey
• dge double g midget, fudge
• Only stressed syllables get true vowel-sound
• democracy, democratically

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Who are at risk?

• Launched in January 2007
• GAPS Grammatical Abilities and Pre-reading Skills
• an early warning dyslexia test (10 minutes)
• (see handout)

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How to help them

• Help raise awareness of individual sounds !!!
• Only then start teaching letters and the
  sound-letter correspondences
• Help them understand the structure of words
  
• cat ? ?
• ball ? ??
• beach ? ??
• witch ? ???
• Help them understand basic spellings and
  spelling-rules and support their mnemonic
  techniques
• Choose the right words to teach them

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Basic (sight) vocabulary

• Dr. Frys 1000 Instant Words the most common
  words for teaching reading, writing and spelling
• First 300 basic words cover 65 of each written
  text
• First 2000 words cover 80 of each written text
  Google Vocabprofile choose WEB VP1.5 English
• Audio books (graded readers) help to build sight
  vocabulary