Learning to read - seems to be no structure to it

[grumpypants]

I'm a bit frustrated at the moment - ds (5) is in Y1 and brings home two books a week, one to read to me, and one to have read to him. There is just no continuity to the books he is meant to read and he is just not reading as well as i thought he would be by now. Older ds also couldn't read (worse than this) buy the end of Y1 and we hired a tutor for Y2 - he is now a free reader (Y3) and has a brilliant reading age.
The school read in groups, and apparently use several reading schemes.

Any thoughts?

The child I am thinking of has GDD but no cause has ever been identified.

The most common causes of GDD are chromosome and genetic abnormalities such as Down's syndrome and fragile X syndrome or abnormalities with the structure or development of the brain or spinal cord such as cerebral palsy or spina bifida. Other causes can include prematurity ? being born too early , infections (such as congenital rubella or meningitis) or metabolic diseases such as having an underdeveloped or underactive thyroid gland. There are a number of tests that can be done to identify the underlying cause of GDD. However, often the cause is never determined.

The child I am thinking of has had every test under the sun, on two continents.

I am hoping to spend 3/4 days with friends who have two adult offspring with Fragile X. The girl, who is borderline, had no difficulties in learning to read, the young man - now 30 year old - would absolutely love to be able to read. He has a mental age of around 6, I would think, with some very startling insights into the behaviour of others and some very distressing behavioural attributes.
I am going to try to get him started and have a very good tutor friend in the neighbourhood who would be ideal to carry on the instruction, if sessions prove fruitful.

The problems may prove unsumountable but I think he would so respond to the logical progression of alphabetic code teaching and to little stories that introduce the code so gradually and carefully. We'll see!

as I said often the cause is never identified. Of the children I've met with GDD some have had identified casuses - Down's Syndrome and FAS but the child I taught had not cause identified.

Dolfrog
There are indeed different writing systems developed by different cultures.

Sadly, among alphabetic ones, the English orthography is by far the worst for learning to read and write. It's the only one that tolerates so much phonic unreliability as I have shown at englishspellingproblems.co.uk/html/sight_words.html

It is especially unhelpful for learners for any kind of special difficulties.

Bonsoir

As mrz has mentioned the terms used to describe conditions and general overall terms, can vary both locally and Internationally. And some of these variations can be more political than scientifically logical.

In the USA and still in leading research journals the vocabulary is beginning to change, but they still refer to Retarded Abilities. So the actual conditions are recognised but by a different name.

And as mrz also mentioned in the UK politics has decided to introduce Specific Learning Disability in place of dyslexia as a further attempt to avoid providing the support dyslexics need.

We need to take the political correctness out of disability issues so that all can have a proper understanding of the issues involved. This is particularly import for those like me who have one or more of these disabilities so that we can first understand the nature of our own disabilities and very importantly be able to explain our support needs to others who we come into contact with, so that they can provide the understanding and communication accommodations we need.

mashabell - do you speak French? French is a much harder language to write than English.

Yes, you could make a whole new set of lists in French, Masha!

I speak French. And learning to write French is pretty difficult too, but it's far more rule-governed than English spelling.

But the biggest difference between English and French, and all other alphabetic languages, is that only in English do many identical graphemes have different sounds (eg, ou: sound, soup, couple; ea: eat, great, bread). So learning to read French is vastly easier than English. E.g. French ou spells the long English oo sound every time, even if accompanied by extra letters (ou, tout, nous, choux).

In other languages very few words pose pronunciation problems for beginning readers. In English hundreds do.

I disagree with dolfrog that calling a child's difficulties SpLD rather than dyslexia prevents the child from accessing appropriate support. Whatever the label (or indeed even without the label) good teaching is good teaching and should match the child's needs.

But there are just so many "rules" in French that they are almost impossible to retain. I write French with a great deal of fluency, but the grammatical spellings (conjugation and agreements) are a nightmare.

Perhaps we should go on a French educational forum and insist they make it easier Masha?

LOL mrz .

I do think (and French DP agrees with me) that there are more pointless (eg no added value) rules in French than English. All those genders and conjugations that we manage perfectly well without in English...

All those genders and conjugations that we manage perfectly well without in English...

They are indeed pointless. In English they were got rid of by the lower classes who carried on speaking English during the three centuries of Norman rule, while their uppers switched to French and ignored what they did.

Given half a chance, ordinary people would be very happy to improve English spelling too, but the educated elites are highly unlikely ever to allow that.

The invention of writing has been a wonderful thing, but once languages become written down, they become more rigid and resistant to change, even ones that would improve them.

Masha you are mistaken that writing made language rigid it was in fact the birth of printing which made standardised spelling viewed as desirable.

'the birth of printing which made standardised spelling viewed as desirable'

And Dr. Johnson's dictionary

but would it have caught on if it had to be handwritten?
and what if the people copying made spelling mistakes ?
it could be Masha's next project - a dictionary of her proposed spellings - handwritten of course

"I disagree with dolfrog that calling a child's difficulties SpLD rather than dyslexia prevents the child from accessing appropriate support. Whatever the label (or indeed even without the label) good teaching is good teaching and should match the child's needs."

DS was "labled" SpLD rather than dyslexic by primary school. It didn't stop him getting the appropriate help ie 1 to 1 several times a week for spelling.

mrz and bruffin

So if a child is defined as having SpLD how do you go about identifying the underlying cognitive / medical deficit or disorder which will have more sersious symptoms than just the problems with reading.
All of the international research realted to these issues found under the heading of dyslexia, and not SpLD which is peculiar to some areas of the UK.

Can I ask why your LA doesn't recognise dyslexia mrz? And do you agree with this policy?

Mashabell

Waht you are discussing is the nature of orthography or the structure of written language.
The purest writing systems are the logographic writing systems which have single word sound to single word graphic correspondence, such as Chinese and Japanese.
We use the most complex for of writing system an alphabet, and more specifically the Latin Alphabet, which has multiple graphic symbols to represent the sound of a word. There are many other types of writing systems between these extremes.

The next comparison of orthography is the comparison between the languages that use a writing system. The purest languages or shallowest orthographies in the Latin Alphabet writing system are Italian and Finnish, the most complex or deepest orthography in the Latin Alphabet system is English. And again all the other languages which use the Latin Alphabet have varying complexity of orthography.

Each writing system represents a system of graphic symbols best suited to those who designed and created the system and not necessarily best suited to all who have to use the system. And the evolution of language may have temporarily stalled due to the inflexibility to change over most recent years.

Jezabelle

The problem with the term dyslexia is due to the dyslexia industry in both the UK and the USA, which are tied to a specific remedial program, rather than defining dyslexia inline with international medical research.

Dyslexia is a learning disability, regarding the cognitive deficits / disorders which can cause problems decoding the graphic symbols used to respresent the sound based human communication system speech.

There are 3 Cognitive Subtypes of Dyslexia: Auditory, Visual, and Attentional. Which means that the clinically diagnosable auditory processing disorders, visual processing disorders, and attention disorders, all have a dyslexic symptom, and each requires a different form of support due to the different type of cognitive problem causing the dyslexic symptom.

Unfortunately for the UK dyslexia industry this conflicts with the marketing needs of their funding support which is based on specific remedial programs which can only help specific groups ot types of dyslexics, and not as they would like to claim, that their program can help all dyslexics. Some of these remedial program providers even own some of the dyslexia research journals to ensure support for their preferred program.

dolfrog for children in my school experiencing serious difficulties a number of multi disciplinary professionals will be involved EP, SaLT, OT, Developmental Motor Support, possibly CAMHS and paediatric services...

I came across this term today - dysgraphia.

It isn't 'generally' recognised in this country at all. Is there any 'point' in recognising a label that won't make any difference to how the child is perceived or taught?