We have a resource for people with dyslexia at http://www.causesofdyslexia.com please feel free to browse around it and refer it to those who it may help!

I considering myself to be mildly a dyslexic thinker, I don’t experience the depth of challenge that many experience.

What follows is my approach to helping non-dyslexic thinkers to understand what dyslexic thinking is like. I do hope that it helps.

For ease of reference I refer to dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and ADHD with the term ‘dyslexic thinking’ because they are very closely related and those who identify with one area usually identify with elements of one or more of the other areas, (the names are just convenient labels for the insufficiently educated / inexperienced / uninitiated to make it easier to talk about). The lines are blurred, for example, is a person who does not understand what they have read, or writes poorly and also has difficulties with balance/motor control dyslexic/dyspraxic or is it because their mind works so fast they have never implanted the necessary pictures which reading/writing is based on? Even with the writing bit, is it due to poor picture taking or underdeveloped fine motor movement?

To help you we’ll start by gaining a common position of understanding and to do that, I’m taking you on a short journey into language.

Understanding the Dyslexic Thinking Style

Choose a language that you don’t speak any words of. If you were to meet a native speaker of this language who also doesn’t speak your language(s), how effective is your conversation going to be?

If you were then to meet someone who can speak a small amount of your language(s), you would be able to have a low level of conversation but this time, how effective is your/their understanding? Did you both understand every word; pick up the gist; or lose the thread altogether?

And if I suggested that one or both of you were disabled because you can’t communicate effectively I’m sure you would feel indignant, maybe even outraged by my judgement.

Spoken language is an expression of thought. Written language is a different approach to expressing thought – maybe the same thought, but the language is a different media completely, requiring a different skill set.

A dyslexic thinking person often has difficulty in using the written language either because they don’t associate their thoughts with the individual marks on the page; because they can’t link the written marks with the audio marks (phonetical sound); or because the collective of these marks don’t connect with their thought patterns (pictures or other sensory elements).

At its most simple, they haven’t developed competence in using this form of language, in much the same way as many people have not learnt a second spoken language to the level of fluency.

The key difference in levels of acceptability is that our societal values require competence in written language but not in a second spoken language. If it did the difficulties experienced by all those who don’t achieve fluency in the second language would be highlighted and maybe regarded as failures and subjected to being labelled disabled.

I have to ask, who’s inability is it that’s causing the learner not to learn? It is the learner for not thinking in such a way as to respond positively to the process they are being taken through or is it as a result of teaching methods not being sufficiently effective?

To demonstrate this point I’m now going to take you onto another short journey of language learning.

For three years I went to weekly 2 or 3 hour lessons to learn sign language (BSL). During this time I learned hundreds of word signs; was told uncountable numbers of stories by my teacher (in BSL); and was encouraged in every lesson to converse with fellow students (who didn’t know any more than I). After three years of in- and out- of class practice I still couldn’t converse effectively in BSL. What I could do was to put a string of words together in the hope they would be understood.

So what went wrong? Was it my inability to learn or was there something else happening?

I had demonstrated, by learning so many word signs that I have the ability to learn; by forming the signs I demonstrated dexterity; and by following one sign with another in sequence I showed intelligence.

When I look at what was missing it was grammatical structure. I received a small amount of instruction on grammar delivered in the language I did not understand. As BSL structure is completely different to the structure of the English language I had no idea of how to put those hundreds of words together effectively. I also didn’t have anyone who speaks my language to explain it to me. It remained, indeed remains to this day, a mystery to me.

Coming back to the dyslexic thinking learner, this style of thinking is as different to non-dyslexic thinking learning as the BSL grammatical structure is to the English language structure.

How is it then that non dyslexic thinkers believe that teaching dyslexic thinkers using non dyslexic thinking learning methods will be effective?

The dyslexic thinking style has significant differences at a fundamental level that require to be taken into account, these include:
• Thinking media – non dyslexic thinkers do the majority of their thinking (and learning) in words, be it spoken or written, whereas dyslexic thinking and learning is usually in pictures and other sensory media.
• Confusion – the dyslexic thinking style has a lower confusion threshold due to there being no one prescribed and learned way of looking at a picture.
• Speed – with auditory based thinking being estimated at 500 words a minute and picture based thinking running at 32 pictures a second there is little ground for communication as one can be prone to bore the other rigid.
• Emotional sensitivity – whether stemming from picture thinking being closely aligned with other sensory thinking ability or whether as a result of a build up of exposure (similar to food sensitivity) is unclear, but it is real and has its impact.

It is important for dyslexic thinking individuals seeking assistance in learning to find a teacher who understands these factors and uses methods that accommodate them in facilitating learning. When a dyslexic thinker learns how to learn using their way of thinking they learn just as effectively as non dyslexic thinkers: some will be more motivated to learn; some will learn more effectively than others.

One of those deficits is visual in nature and with the difference in orthography between English and Chinese it would seem that the visual requirements are higher for reading Chinese.

Short term memory problems are also a dyslexia deficit that would seem to be more important in reading Chinese.

Given how the severity of particular deficits varies in individuals and the reading requirements vary with particular languages,it is easy to properly conclude that someone would be more dyslexic in one language than another because of their particular set of deficits and severity.

If you can see the reasoning behind an individual having different severity of dyslexia in different languages , then it would seem that differences between the native speakers of different languages would be expected.

The distribution of particular deficits is likely constant in humans but different requirements for reading probably skew the expression of severity.

My niche is visual dyslexia which is often ignored as a possible relevant deficit because only a minority of about 10% of English reading dyslexics have it. I would expect the higher visual requirements for reading Chinese would lead to a higher expression of visual problems /visual dyslexia in Chinese.

Bottom line is that even if the distribution of deficits is the same the expression would vary because of different requirements.

I’m sure the 20th will be even more fantastic!