Week 2 Definitions and identification of dyslexia

Below is a summary of information I found most useful from the University of London's Coursera course, 


Reading capabilities can be represented in simplified form by quadrants, where one axis represents language comprehension, and another represents decoding. 

This gives four general categories: 
  • children who have no difficulty at all
  • children with difficulty decoding, but not comprehending (“dyslexia”)
  • those with difficulty comprehending, but who can read the text on a mechanical level (“specific comprehension deficit”)
  • and those who struggle both with comprehension and with decoding.

Dr. Goetry talked about the importance of asking parents and grandparents about their own relationships with reading, because dyslexia and its diagnosis were less common than they are today.

How well does the child distinguish left from right? Is she ambidextrous? Are rhymes difficult to provide? Are multiple directions difficult to follow? Is time difficult to estimate? Does the child say “disonaur” instead of “dinosaur”?

Fatigability can allow primary children to begin with correct sentences, and slowly have their writing or reading fall into additions, ommissions, and substitutions.

70% of dyslexic children have difficulties manipulating the sounds of language.

Phonemic tasks for detection of dyslexia: generation, detection, blending, segmentation, deletion, substitution, fusion, inversion.

Week 1 An overview of Supporting children with difficulties in reading in writing

Week 3 “Co-morbidity”, and psychological and social aspects