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Words...
The literal meaning of the
word dyslexia – from its Greek roots – is
“difficulty with words”.
Dr. Maryanne Wolfe, author
of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading
Brain, explains, “ the more you know about a word,
the faster you can read it.” Dr. Virginia Berninger
, of
the University of Washington, has demonstrated that reading fluency
is enhanced for dyslexic students through instruction that focuses
on the interrelation between the three “forms” shared
by each word: the meaning of the word, its visual appearance,
and its sound.
Ronald Davis, author of
The Gift of Dyslexia, builds his program for dyslexia
correction upon the insight that word mastery is essential to
reading development, using only two essential materials: clay
and a dictionary. Students use clay to create three-dimensional
models of the meaning of each word, as well as the letters that
spell the word. The dictionary is the key to independence: it
provides the correct spelling, a key to accurate pronunciation,
and all possible definitions and use of each word. The modeling
is needed because dyslexic individuals think mostly in pictures,
unable to think with words unless they have mental pictures to
go along with them. By tapping into the creative process, the
Davis program empowers each student with the ability to learn
and discover on their own.
But here is where dyslexics
encounter their biggest barrier: spelling. The most persistent
and pervasive symptom of dyslexia is an orthographic barrier;
they have difficulty remembering the conventional spelling of
phonetically irregular words. Many educators focus on intensive
teaching of phonics, as this provides one avenue for decoding
many of the simpler words encountered by beginning readers. English
is not a phonetic language, but rather a polyglot and amalgam
of words drawn from different languages, often retaining spellings
that reflect histories and pronunciations long forgotten.
If you can't spell a word,
you cannot find it in a dictionary.
Through brain scans, Dr.
Sally Shaywitz of Yale University has shown that dyslexic readers
typically underutilize the “visual word form area”
of the brain – the part of the visual cortex believed to
be involved in instantaneous recognition of whole words. This
is the part of the brain that probably stores a picture of the
right letters arranged in the right order, the part that is engaged
when you choose the correct spelling because it just looks
right to you.
It isn't that dyslexic writers
are unable to spell a word; with their creative problem-solving
strengths, they can easily spell the same word half a dozen different
ways. As Andrew Jackson once said, “its a damn poor mind
that can think of only one way to spell a word.”
The problem is in figuring
out which spelling is the one that everyone else will use and
understand.
And here is where the most
powerful tool – the dictionary – is also the most
inaccessible. Because if we err in guessing the first 2 or 3 letters
of the word, we will never find it.
And here is where Gabby's
Wordspeller becomes indispensible – it provides the
key to the door that opens the dictionary. It is where all those
phonetic decoding skills emphasized by well-meaning primary school
teachers can finally be brought to fruition: krecher may
not be a word, but it is a spelling, albeit an incorrect
one. In a regular dictionary, it leads us to the Kremlin, which
is not where we wanted to go. But Gabby's phonetic dictionary
gives us the answer in exactly the place we have gone to find
it: “creature.”
Suname leads to
tsunami. Fanomanen takes us to phenomenon. Ekselerate
turns into accelerate. And pretty soon, the world of words is
ours for the taking. If
we already know the meaning of the word, that is all that is needed.
The correct spelling is there, in a form that we can copy and
use.
If our trip to the dictionary
is also a search for meaning, or etymology, or information as
to usage, or a set of synonyms, then Gabby's has opened
the door for us. By providing the spelling we need, we can access
the larger dictionary or thesaurus which can provide us with whatever
information we seek.
This reference book should
be in every school library, in every classroom, and at home on
every student's desk. It is the key to independence for every
learner.
-Abigail Marshall April
7, 2009
Abigail Marshall is the
author of the books The Everything Parent's Guide to Children
with Dyslexia and When Your Child Has … Dyslexia,
published by Adams Media. She also manages the Dyslexia
the Gift web
site at www.dyslexia.com
and other educational sites
for Davis Dyslexia Association International.
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