Sparked by the Dyslexia convo.... repeating my question from that link....

[Jackaroo]

Can I ask a question? I have a good friend who has just taken his final exams to become a professionally qualified architect (I hope no one recognises either of us when I say this but...) which he's left for years because he has such a problem with reading, and speaking and actually how he forms a sentence. He uses very coherent arguments, and I know what he's trying to say, but he just misses out words, or uses the most tortuous sentence structures ever ( much like this post :-)
Does any of this ring a bell for anyone? He had a g-friend years ago who said she thought he had dyslexia, but he didn't ever do anything about it. I assumed it wasn't dyslexia as it affects how he speaks too.
He is superb at technical drawing and extremely creative, but this is a real problem for him.
I edited his essay as much as I could without actually changing the content (which was pretty much fine I thought)...
Any ideas ?
I've no idea if this should have gone under health, other or what, but I'm comfortable here with my hypocondriacal tendencies

Good list. Took my daughter ages to learn spellings, tables, telling the time, all that basic stuff.

Agree with bb over motor skills too. That daughter who is very fit and does loads of sport and was in school swimming etc teams could never do things like tennis which require that coordination.

Brilliant, many thanks, i'll find a quiet moment and pass on the checklist to him!
J
x

If he has problems forming sentences accurately, he may have a specific language disorder. Most psychologists would consider a language disorder to be different to dyslexia. It could be that the language disorder is affecting his reading skills. He might find it helpful to get in contact with a speech therapist for an assessment. Most people who have a diagnosis of dyslexia do not have problems speaking in grammatically accurate sentences although they may have some difficulty quickly finding the correct word e.g. working out left and right. (I'm an ed psych by the way but was a bit wary of getting involved in the dyslexia thread. It seems to generate a lot of heated debate!)

Sorry, should also have said that of course he could also have a specific difficulty which makes it difficult for him to read. This would most likely be a problem with phonological awareness. This is the most important skill you need when learning to read and most people who have difficulty with literacy will have problems with this. If you find phonological processing hard then anything involving phonics (e.g. sounding out when spelling or reading) is difficult. This skill is not assessed as part of IQ tests which is why some poor readers and spellers can get very high IQ scores. Incidentally, you can also have problems with phonological processing and score poorly on IQ tests.

Thanks so much neolara - you're a legend! I'll try and persuade him to get a speech therapy assessment. It would be a good start.