An Overview of Language Learning Disabilities with Special Attention to Dyslexia

An Overview of Language Learning Disabilities with Special Attention to Dyslexia

School life is obviously the most interesting and challenging time for many of our children and a number of behavioural disorders could also be noted among the children at this stage. Timid and highly pampered children may not be able to bear the separation from their house or parents, especially mothers. Children who are technically interested, on the other hand, may find boring when they are dropped at schools. But in the schools all these children are put together as a heterogeneous whole, wherein children with some neurological and psychological imbalances, would also be included. All these children are taught and learnt in the same manner if the teacher is not aware of the neuro -psycho mechanism of learning. Some are labelled bright students and some dull-headed. And the children also develop the idea that they are either bright or poor in course of time. But there is a crucial factor which ought to be known by the teacher and parents as of why this discrepancy. Here comes the necessity of the understanding of the term learning disability.

The National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (1991) has adopted the following definition of learning disabilities.

Learning disability is a general term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual, presumed to be due to central nervous system dysfunction, and may occur across the lifespan... Qtd in Robert E. Owens, Jr., (29)

It is understood that learning disability could not be a wholesome entity. It involves heterogeneity both in its implications and applications. Though social and environmental factors do play a role in the difficulties with learning, the primary reason could be presumed to be the central nervous system disfunction. At the same time, it should be noted seriously that one may not confuse mental retardation with disabilities of learning. They are of totally different planes; While the former is more of neurological and biological imbalances, the later has lesser to do with biological factors and involves more of a psychological and environmental inhibitions and restrictions, as Doctor Samuel Kirk observes learning disability as “… a disorder, or delayed development in one or more of the processes of speech, language, reading, spelling writing or arithmetic resulting from a possible cerebral dysfunction and / or emotional or behavioural disturbance and not from mental retardation, sensory deprivation or cultural or instructional factors.”(Kirk 1962). Qtd in William N. Bender (16)

In general ,the problems of children with learning disabilities could be of six different categories involving attention, perception, symbol or sign recognition, motor functions and emotional attributions. Any learning is possible if only there is a proper co-ordination of these six aspects, the failure of which leads to one or other learning difficulty. The affected children may show normal psychic behaviour, whereas in terms of learning, they become slow, withdrawn or completely lost.

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is one such learning disability wherein a child despite normal intelligence and other biological factors, fails to develop language in an age appropriate level. Delay in speech production or reception could happen in some cases at an earlier stage of life, but lack of well developed expressive language by age 3 is absolutely abnormal. Ruth Nass gives the following points as warning signs of a developmental language disorders:

Limitation in expressive language
Has feeding problems related to sucking, swallowing and chewing.
Fails to vocalize to social stimuli and fails to vocalize two syllables at 8 months.
Produces few or no creative utterances of three words or more by age 3.
Limitation in vocabulary
Has small repertoire of words understood or used and acquires new words slowly or with difficulty.
Limitation in comprehending language
Relies too much on contextual cues to understand language
Limitations in play
has not developed symbolic, imaginative play by age 3
Limitations in learning speech
Expressive speech contains numerous articulation errors or is unintelligible to unfamiliar listeners.
Limitations in using strategies for language learning
Uses unusual or inappropriate strategies for age level e.g., overuses imitation (echolalia) does not imitate verbalizations of others (dyspraxia), does not use questions for learning (“why” question)
Limitations in attention for language activities
Shows little interest in book reading, talking, or communicating with peers. (162)

Children with Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) may find one or all of the aspects of learning a language to be alarmingly difficult. At the pragmatic level, children have difficulties with answering to questions, requesting clarifications, or maintaining a conversation. At the semantic level, children have problems with dual definitions, word finding and figurative language. They also have relational terms difficulties like comparative, spatial, temporal elements and confusions with conjunctions. At the morphological and syntactical level, difficulties with relative clauses, passive constructions, tense makers, adjectival forms etc could arise. At the phonological level, inconsistent sound production could be noted. Finally at the comprehensive level, poor reception of vocabulary when compared with their peers, may be noted in addition to the confusion of letters that look similar and words that sound similar.

Difficulties with one or all of the above mentioned levels of language factors may finally result in the failure of one or all of LSRW skills. Listening and speaking involve more participation of the biological articulators like ears and mouth and are clinically oriented, whereas reading and writing need cognitive involvement and therefore the mechanisms of the brain becomes more essential, thus becoming psycho-neurological. Thus those children with this type of Language Learning Disorder (LLD) who have reading or writing problems could be dealt with, to some extent, psychologically and neurologically and one could term these difficulties as dyslexia and dysgraphia respectively.

Understood to be affecting boys twice the rate as girls, dyslexia is an impairment of reading skills. Sally E. Shaywitz’s defines dyslexia thus…,

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and / or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction…(855)

Developmental dyslexia is an unexpected difficulty in reading as the child grows. One could surmise that dyslexia is a specific learning disability in children or adults who have normal or sometimes even better intelligence. Though this is also the result of central nervous disfunction, this is a disorder which has strong emotional, environmental psychological and perceptual dimensions. The signs of this disorder are so mild, that one easily tends to just ignore it as ‘lazyness’ or ‘incompetence’. The role of the teachers and parents become crucial at this point to distinguish between the normal learners and the affected children.

Here the main problem is an inability to read words or sometimes to write them, despite proper vision and intelligence. There are different patterns of this reading impairment. And the neuro-psychologists distinguishes peripheral and central dyslexia at the primary level. While the primary dyslexics have difficulty with visual word recognition, the central dyslexics can’t translate print into sound or meaning. So, when they attempt reading, they either fail to recognize letters or read letter by letter and not word as a whole and so commit blunders, as they fail in letter recognition. Reconstructing longer words is tremendously difficult for them as it takes time and effort. They could not even write sometimes, as their ability to read the symbols is very poor.

Dyslexia is an impairment of different cognitive functions including language and phonemic abilities, visuo-perception, visuo-motor co-ordination, memory and organizational abilities. Thus, reading problems in dyslexia is a product of failure of one or more cognitive functions or sub-skills associated with it. For example, one requires proper vision for sight reading and auditory-acoustic abilities for utterance of words. An impairment in any one function, will naturally have a worst effect on the ability to read. Thus, dyslexics may have varied cognitive impairments.

There is no single cause to point to for this disorder. Clinically perceived, the left cerebral hemisphere which is the seat of language skills may be affected in the dyslexics. Physicians opine that dysfunction of the left inferior frontal areas and reduced activity in left parietal, temporal, occipital regions of the brain may result in the failure of the abilities associated with these areas including implicit and explicit word and pseudo-word reading, pronounciation and decision making tasks, letter perception., etc., respectively as the biological causes of dyslexia. Bennet A. Shaywitz and Sally E. Shaywitz’s observation reads thus: “Studies using postmortem brain specimens, brain morphometry and diffusion tensor MRI imaging suggest that there are differences in the left temporo-parieto-occipital brain regions between dyslexia and non-impaired readers” (2780).

However, studies also indicate that a high percentage of dyslexia have a family history of learning disabilities suggesting the presence of genetics, which says that the short arm of chromosome 6 which is the genetical site for word reading, phonological awareness, naming and orthographic abilities as the reason for dyslexia genetically transmitted.

The common symptoms of dyslexia include articulatory difficulties, wherein the child sometimes has poor expressive styles and lessor vocabulary, failure of grapho-motor-co-ordination and visuo-perceptual abilities resulting in spelling bizarre and reading paroblems and phonemic disabilities resulting in inadequate application of phonics. A dyslexic child may also have difficulties sequencing alphabet, days, months and with multiplication tables even after being taught properly, certain spatial problems involving directional confusion, telling the time etc. Lack of cognitive functions resulting in impaired understanding of ideas could also be noted.

Overall the affected child may be very much disorganized, forgetful and usually late and psychologically withdrawn.

Lesser degrees of dyslexia are more common than the severe ones and many among the school population may possess this disorder and the pathetic part of it is that it is hardly recognized as a disorder and such children are simply termed as dull headed, careless or disinterested children. This form of language disorder, unattended by many of the neurological signs could be overcome by appropriate teaching strategies designed, having in mind the causes or the improper biological mechanisms involved in it. The teachers and the parents become the van guard and it is in their hands that a dyslexic is motivated or demotivated resulting in good or bad resultant learning. Children affected may get teased by others and ridiculed over their poor reading and mispronunciation. Therefore they should be motivated and encouraged first handedly through words of appreciation and signs of warmth and understanding by a simple pat or handshake. In addition to the psychological and emotional support, the teachers can follow certain suggestions as given below to encourage learning in the dyslexics:

The mispronunciation made by these children may be studied by the teachers carefully and corrected immediately through diplomatic measures, so that the child may not feel humiliated.
Rhythmic patterns of teaching language could be adapted.
Support movement in the class, so that they are refreshed for the learning activity (Eg. Ask the students to perform a moon walk (or) how the astronauts walk on the moon).
Body awareness activities like Simon says, or Swimming could help develop an understanding of the location and functions of the parts by their body.
Eye-hand co-ordination activities may help the dyslexics to recognize letters on the board or the texts and to repeat them on their own notebooks. The children may be asked to make a boat as how the teacher does, thereby understand the paper-folding method involving proper eye-hand co-ordination.
Eye-movement activities may be of much help. The child may be asked to just draw a line following the light from a laser light in the hands of the teacher.
Certain memory mechanisms are to be applied in the class rooms as with questions like what the child did through the previous day etc could be asked.
Over-head projectors could be used to teach symbols and reading techniques as to provide room for them to listen to proper reading and associate sounds with symbols.
Give chances for the children to follow directions. Direct them to draw a picture through proper instructions.
Make the students just listen to a story slowly told and then to repeat.
Vocabulary building exercises are beneficial. The children may be asked to draw mind maps of any place (or) event. For example a mind map on the departmental store could help them learn vocabulary associated with it.
The children may be asked to locate a popular place, so that they could get a clearer understanding of directions.

The above mentioned are some of the multifarious teaching strategies adapted to teach the dyslexics. Although no one technique or remedial approach is successful, a combination of all the approaches could be of help. Movement exercises along with simple cognitive strategies can produce wonders. However communication to co-ordinate with all the difficulties of the dyslexics could facilitate more remedial efforts.

These children should not be ignored. They must be made to realize that they are special, and they can produce marvelous results thanks to the special training methods. Only when the teachers realize the why and how of this ability, they will be able to understand the mystifying behaviour of these children and this knowledge could change the teacher’s attitude from annoyance and irritation to appreciative and considerate. When this happens, these children’s time at the school becomes constructive and their lives are transformed towards success.

Works Cited:

Owens E Robert., Jr. Language Disorders: A functional approach to assessment and intervention, III Edtn. USA, Allyn & Bacon. 1999.

Bender. N. William, Learning Disabilities: Characteristics, Identification and Teaching Strategies, V Edtn. USA, Pearson Education Inc. 2004.

Nass Ruth, Developmental Speech and Language Disorders: Bradely G Walter, Robert B. Daroff et.al, Neurology in Clinical Practice: Principles of Diagnosis and Management. III Edtn. Woburn, USA,Butterworth Heinemann,2000.

Shaywitz E Sally and Bennet A. Shaywitz, Dyslexia: Swaiman F Kenneth, Stephen Ashwal et.al, Pediatric Neurology: Principles and Practice IV Edtn. Philadelphia, Mosby Elsebier, 2006.

Shaywitz A Bennet and Sally E Shaywitz, Management of Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity, Disorder and Dyslexia (Specific Reading Disability) Noseworthy E H John (edtd), Neurological Therapeutics: Principles and Practice, Vol. 2, London, Martin Dunitz, 2003.