Learning disorder (Dyslexia) [Archives:2008/1217/Education]
G. Manulal
[email protected]
Poor academic performance of students has always been a cause of great concern for everyone. A teacher normally puts the best of his/her efforts to help every child to achieve optimum academic performance. In spite of this, not all children rise up to the expectations of the teachers and parents. These under-achievers are scholastically backward. The reasons or causes for this scholastic backwardness are several: some of the important ones are the following:
1. Some of the students are actually bright, but cannot get marks in spite of their efforts.
2. Some others have certain behavioral problems and may not be keen to make an effort to get good results.
3. Some students cannot make adequate efforts because of their physical or neurological handicaps.
The third category of students mentioned above, especially those having neurological handicaps, experience learning disorders and thereby they become poor school performers.
Learning disorders (LD) or Dyslexia is a term that denotes a single, but heterogeneous group of disorders. These groups of disorders are manifested as significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of basic academic skills-skills of reading, reading comprehension, writing, spelling, mathematics and so forth. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual and due to the malfunction of the central nervous system. Even though they are intelligent and their overall global brain growth is normal, the miniscule brain areas with the above mentioned academic skills have not developed adequately. This is called specific delay in development which is in contrast to the global delay in development in the case of mental retardation. These students with LD are slow in learning, despite the normal or above normal intelligence. The German doctor, Dr. Berlin coined the term Dyslexia ( from Greek ) to mean “difficulty in words.” Studies clearly show that the learning disorders are basically of neurological origin.
An LD child's brain cells are arranged differently or function differently from a normal person's. The brain cell abnormalities may arise from genetic factors or environmental causes during the pre-natal, natal or post-natal periods. The snapshots of the above abnormalities can now be taken using special brain scans.
Acquisition of academic skills and the process of learning take place by the integrated operation of various parts of the brain. Broadly, we understand that the brain has two separate halves, namely left hemisphere and right hemisphere connected by a bridge called corpus callosum. These two halves, however, function in tandem to instantly produce an integrated output-spoken or written language, for instance. The right hemisphere controls essentially the non verbal and abstract functions like art and music, imagination and intuition, spatial skills, bodily-kinesthetic skills etc., but the left hemisphere controls reasoning, logical, mathematical thinking and verbal skills. The left brain is also responsible for skills to express ideas into words/sentences and to use spoken/written language which is also responsible for understanding through listening and reading. A specific area towards the front of left brain (Broca's area) is in charge of expressing language. A location at the back (Wernicae's area) is where understanding of speech that we hear takes place.
There is a tiny language area in the right hemisphere too. A plethora of functions related to language are controlled by these various areas in the left and right hemispheres, and by their communication with each other. Any developmental deficiency in these functions gives rise to faulty comprehension or expression of language, causing learning disorders.
Sub-skills underlying reading and writing include (i) dealing with symbols for sounds, (ii) breaking words down into sound units or phonemes, (iii) spellings, (iv) deriving meanings from the symbols on the page etc.. Any defects in these sub-skills lead to learning disorders.
In this context, Dyslexic difficulties may be attributed to a lag in the maturation of the dedicated areas of the left hemisphere. This does not imply any form of brain damage as such, but refers to individual differences in the complex brain organization during development.
A teacher who is sensitized to the academic and behaviour pointers is the most suitable person to diagnose a case of learning disorder in the class room.
1. Reading problem: Reading tires the LD child easily; he is curious to read, but prefers being read to. He reads slowly and hesitantly, with omissions and additions of letters, and does not pay attention to punctuation. He fails to look carefully at the word, makes a guess from the first letter, eg.: reads “portion” for “proportion.” He reads aloud monotonously without intonation, word by word. He may lose orientation on a line or a page while reading. Most often he finds difficulty to read lengthier words and also may be unable to mentally interpret the meaning of what he reads.
2. Writing problem: Writing is frustrating for a child with LD. He is extremely slow with writing and rarely completes his class notes or exam papers within the given time. His spellings are bad and so are grammar and sentence construction. Even spelling mistakes are inconsistent; the same word may be spelt differently in different places on the same page. He is unable to see the pattern in the spelling like 'tion' in 'portion' and 'station'. The LD child may confuse letters while writing, like 'b' for'd', 'n' for 'u' . These letters may be mirror images like 'E' for '3' ,'6' for '9'. He omits capitals and punctuation. The handwriting may be poor and pencil grip awkward. In more severe cases, word images may be transposed eg.; 'saw' for 'was', 'no' for 'on' etc.
Children with severe problems in writing may find it difficult to write words or letters from a dictation. Some of them may even be unable to pick out letters of alphabet from a display or match the same alphabet. Many children with LD have confusion even between left & right.
3. Arithmetic problems: Arithmetic does not interest many of these children. They may use fingers for calculations even after eight years. They may get confused with arithmetic science like multiplication 'X' and '+' . They may do half of the problem with the correct sign and the remaining with another. They may even find it difficult to decide on correct operations. Many of these children work out answers correctly in the working column, but may transpose the digits while writing out the answer eg: 2538 may become 5238.
These children may reverse numbers, eg: 12 may become 21 on reading or writing. They may subtract a smaller number in one column from a large number, without realizing the value of the number, eg; 43-8 may be answered as 45, subtracting 3 from 8. Also the concept of time, space, speed or distance may be difficult for some children with learning disorders (LD), some find it very hard to tell the time from the face of a clock. Certain others have trouble with maps, graphs and directions making it difficult for them to draw or spot a place in a map or a puzzle.
Education is meant to mould an individual to function effectively as a social being and a useful citizen. This involves a process of identifying the strength and potential of each child and assisting him/her to develop that potential to the fullest, enabling him/her to achieve human excellence.
But most of the time the steps of the parents and teachers to make their children academically excellent with out understanding their strengths and weakness will surely act as the oil in the fire of problems , especially in the case of children having learning disorders.
In history there is a long list of famous personalities with learning disorders which includes the names like Thomas Alva Edison, Leonardo Davinchi, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill etc..
It is a fact that even in the western world, around 10% of children are diagnosed as having learning disorders. Even though it is too difficult to cure the learning disorders, for an effective handling of the problem a comprehensive counseling programme for the parents and teachers along with the affected students is essential. On the other hand, an effective participation in co-curricular and extra curricular activities along with the class room learning is important, so as to ensure a proper development of the skills controlled by the right hemisphere.
——
[archive-e:1217-v:16-y:2008-d:2008-12-18-p:education]
