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Individuals with dyslexia frequently have problems getting the sequence of letters mixed up when they write. They also find it difficult to read words that most people can read once they see it, such as ‘the.’ Other indications of dyslexia include:
- Slow development of phonological awareness abilities. Examples of these types of abilities include mixing sounds, segmenting words and phrases, and rhyming.
- Trouble understanding words or phrases that they have read compared to something that they read out loud.
- Trouble pronouncing specific sounds.
- Varying spelling mistakes.
- Slowing writing pace and poor handwriting.
- Struggle with note-taking or copying notes.
- Struggle to recall things like phone numbers.
- Reading takes much effort.
- Difficulty writing answers than answering them verbally.
The struggle reading phrases and words frequently results from a discrepancy in the phonological aspect of language, which implies that the individual might find it tough to understand the way sounds go along to shape words. Subsequently, this makes it hard for the individual to decipher a written word (when the person is instructed to say the letters out loud and form words from them).
How Speech Therapy Can Help
- Phonological Knowledge. Awareness about this aspect primarily implies comprehending the sounds that create language. When a teenager starts learning to read, he needs to create a link between the individual letters and their combinations and the proper sound. This is known as decoding and is the way each child beings to learn how to read. Gradually, complicated words become more familiar, and reading eventually becomes automatic.
As an individual learns more phrases and improves vocabulary, his brain also acquires knowledge of unwritten guidelines regarding acceptable vowel and phoneme groupings in language. Teens and children build on this comprehension through playing with language, like doing word games, singing, and rhyming.
Source: scholastic.com
Individuals with dyslexia typically find language play and rhyming more troublesome compared to their peers. They frequently have difficulty sequencing sounds and might also find it hard to play games that entail changing middle vowels or using the initials of a word with another ending. Consequently, tongue twisters are especially daunting for them.
Language and speech therapists have extensive knowledge of the acquisition of phonological awareness abilities, and many of these abilities have been associated with learning to spell and read. Those who need speech therapy have a higher likelihood of developing reading disabilities in the long term, so developing robust phonological knowledge skills in kids and teens with speech delays can be beneficial when learning how to read.
- Speech Sound Disabilities. A teenager or young adolescent with speech sounds because of phonological awareness problems has difficulty creating all the sounds in specific classifications. It could be possible to notice patterns in their speech; for instance, they might substitute long sounds or substitute them with shorter sounds. The child might have one sound mistake pattern, or he might have many mistakes, which makes the speech very hard to understand. For someone who has trouble producing sounds, a language and speech therapist must be your initial step in supporting him.
Some of those with dyslexia also experience dyspraxia, a fine motor skills disability that affects sequencing and movement coordination. This affects the muscles that play a role in speech formation and result in language delays. Additionally, some with major dyspraxia might even require alternative approaches to communication because speech takes so much effort and is hard to understand.
- Working Memory Problems. You may have heard speech therapists making comments about someone’s ‘processing period.’ This means the length of time it takes for someone to process the data provided to him and the time it takes to react to it. Individuals with dyslexia usually need more time to process and more repetition of spoken words to learn.
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Dyslexia could also impact memory because of the term known as phonological loop. This is an instrument utilized by one’s short-term memory to pick up some information and then practice it in the brain. For instance, you use the loop if you want to recall a phone number. This helps an individual retain data in his memory just until he needs to recover it later. Other people can recall more information than others, but those with dyslexia can frequently recall less information than the rest who do not have the disability.
Individuals with short-term memory problems find it more difficult to remember and emphasize spoken information. For instance, a teen with dyslexia that is instructed to repeat a sentence that his teacher just said might not be capable of finding the words to do what is instructed of him, even if he was listening and paying close attention. The more the repetitions, the easier it will be for him to recall the sentence. This problem with remembering spoken information is why an individual with dyslexia finds learning a new language more challenging.
