can anyone talk to me about dyslexia in adults?

[MamaChocoholic]

I have a PhD student who I think may be dyslexic. Getting hum to organise his thoughts or work is really hard, and writing is painful. During his first year I have swung between thinking he is just not bright enough and being impressed with his work. It's bee really confusing! On the other hand, he can discuss his research area very clearly, he can fit all the pieces of the jigsaw together, and has lots of ideas. The difficulty is more about getting him to structure things in a logical and linear fashion.

I was talking about him with a friend who said it sounded very much like her dyslexic teenage son.

My student is bright I think, but I often struggle to teach him, perhaps because I tend to be quite linear and logical my explanations (I'm a mathematician now working in science). Are there any resources where I can learn how to explain things in a way he is more likely to understand? How should I approach the topic with him? We need a strategy to better communicate, but I don't know whether to directly raise the suggestion of dyslexia with him. He already lacks confidence and I don't want to push it down further.

I'd be really interested to hear about what coping strategies dyslexics have and what approaches they've found help/hinder their learning.

Try posting on this forum: www.beingdyslexic.co.uk

I think most universities have someone who deals with SEN such as dyslexia. You could seek their advice.

Sounds like my son too.... when he talks, he sounds like a Professor but his writing and spelling is pretty poor.

I have a dyslexic husband & 2 dyslexic children. DD used to frustrate the hell out of her sixth form tutors & is now at the point of thinking she's stupid (she's is not!) & has given up on year 12 three times. She's now working in a minimum wage job & extremely depressed. I'm so impressed to see what you are trying to do to help this student OP. load yourself with ideas but don't expect them all to work! Mind mapping never helped my kids for instance, but this student has reached PHD level so must have learned what works for him so I'd also suggest asking him about this.

Good luck!

I've taught dyslexic adults.
First question is- how has he got as far as a PhD without having any assessment at uni- or has he and he's not telling?

There are lots of books - aimed at teachers of adult dyslexics- which help with strategies, but is it your job or the uni's job? (not sure of how you appear in the chain- as a supervisor for him, or what?) Most unis have assessors and a support system via student welfare. As an adult he should access this support himself- especially if you make him aware of your concerns and the availability of support.

I'd say you need to bite the bullet and raise ths issue- if he is non UK he may have missed a diagnosis or his ability may have masked his problems to an extent.

He or you need to investigate the support that is already in the uni which should/usually includes dyslexia trained learning support staff.

Thanks. He is UK, and has got this far by studying computer science. It's possible he has been assessed and isn't telling, but I don't know if bringing this up would be productive.

I am his supervisor, so it is my job to teach him how to become an independent researcher, which includes organising his approach, and communicating his results. I will have a look around our website for resources but generally, I have found little support for supervisors here.

We have talked about his disorganized approach, and are trying together to find strategies that will help him. I am reluctant to raise anything specific re dyslexia in case I am wrong. Although he has plenty of ideas and puts himself forward for challenges like conference presentations, he lacks confidence and I don't want to risk knocking it further.

I will check my university website first, then that website niceweather linked, and do a quick search on amazon.

I was an arts graduate with an essay writing background and found the first year of my PhD like learning to write again. I could organise it but the complexity of what I was trying to express often made my writing convoluted in the extreme!

So going from undergrad and even masters to the phd level is a massive step. I am now an HE administrator with disability liaison responsibilities and it is common for students who end up getting late diagnoses of SpLD/dyslexia to be incredibly bright individuals who coast through often science based disciplines with little extended writing required who only struggle when the knowledge they need to acquire and then process and feed into assessments gets incredibly complex as they move up an educational stage. This has happened to your student and his old strategies have fallen apart. Ask if your Disability Service will assess him. At best he needs to transition to writing at postgrad level but he may need help and to work with a tutor.

Ive worked with professional post grads ( support in the workplace) who were diagnosed late in their careers when they came up against something where thier previous strategies didn't work.

Sounds typical TBH that he isn't coping well now but is brill with computers.

I'd say complete openness- but tactfully done- is the way forward.

Ask him and if he hasn't been assessed then get the uni to assess him.

You can get quite far, particularly with something like computing without an assessement.

They will then look at areas that need supporting, you say organisation and also getting ideas down. There should be someone to help with this.

Hi.

I'm a dyslexic PhD student, but in English. I agree it would be good if he'd accept being assessed. There's nothing to be ashamed of. An assessment will show his strengths and weaknesses, whether he's dyslexic or not, and be really useful.

One thing that strikes me is, does it help if you change the mode of reception he uses - eg., if you usually do a lot of writing things out, is it possible to do more aurally, or vice versa? And can you try to avoid making him do two types of processing at once (eg., both listening to you and watching you write things down). I can't do this at all, so if my supervisor is talking to me and I am trying to write, I can't hear anything she says. And my writing goes to pot. Until she learned to keep pausing and to give me time, I would lose all my notes.

Structuring things is my weak point too. My brain wants to be structured like the internet, with lots of hyperlinks and no fixed order. I find it extremely hard to see why other people need a linear structure at all, and extremely hard to understand when the structure of my own work is insufficiently linear.

Partly it just takes practice (in my discipline, but perhaps in maths too?).

Does he do anything like a postgrad study group, or do your students get together and present papers to each other? That can really help as he might find it easier to explain something to other students, and you learn a lot - and it's harmless, whereas you possibly wouldn't want to set him loose teaching undergrads if you're worried about how he organizes things.

I wonder how much of his structuring problems are fundamentally to do with the subject-matter, and how much are from ancillary stuff, like that he's not managed to take proper notes of what you said, or he's forgotten to chase up a reference you gave him?

As a dyslexic I found the only way to cope with my degrees and now running a successful business is to create lists of bite size things to achieve. For example I would write clean the house - I would break it in dust and Hoover each room, wash each floor and that way I would achieve it.

Ok, if I do ask him if he's been assessed, in what ways would an assessment help.him? Tact is not my forte at all.

LRD the analogy of having an internet structure to his thoughts is very.useful, that's just what he's like. Tbf, I think my thoughts are often structured like that but when communicating them I have learnt to pull a thread through them, and I certainly struggle to follow arguments unless presented in a linear fashion.

The advice about not listening and writing at the same time is good. Often I expect him to take notes (which are Ty

Ok, if I do ask him if he's been assessed, in what ways would an assessment help.him? Tact is not my forte at all.

LRD the analogy of having an internet structure to his thoughts is very.useful, that's just what he's like. Tbf, I think my thoughts are often structured like that but when communicating them I have learnt to pull a thread through them, and I certainly struggle to follow arguments unless presented in a linear fashion.

The advice about not listening and writing at the same time is good. Often I expect him to take notes (which are typically poor) at the same time as I talk and scribble graphs/algebra on another sheet. I can definitely think about tryijng to change this.

We do have a monthly journal club, but that means he only presents every 6 months or so. I will think about what other practice he can get.

I have to admit, I forgot to say that I was thinking of assessments being subsidized for students because mine have been.

If it is subsidized, now is a good time to do it. He might as well take the opportunity while he's a student.
It helps because a good assessment will look at all sorts of areas of strength (and weakness) that he may not know about. It's not about saying 'here's what's wrong'. I'd say to him that doing a PhD is really specialized, so it is that much more important to be very aware of your own individual way of thinking. And a PhD is quite lonely, so you don't have the chance to compare to other students and see how what you're doing compares. Eg., because I know that my reading speed is actually very good, I don't worry any more that it feels slow. It isn't. My visual memory is shite, so instead I concentrate on avoiding using that.

I accept assessments aren't everyone's cup of tea and I can see why you're not wanting to push and upset him.

I think a lot of us don't think in a linear way. Perhaps especially mathematicians? I think it is an asset often but I would guess he's struggling to see why other people don't follow him. It's a really hard bit of transitioning to trying to do something original - you do have to learn that if you have a hope of being original, you are suddenly going to find that you're not surrounded by teachers cooing that you're so clever. I get that you know this (!), I'm just trying to put down the things that should have been obvious to me, but took me a little time to work out - because it might help him understand why you're having problems with him, rather than him simply worrying he's not good enough.

When you say, 'writing is painful' - is this getting things down on paper? Or he procrastinates? Or the gap in quality between the written work and how he sounds when he discusses it? My brother is a (probably dyslexic) mathematician though he will be much more junior than you, and he hated this initially, but has commented that he is more 'wordy' than lots of mathematicians and finds it easier to start off reasoning something out it words rather than writing down symbols. I don't know how far this can work - I just don't know maths well enough.

Sorry, I am probably not being much help at all at this stage, I'm just too distant from your subject. He is very lucky to have someone who's so concerned about him though.

(I hope you're ok/ not in the UK to be up so early, btw!)

Oh ... I'm sure someone will have said, if his notes are poor can he record supervisions on a dictaphone if his notes are poor. Frankly, the idea of doing this would give me the shudders, nothing I'd like less and my supervisors would hate it too, but some people find it works for them.

He should definitely try recording (or, better, filming - just roughly) himself giving a paper, so he can hear what he's like when he tries to explain things.

LRD, thanks, this is really very helpful. He's only my second student, so I'm still finding my way with supervision. He's not doing maths, but is learning a bit to supplement a PhD that will be mostly computing.

Writing is painful in many ways.
He procrastinates, has tried giving me 30 pages of plagiarised text (including my own papers) when I asked for two, writes sentences without verbs, doesn't ever use commas, and starts each sentence on a new indented line. My English isn't great (I'm a mathematician for a reason!) and I struggle to make sense of it at all sometimes.

I will find out what support/assessments are offered before I broach the subject with him. It is worth doing, because he has two years left and we need to spend that time doing some interesting science, getting papers, which will he easier if he and I can relax a little about his thesis.

Oh, I was up in the night with non sleeping toddlers. I use the time to keep up with my reading :)

He needs learning support within the uni.

Short term, it might be worth you asking him if he has really understood the instructions ( thinking of the 30 pages when you needed 2) and ask him to read such like back to you- what he has to do.

I am really surprised (I'm a former English teacher) that he hs got this far with that level of skills- he wouldn't get through English GCSE even with the dumbing down there has been over recent years!

Oh, gosh. Poor him but also poor you.

Bar the plagiarism (!), I could quite easily hand in similar stuff and I did in the early stages (and I'm an English PhD with English GCSE, FWIW, MissBoPeep - I think things can go to pot when you're concentrating really hard on being original, and you make mistakes you otherwise might not).

Does it make sense if he reads it aloud? Some people would put the verbs/commas etc. back in without even noticing they'd left them out ... others, if reading it aloud, would then see the mistake, but wouldn't if they just looked at it. He needs to learn proof-reading skills, not just glance over the text or hope you won't notice ... and you know that but I don't know how you get it through to him except by giving him exercises like this.

I am really purely guessing here, but new sentences on new intended lines makes intuitive sense to me. If he cannot track text very well, it would be helpful. FWIW most people can take in about 5-9 words at a glance without needing to track much, so if he's writing short sentences and separating them with lots of blank space, it might be a tool to help him manage to read without losing his place.

He needs to re-edit and take the spaces out for you though!

You sound so nice. I'm angry on your behalf he is putting you through so much work.

PS I hope the toddlers sleep better tonight!

One toddler awake again. They're nearly two, so am hoping sleep will be better soon.

I didn't actually pass English GCSE. I got into uni on the strength of my maths/science a levels and frankly lied when they asked for GCSE grades. I had a very eccentric and brilliant PhD advisor who taught me to write. I wasn't dyslexic, just lazy in school. So, don't be angry on my behalf. Though I think not reading the instructions/thinking the rules don't matter is also an issue for him.

Good to know you handed in work like that in the early days. With time he does manage to polish what he's written up. The abstract to his first year report was lovely the first time I read it. I think he either doesn't see.that the unpolished version is so different to the polished, or.reaches the deadline without allowing himself time to polish. Or perhaps he just reaches the point where he doesn't feel able to push a chapter forward and hands it to me to get it off his hands. I need to ask, but currently trying to build off the success of his first year viva, which went really well, keep his confidence up, and get him to do some new work.

The short sentences, yes, I think you're right. He begins his written work as slides before putting the bullet points together and adding capitals, verbs to make sentences.

Thanks for being so open about how you write/think. It's really helped me understand his approach a bit better. Hopefully I can start by pausing when we chat, being less impatient and allowing him time to take better notes, and will be able to ask about an assessment in a couple of weeks once I know what support the university offers. (I suspect it may not be much, ours is a bit survival of the fittest at times!)

You cheeky bugger, lying about English!

I'm interested in how people learn and think so I have been fascinated by hearing about him, and about what it's like trying to teach someone like that. Thank you. I hope you get things sorted out with him.