Dyslexi Difficulty In Learning

I’m a senior at the University of South Carolina Upstate and have been diagnosed with dyslexia since childhood. This label could have caused for a disastrous college experience, but there has always been something in myself pushing beyond the stigma.

I am a student that has had to work hard for as long as I can remember in achieving my goals, dreams, both personal as well as academically. After many years of testing, I was diagnosed with dyslexia in my sophomore year of high school. Dyslexia is a congenital language process disorder. It can hinder reading, writing, spelling and sometimes speaking. Dyslexia is not a sign of poor intelligence

In the essay “On Being Seventeen, Bright, and Unable to Read,” David Raymond offers information on him having the experience of dyslexia.  He explains how dyslexia plays a major role in his learning. In a positive and negative way.  Dyslexia doesn’t only stop him with other educational activities but effects his self-confidence. While dyslexia brought Raymond many struggles as a child, it also played a huge role in Raymond’s confidence such as him saying that he wanted to die since he was different to everyone else. David visibly tells us how his dyslexia held him back from every day activities as a child. While reading, he says, “My family began to suspect I was having problems almost from the first day I started school.” This quote makes

Dyslexia is a term regularly bandied about the educational community and is a word that is likely to have been heard by most of the general public. For all its popularity, dyslexia is a term that is shrouded in confusion and ambiguity. This confusion was experienced first hand during SE1 and has been observed as something trainee teachers and teachers alike encounter regularly (PLL, 5/11/11], Appendix 1, pg2).

Several studies have shown that when dyslexia is undiagnosed, it can cause a lot of frustrations and anxieties in the individuals involved (Riddick & Edwards as cited in Glazzard, 2012). Dyslexia is a ‘hidden’ disability, as there are no obvious external signs for people to recognize (Riddick as cited in Glazzard, 2012). It is not like some other disabilities, as for example down syndrome, or cerebral palsy which people can recognize from the moment they see them. People can get confused and assume different reasons for the children’s poor performance in school. That is why, when dyslexia is undiagnosed, the characteristics like ‘stupid’, ‘thick’, and ‘lazy’ are commonly used to describe students with dyslexia. People who are not aware about dyslexia cannot find any other explanations for them who are not doing well at school. Lack of assessment may result in low self-esteem compared to non-dyslexic students (Humphrey as cited in Glazzard, 2012 ). On the other hand, lack of appropriate help and support can have long-term effects for people with dyslexia when reaching adulthood (Morgan & Klein,

However, I refuse to let it hold me back. English homework that takes classmates thirty minutes to do takes me twice as long. When teachers ask students to read out loud, I never raise my hand because of fear I’ll mess up. I slump down in my chair praying the teacher doesn’t call on me. Instead, I participate in other ways like answering questions teachers pose to the class. When people ask what it’s like to have dyslexia, I try to explain, but there’s nothing I can say that will allow them to truly understand. Often, I share one of my earliest memories. In preschool, we were learning the difference between right and left. The teacher kept saying your left hand is the one that makes an “L.” I stood there staring at my hands in confusion. I didn’t know which way “L” faced. It’s hard for those who haven’t experienced this to fully comprehend the obstacles I’ve had to overcome to get where I am.

Again I have dyslexia and I have already said how hard it was for my mom, but I also have a hard time with it. When I was little it was hard because everyone always thought I was weird because I was in AIG and in the special needs class. When I got into the key school I was so excited I was telling everyone but I also heard people whispering that Kylie is a idiot because she has to go to a different school for stupid people that read everything backwards.

Since dyslexia is a neurological condition along with difficulties with different aspects of reading dyslexia can have cognitive aspects as well, such as speech perception, recognizing and manipulating the basic sounds in a language, language memory, and learning the sounds of the letters (citation). All in all, up to 10% of the population is predicted to have some form of dyslexia therefore it is imperative that educators are able to identify these students and know strategies that can help them early on in their formal

As a reader, I have always struggled. From the first time, I began to read to now. We never understood why until I was in sixth grade. In sixth grade, I was tested for dyslexia and as a result we found out I was dyslexic. Through my grade school and high school years We did everything and anything to help me to read better.

It wasn’t until my bright seventh grade teacher, Mrs. Garver saw the signs of a dyslexic kid in me before the first quarter ended that I found out what dyslexia was. She told my mother what she thought I was dealing with and how we should go about learning if I even had dyslexia. After a week load of tests and my annoyance level raising, they told me I had dyslexia. I tried to ignore what they said, the help they tried to give me, and I decided I wasn’t going to believe them. I thought they were just making dyslexia up, that they were trying to make me look stupid. After long talks with my mother and my teachers where I told them I had no intention of going to special classes, they decide to instead give me extra time to finish assignments. The extra time to do assignments really did help, I would have to re-read any assignments given to me multiple times to understand them, and I would have my mother check any writing I did to make sure it made sense and wasn’t backwards.

“Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability” (“Frequently Asked Questions”). It makes reading, writing, comprehending, summarizing, spelling, and many other things that involve words and letters difficult. Some people with it may even struggle with math while others could be astounding at it. Dyslexia is not a form of retardation, but sadly 80% of people associate dyslexia with some form of retardation (“Dyslexia Facts and Statistics”). In most cases, dyslexia is genetic, but researchers still do not know how it is caused, passed down, or generated with or without a genetic past (“Frequently Asked Questions”). Dyslexia will never go away, so people with it will have to learn to overcome it.

According to the Dyslexia & Learning Disability Centre in Las Vegas, Dyslexia is an ability within the sensory mechanism of the nervous system to perceive the world with a multidimensional view. However it comes with poor word reading, word decoding, oral reading fluency and spelling. Though with appropriate teaching methods, dyslexic individuals can learn successfully throughout their lives. Also, when properly trained and informed, a dyslexic can use their

Dyslexia is a lifelong struggle with constant challenges with reading and speaking. About five to ten percent of the United States population deals with the learning disorder dyslexia (Van den Honert, n.d.). It is a neurological condition that is mainly caused by genetics but there are some rare cases in which it is acquired. Dyslexia interrupts the normal processes of reading and speaking (Van den Honert, n.d.). All of which are used in daily life and this makes life and school so much harder for dyslexics. They must learn to live with the condition for their entire life and there is not really a treatment for it. With the constant struggle and reminder of their

Growing, developing and learning are the facts of life for all children. Each day children are faced with many new concepts and various challenges. Can you imagine how it feels for a child to face not only new challenges life has, but to face these challenges while living with a learning disability? These challenges are met not just when they begin school either. Students suffer from learning disabilities from the moment they begin learning, not when they start school. Learning disabilities are real and they affect millions of people. “One such disability that affects over approximately 15 percent of the total American population is dyslexia” ( Nosek 5).

One of my primary focuses was to find out how different literatures dealt with Dyslexia and how best to support the child. Dyslexia can be described from a number of different perspectives as we see in Ball et al (2007) who explain that it can be “how one learns (Cognition), what parts of the brain are involved (neurology), what genes are involved (genetics) and behaviour (p14). Their book entitled ‘Dyslexia: An Irish perspective’ is very relevant to my research as it gives a great insight into the history of the special education sector in Ireland. It also looks into some of the key debates that are facing the educational sector today.