"Audio books, turned out to be the most powerful tool I had in my toolkit." - Yvonna Graham, MEd., author Dyslexia Toolkit Despite the widespread availability of text-to-speech and audiobooks, it's only a small percentage of people who discover and use these tools....
From the first edition of our book, The Dyslexic Advantage: "Early in school most—but not all—dyslexic children will show obvious struggles with reading and spelling. (A few, whom we’ve elsewhere called stealth dyslexics, have problems so subtle or “stealthy” that...
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With more colleges and universities waiving standardized tests for admissions, many college advisors are recognizing the importance of college application essays in the process. Rightly or wrongly, AI is also having considerable impact on college applications. For students who struggle with writing and writing about themselves, having a way to start the essay can greatly ease the stress on the application process. It is possible to use ChatGPT to help you build a professional sounding resume, but also use it to personalize an essay, tailor it to particular schools, and give different versions that help students choose the best fit to what they want to say. In one video, a tutor explains how she would chat to ChatGPT to generate different possible answers […]
FEWER COLLEGES REQUIRING STANDARDIZED TESTS If you or your students struggled with standardized tests, there is good news on college admissions as increasing numbers of schools no longer require tests for admission. This fall, over 80% of four-year colleges...
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A multilingual member of this community (who is also dyslexic) asked us for advice about improving grammar in English. Grammar is something that non-dyslexic people may pick up effortlessly and without conscious awareness as they read and listen to native speakers (Implicit Learning). Unfortunately, grammar cannot be learned in such a passive way by most dyslexic people. As a result, it must be learned explicitly and likely with multisensory strategies. Rule-based learning of English grammar is difficult and inefficient for many dyslexic learners. It is possible that pairing with a dyslexia tutor who has expertise writing and grammar for dyslexic adults (including those in higher education) may be able to help you in a step-by-step fashion addressing complex sentence structure. I do know […]
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I had been re-reading Taylor and Vestergaard’s Developmental Dyslexia: Disorder or Specialization in Exploration? and reading more of the background studies that led the authors to suggest that dyslexia was a cognitive specialization with evolutionary advantages. If that is the case, it seems more important than ever to specialize education to nurture abilities that build on how dyslexic minds are optimized. Successful human problem solving groups often exhibit different types of “intelligence” and the importance of explorers can be seen in many different types of problem solving groups. For instance, studies of groups addressing crises have shown that groups that insist on consensus may develop decision inertia or persist in using solutions that worked in the past although current crises involve new problems. The presence […]
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Although dyslexia is typically defined in terms of its effect on reading, research studies have established much broader effects on motor systems, language, and speed of processing. If professionals are not aware of these differences, they won’t request accommodations for the students who they test, and as a result, these students will miss out on supports that help them in higher education and beyond. MOTOR AND LANGUAGE – WRITING There are motor difficulties associated with dyslexia that are unrelated to reading (Turesky et al., 2023), but rather than being a difficulty affecting speed or coordination, it is more subtle – affecting automatic learning. If you are able to sign your name without thinking about all the twists and turns your fingers make for […]
Any student who applies to college or graduate school knows that the burden to re-test can be costly for students pursuing higher education. For decades, families have had to navigate a minefield of proof to be granted much-needed accommodations for high stakes...
If you or your student haven't tried audiobooks or e-books, summer is a great time. You can get a public library card for free, and have access to thousands of e-books, audiobooks, comics and graphic novels, and movies and magazines from the convenience of your...
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“I’m dyslexic, so my first real language was drawing,” he said. “Even at the youngest age I can recall, I wasn’t necessarily interested in the essay or the text, I was graphically designing the header. I doodled everything. That was the way I communicated.” — John Hoke From Fast Company: “My father was an engineer and I used to only run in the waffle trainer cause that was my shoe. I had to have it. It was the best. And when I was done, I would bandsaw the shoe in half and I would look at the two halves of the section and I’d look at my air mattresses, my pool, my bike tire or my bike tire inner tube. I was like, why can’t […]
Summertime tends to be a great time for dyslexic students. The grinding schoolwork routine is gone - and school, if at all, has fewer time commitments and less time in a seat. TAKE A BREAK First, especially if your student has had a difficult school year with heavy...
This question came through our webinar last month and I thought we could respond to it in more detail in our newsletter. There can be a high degree of overlap between individuals diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. Both dyslexia and ADHD can run in families and...
