Characteristics of Dyslexia

The characteristics of dyslexia vary from person to person, as does the severity of the condition. Many young children exhibit one or more of the following characteristics, but that may not mean that they are dyslexic. No single symptom characterizes dyslexia.

It is the persistent occurence of a number of these symptoms -- in spite of efforts to correct these weaknesses through proven interventions -- that will alert parents and teachers to the possibility of dyslexia. Interventions must have been documented before a diagnosis of dyslexia can be made.

The primary difficulties of a student with dyslexia are in phonemic awareness and manipulation, single word decoding, spelling, and reading fluency. These difficulties can lead to problems in reading comprehension and writing.

Generally, characteristics of dyslexia show up as difficulties with:

Learning sound/letters correspondence
Difficulty in learning to write the alphabet in sequence
Having to sound out each letter when reading words
Remembering basic sight words, especially irregular words that cannot be sounded out
Reading real words in isolation
Decoding nonsense or irregular words (such as two and does)
Terrible spelling and handwriting, in spite of adequate spelling instruction and practice
Letter transpositions, additions, omissions, and reversals
Slow, labored and inaccurate oral reading
Retention of information
Poor reading comprehension, better listening comprehension
Learning to tie shoes
Directional confusion (left/right, over/under, before/after)
Can't create words that rhyme
Trouble telling time on clock with hands
Mixing up the sounds and syllables in longer words
Late in establishing a dominant hand
Family history, ideally diagnosed and not just suspected
 

Furthermore, these can be separated into two categories:

Spoken language difficulties

delayed speech
mispronunciations, mixing up sounds and syllables in words
difficulties with word retrieval, needing time to summon oral response
confusing words that sound alike, saying "tornado" instead of "volcano"
using imprecise language, saying "stuff", "things" instead of the proper name of an object. Using lots of "ums" during speaking, lack of quickness in speech
pausing or hesitating often when speaking
 

Reading difficulties
slow progress in acquiring reading skills, in spite of educational opportunities
lack of a strategy to read new, unknown words
inability to read small function words such as that, an and in
oral reading that is choppy and difficult to understand, filled with mispronounciations, substitutions, and omissions
reading causes fatigue
poor performance on multiple choice tests; grades do not reflect student's oral knowledge of subject
requires quiet environment and extra effort to concentrate on reading