Academic Skills Disorders

Overview

Despite average intelligence and normal vision and hearing, some children experience difficulty learning how to read and spell (Table 29.1). Children with reading disorders begin their school careers motivated to learn to read and they are exposed to the same instruction that is successful in teaching their peers to read. They usually do not have emotional problems, except for those engendered by the frustration of their reading failure. Such children do not have difficulty in all areas of learning, and quite often reading and the related skills of spelling and written expression are their only problem areas. These children are not seeing words reversed or backward. Rather their difficulty lies with word identification—instantaneous sight word recognition and/or application of phonics rules. Disabled readers have good understanding when the material they cannot read is read to them. This capability distinguishes intellectually adequate disabled readers from slow learners: slow learners have global difficulties in all academic and learning tasks whereas disabled readers learn and understand normally except for a specific problem mastering the written symbol system of oral language.¹ The terms “reading disability,” “reading disorder,” “dyslexia,” and “learning disability” are often used interchangeably to describe this phenomenon of persistent, unexplained, “unexpected reading failure.”² Only a few children with dyslexia will be completely nonreaders. And only a few will become almost normal readers. Rather, most children with reading disorders will eventually and painstakingly achieve functional literacy, approximately a sixth to seventh grade reading level. For disabled readers, reading will never be effortless and automatic and they will always be smarter than they can read. Perhaps equally as devastating, disabled readers may be chronically plagued by issues regarding their self-esteem and overall learning capabilities.