Students with Dyslexia often Struggle to Express their Hidden Strengths
By Margo Fourman
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People with dyslexia often have surprising strengths which may be masked by their difficulties with ‘simple’ things. This can change with the right help.
Let’s look at some of the things that learners with dyslexia struggle with, and then at their special skills.
Dyslexia is most commonly associated with difficulties with reading and writing. But that’s not the whole story.
Here’s some of what you may see:
- Reading skills – they maybe slow readers, or learn late, or unable to remember or process what they are reading at the level you would expect from their general skills and intelligence.
- Reversing letters and numbers when reading (for example reading “saw” as “was”)
- Having muddled sentences where the grammar seems odd: they may start from the most important idea and try to fit the sentence around it
- Difficulty taking notes in classes and lectures. This may look like: Can’t write fast enough, can’t listen at the same time as writing, can’t understand their notes when they look back.
- Difficulty Understanding how to answer written questions, whether word math problems or exam questions.
They often also have difficulties with things like:
- Processing information that they listen to. They may need you to speak faster or slower. Unfortunately, most teaching relies on listening or reading.
- Telling left from right.
- Following and remembering sequences.
- Following travel directions (which includes telling right from left, up from down, reading maps and reading the sign posts quickly enough).
- Learning to tell time.
- Remembering words, phrases and names and isolated data.
- Memorizing written lists and phone numbers
- Staying on topic.
- Expressing their ideas in a way that other people can follow them.
By Margo Fourman
Table of Contents
Together, these limitations often lead dyslexic learners to:
- Avoid being called on to read out loud in front of classmates.
- Become tired or frustrated from reading.
- Have trouble finishing assignments and tests within time limits.
- Find it difficult to retain information and need to reread something several times.
- Find it difficult to write intelligibly while working out what they want to write.
And unfortunately, these obvious challenges in the classroom tend to lead to emotional problems as well:
- Low self-esteem
- Becoming incredibly frustrated, especially with tasks that other people would consider easy
- Perhaps worst of all, other people may label them as lazy or stupid.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite: dyslexics often have to work incredibly hard to accomplish tasks that others might find easy.
Yet there is hope.
So let’s talk now about the hidden strengths of people with dyslexia.
People with dyslexia tend to be particularly strong at processing big-picture information, both literally and figuratively. Their advantages are seen with.
- Spatial knowledge and manipulation
- Visual thinking
- Thinking outside the box
When leveraged and applied properly in life, these lead to some extraordinary benefits.
Sociologist Julie Logan of the Cass Business School in London found that dyslexia is relatively common among business entrepreneurs. They are people who tend to think differently and see the big picture in thinking creatively about a business.
Indeed, one in three American entrepreneurs has dyslexia.
Entrepreneurs like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Charles Schwab were all dyslexic.
Some of the things that can be worked on, to support people with dyslexia to express their strengths
Most teaching is done in a sequential fashion, and dyslexics tend to learn better through deeper learning: connecting new knowledge with prior knowledge.
For this they need to learn active learning and understand why mind maps are often recommended for dyslexic people.
Working memory is often an issue, and they need to learn tips and tricks to support more effective function around that.
However, the difficulties we see with working memory and processing speed do seem to become less of an issue with reduction of sensory overload, if present, and with improved communication and integration between the two brain hemispheres.
Sometimes people with dyslexia may see the text as moving, or doubling, or blurry. Children rarely tells us what’s going on unless we ask them. They assume that what they see is the same as everybody else. This can be addressed.
Auditory processing (remembering and following instructions, understanding classes or lectures) can be addressed. Knowing right from left can be addressed. These issues are often the tip of the iceberg. When we meet the person, we often find that other issues need to be addressed first for more successful learning.
