FORMS AND CAUSES OF DYSLEXIA - Teacher's Zone

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FORMS AND CAUSES OF DYSLEXIA

by Anna Sawa

I have been interested in teaching students with special needs since I started to be a teacher. Nowadays, about 10% of students have specific  learning disabilities that should be taken into considaration during  organisation of teaching process. They are not all the same, they have  to cope with different difficulties - with reading (dyslexia),  handwriting (dysgraphia), spelling (dysortographia), counting  (dyscalculia), music (dysmusia) or mixed disorder of scholastic skills.

Special needs students


It will be presented here some forms and causes of dyslexia:

Auditory dyslexia
Special needs learners

It  is a retarded ability to discern differences between similar phonemic  letters, like k/g, t/d, p/b. Students have difficuties with articulation  of all phonemes in complex words or with connecting sounds to printed  letters. They cannot see differences between minimal pairs (e.g.  cut/cat, foot/food, aunt/ant). It is almost impossible for them to  recognize and produce rhymes. Therefore, appears that learning  pronunciation by imitation is hindered.

Visual dyslexia
Dyslexic students

Children  have difficulties with directionality, symbol reading and spelling  words. They have also problems with fluent reading, they can skip  endings and small words. Main mistakes are:  
- phonic writing (e.g. cheese / “cziz”; book / buk),
- mirrored writing (b/d; p/g),        
- letters replaced by similar ones (w/m/n; p/b/g/d),        
- letters written in the wrong order, omitted or added (e.g. mouse / “muose”; chess / “ches”; shop/“schop”).


Audiovisual dyslexia
It combains problems of auditory and visual dyslexia.

Special needs children
Emotional dyslexia
 
Dyslexic  students have usually experienced many school defeats. Therefore, they  may feel anxiety and be discouraged. They may also become prejudiced  against school subjects that they find difficult and what is more these  students have low self-esteem and motivation for learning. That is why  they cannot enjoy learning or refuse to go to school. Due to  frustration, there may appear some behaviour problems, such as passivity  (a withdrawn student), aggression and tantrums as a form of protest or a  student becomes a classroom “clown”.
Students can try to hide the faulty reading bi skimming or guessing the text. They have problems with correct pronunciation.

Pedagogical dyslexia.
It is usually a result of bad teaching.
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