“D. Davis’s method for eliminating dyslexia. Correction of dyslexia using the Davis method Correction of dyslexia using the Davis method
The Davis system for correcting dyslexia - a brief overview
Davis Dyslexia Correction - a brief overview
Abigail Marshall, director of the website Dyslexia is a Gift, describes Davies' method
Five years ago, my son's life turned upside down when we tried some simple exercises we found in Ron Davis's newly released book, The Gift of Dyslexia. After years of struggle, tears, frustration, and anger, my son's reading problems seemed to dissipate almost magically less than an hour after we started doing the first exercise in the book. The pain of reading gave way to the joy of discovery, and my son was eager to try out his newfound skill. The little boy, then 11 years old, who had been struggling with third-grade material, began to read voraciously, catching up to his grade level in a few weeks and surpassing it within a few months.
My life changed too, because I soon discovered that despite the fact that Ron Davis's technique, which he describes in his book, had been well established for 15 years of its use with dyslexics of all ages, it seemed that few know about his work. In fact, Davis wrote this book after he received intense pushback from educators and founded a dyslexia organization to pursue his innovative, out-of-the-box approach to the phenomenon. He believed that if he could not get leading figures in education to study and apply his methods, then at least he could write a guide for parents so that they could do what I had done - open the doors to reading for their children.
Less than a year later, I left my successful career as a lawyer to head a new organization, the Davis Dyslexia Association International (DDAI), created to provide information about the Davis Dyslexia Methodology, develop a set of standards for the Davis program and to train educators and individuals providing the system in the application of these methods. This was in 1995. Today, at the end of 1999, DDAI has branches in Mexico and five European countries, more than 120 people around the world have been licensed to provide the system and work as Davis instructors, and hundreds more teachers and parents have received initial training. by participating in seminars held continuously in five different languages. Most importantly, thousands of children and adults with dyslexia and related problems have successfully completed the Davis program. Many of them, like my son, are now excellent students in secondary and higher education institutions.
In this article, I will give a brief overview of some of the main aspects of the Davis method, including Davis theory and the main Davis dyslexia correction methods.
Davis' theory:
Before he came up with any theory on dyslexia, Ron Davis, as an adult with severe dyslexia, discovered how to “correct” his own dyslexia. Until the age of 38, he always accepted the official statements of specialists who diagnosed him as “mentally retarded.” And although he had an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 160, he knew that he would never be able to read or write without hard effort because there was something very abnormal with his brain.
Then he noticed that sometimes his dyslexia got worse. An engineer by trade, the idea occurred to him that if he could figure out how to make his dyslexia worse, then somehow he would find the key to how to improve it. The first step towards a solution was taken when he worked as an amateur sculptor - then, at the highest moments of creativity, dyslexia worsened to the extreme.
So he locked himself in a hotel room and practiced making his dyslexia worse. He then worked to improve it. Three days later, the moment came when he suddenly saw the letters on his hotel card legibly. Stunned that all the letters were the same size and the words were separated from each other, he went to the public library, took the book "Treasure Island" from the shelf, sat down and read it from the first to the last page before the end of the day at the library.
It wasn't the solution to dyslexia, but it was a start. Davis shared his thoughts with others, was surprised to learn that most of his artist friends were also dyslexic, and through trial and error he developed a reliable way to help others overcome dyslexia. About a year later, he opened his first clinic for people with reading problems.
Davis's theory arose from trial and error and is the explanation for why Davis's technique works. Briefly it can be stated as follows:
All dyslexics are primarily visual thinkers: they think in mental or sensory representations rather than using words, sentences or self-talk in their minds. Because this method of thinking is subconscious - faster than a person can realize - most dyslexics are not aware that this is what they are doing.
Because dyslexics think in pictures or ideas, they try to apply techniques of general logic and reasoning, looking at the "big picture" to understand the world around them. They can show themselves very well as clever inventors with great creative abilities, in practical life and in solving objective problems of the real world, but they cannot cope with situations where verbal, linear, step-by-step justification is required. When you look at a picture of a dog, you do not move your consciousness from the tail to the sides, to the legs, to the front of the body, to the head, to the ears, to the nose to find out that it is a dog. You see all the body parts together at once and conclude that it is a dog. If most or all of your thinking process was carried out in images, you would be accustomed to defining everything you see by looking at the entire object or situation at once.
While they think primarily in images, dyslexics also tend to develop very strong imaginations and use image- or feeling-based reasoning to solve problems rather than resort to verbal reasoning. If they are confused (or intrigued) at first, they will mentally rotate the object to look at it from different sides or angles. With this thinking process, they develop many unique abilities and talents.
This ability may also be the basis for the problem. While in a state of disorientation, a person will perceive his thinking as reality. Most people experience a state of disorientation when they are presented with an optical illusion or are exposed to a deceptive sensory stimulus, such as during entertainment performances of virtual reality phenomena. But dyslexics find themselves in a state of disorientation on a daily basis; this is their natural mental reaction to any confusing sensory information - as well as to a creative solution to a problem.
Dyslexics typically have difficulty with non-real objects and symbolic objects, such as letters and numbers. Trying to understand symbols as if they were a car engine or an engineering diagram can cause them to become disoriented. This results in the familiar symptoms of substitutions, omissions, reversals, or shifts when reading or writing letters and words. Manifestations of disorientation are not limited to visual input alone; Many dyslexics cannot hear words or hear garbled versions of words or sequences of words in sentences. Their sense of time may seem skewed and their movements may appear slow and clumsy.
Repeated errors as a result of distorted perceptions due to disorientation inevitably lead to emotional reactions, despair and hopelessness and loss of self-esteem. In attempting to resolve this dilemma, each dyslexic will begin to develop a set of coping mechanisms and required behaviors to deal with these problems. Ron Davis calls them "old solutions." Rote memorization, the alphabet song, getting mom to do homework, pretending, illegible handwriting hiding poor spelling, clever deception, and avoiding any task related to school or reading are just a few examples. Such manifestations can begin to develop as early as the age of six or seven years. A dyslexic adult will have a full range of these behaviors. We now have the full range of symptoms, characteristics and behaviors commonly associated with dyslexia.
The most significant aspect of Davis's theory for solving the problems of dyslexia is that it has been observed that when an auditory symbol - a word - lacks the mental image and meaning required by a dyslexic person, confusion and errors will result. When we show dyslexics how to turn off confusion the moment it begins, and then help them find and master the stimuli that trigger confusion, reading, writing, and spelling problems begin to disappear. As well as the “old solutions”.
Davis's main methods:
If dyslexics are people with imaginative thinking and a tendency to perceptual disorientation regarding time, vision, hearing or balance/coordination, then the problems of dyslexia can be solved in two ways:
Method for controlling perceptual disorientation
Method for eliminating the causes of perceptual disorientation
Eliminating disorientation
Fortunately, stopping disorientation is very easy. All we have to do is teach the dyslexic to recognize the state of disorientation, and then teach him how to use his own mind and consciousness to turn off the disorientation - or, in other words, how to become "oriented." It's really no more difficult than teaching a child to hold his breath while swimming underwater; we just need to learn to consciously control something that usually happens in our mind when we are not aware of it.
Over the years, Davis program providers have developed several methods for teaching such control. The most common and reliable method is the so-called “Davis® Orientation Control Guidelines,” described in detail in the book “The Gift of Dyslexia.” By using these techniques, the dyslexic learns to mentally move his or her mind's eye to another preferred point until an optimal point for focusing attention, called the orientation point, is found. Students who have difficulty visualizing can achieve the same effect by using kinesthetic techniques called "adjustment" and "fine-tuning." After both of these methods, an auditory method called “auditory orientation” is used.
Before the student can proceed further, the state of disorientation must be removed, because otherwise he will continue to misunderstand letters and words. If one word looks like “bat” or “tab” or “pat” or “tap” or “tad”, there is no hope that the student will ever be able to recognize the word. Parents or teachers may think that the student has memory problems and advise him to study and repeat more, while the student is confused, frustrated and hopeless because he feels like the teacher is showing him different words every time.
Luckily, these techniques are easy to teach. Because it involves skills that dyslexic children have developed well - using their imagination, they usually pick it up very quickly.
Sometimes, when working with older children and adults, the results of using the Orientation Monitoring Guidelines are exceptionally successful, with an immediate leap across several levels and the client begins to read. This is because for these children, their disorientation was the main barrier to success. They may already have years of training behind them; once the state of disorientation is removed, all their past experiences take effect and success is usually achieved very quickly.
However, learning to control confusion does not eliminate dyslexia. It only addresses the underlying symptom of dyslexia, not the underlying cause. Until you eliminate the cause, the symptoms will inevitably recur over and over again.
Eliminating factors that trigger disorientation
The reason that controlling dyslexia is not enough to eliminate it is that disorientation is a reaction to states of confusion, frustration, hopelessness or stress. In the case of reading, this reaction is triggered by the student confusing letters or words. And as long as this confusion exists in the absence of an image of what the word represents, the student will continue to remain in a state of disorientation while reading.
To improve reading, writing and spelling skills, the Davis method includes three main stages:
Mastering the alphabet and basic language symbols
Mastering words for which a dyslexic has no image or meaning
Developing sequencing and comprehension skills while reading
Eliminating the phenomenon of mixing up letters - plasticine alphabet:
Disorientation is often caused by individual letters, which visually or auditorily cause dyslexics to become confused. For example, my son found it difficult to distinguish between the letters “c” and “e” because... they look alike; others have trouble with the letters "s" and "s" or "c" and "k" because they often represent the same sound.
Thus, the first step to eliminating dyslexia is to sculpt the letters of the alphabet out of plasticine. We use clay because it is a three-dimensional material and working with it involves creativity and activity. When sculpting letters from plasticine, the alphabet ceases to be something conventional and becomes something that the child (or adult) made, and therefore becomes part of them.
By observing how students form letters and react to how letter names are pronounced, it is possible to determine which letters are the “triggers” of disorientation, confusion and distorted perception; and help students overcome the state of confusion caused by this letter.
The student models two complete alphabets, first capital letters, then lowercase letters. Having mastered each set of letters, the student analyzes and determines the correct shape, name and place of each letter in the alphabet.
After the “Mastering the Alphabet” technique, similar work with punctuation marks and pronunciation or speech sounds follows. With this knowledge, the learner can use one of the most important teaching methods we can give to a visual thinker: the ability to determine the meaning of words using a dictionary.
Representing words in images: the “Mastering of Symbols according to the Davis® System” technique
The words that cause the most confusion for a dyslexic are common words such as “it” or “from”. Often a student will easily read a longer word in a story, such as "crocodile", but will hesitate or stumble on a word such as "the" (article). Because these words cause disorientation, we call them trigger words.
This happens because a dyslexic person thinks in pictures. It's easy to imagine a crocodile in your mind, but imagining "of" (a possessive preposition) or "this" is very difficult.
We solve this problem by using the “Davis Symbol Mastery” technique. After looking up a word in a dictionary and discussing the definition of its meaning with a helper, the student uses clay to create an object or series of objects that accurately represent the meaning of the word as well as the letters of the word. This process goes far beyond the multisensory or phonemic awareness techniques recommended for dyslexic students. It involves the creative process and creates a stable mental image for a specific word and series of letters. It provides understanding and long-term retention of the spelling and meaning of a word without the need for phonetic decoding or memorization. He doesn't let his word cause disorientation in the future.
There are over 200 trigger words in the English language that must be mastered, but completing this task means that the learner has built a working stock of “seen” words—words that he recognizes and understands at first sight. All you have to do is count the number of small abstract words in this sentence to see the difference.
Another goal is for the student to master a method that can be applied to any word or concept. The method of mastering symbols according to the Davis system can also be used to master vocabulary on any topic. The word "polygon" or "cytoplasm" may be even easier to learn than the word "by." As a student grows up, he is given a method that will allow him to master any concept that is causing problems in school. My own son, now 16, no longer needs play dough, but he uses a dictionary all the time.
Three steps to easy reading
To help dyslexic students master reading, read faster, and understand better, we use a combination of three methods: Spell, Skim-Scan-Spell, and Visual Punctuation. The problem with dyslexics is that it is unnatural for them to pronounce words letter by letter, or even to visually move from letter to letter from left to right, looking at each letter separately. Thinking visually, they want to look at all the words at once. Their efforts to pronounce the written words make it impossible for them to understand what is written, and it usually requires reading the same text over and over again many times, often causing severe headaches. These exercises allow a dyslexic person to quickly, naturally and easily learn to visually track, decode and comprehend written material by using their natural abilities.
A detailed description of Davis' theory of dyslexic thinking and development, as well as instructions for the step-by-step application of Davis's basic methods, can be found in The Gift of Dyslexia. This book is widely available and can be found in most public libraries or purchased at any large bookstore.
DDAI may provide other sources of information, such as:
"Dyslexia, the Gift" Video: This one-hour video provides an overview of Davis' theory and methods, as well as interviews with students and instructors.
The Gift of Dyslexia book and audio cassette set.
Additional training materials including:
video "Davis Perceptual Ability Assessment"
video "Davis® Orientation Monitoring Guidelines"
set of materials on the “Mastering Symbols using the Davis® System” method
More information about Davis' methods is available on the website Dyslexia, the Gift.
n1.doc
"Reading Research Council," "Davis Orientation Counseling" and "Davis Orientation Mastery" are registered service marks owned by Ronald D. Davis.Copyright ©1994, 1997 by Ronald D. Davis.
Interior illustration by Mia Sutter
Interior photographs by R Coutney Davis
Computer graphics illustrations by Mark Gittus
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
System, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
Recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
Ability Workshop Press edition: September 1994 Ability Workshop Press ISBN: 0-929551-23-0 First Perigee edition; March 1997
The Russian translation was published by the Center for Correction of Education.
The rights to the Russian edition belong to Judith Schwartz,
Learning Center, Ra'anana 09-7729888
E-mail address: moogy @ netvision . net . il
Email address to receive information in Russian:
Translator: Lidiya Baranovskaya
Proofreader: Violetta Knuth
Printed by Cal Press
Computer layout and graphics preparation: Lisa Lyubinskaya
Cover: Judith Schwartz
Illustrations in the book: Maya Shutter
Photos in the book: P. Courtney Davis
CGI illustrations: Mark Gittus
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Funky Winkerbean is reprinted with special permission from North American Syndicate, Inc. "Reading Research Council", "Davis Orientation Counseling" and "Davis Orientation Mastery" are registered trademarks of Ronald D. Davis.
In honor and memory of Harold Joseph Anderson, a man who cared
Foreword by Dr. Joan Smith vii
Introduction xv
Expressions of gratitude xvii
Part one. What is dyslexia really?
| Chapter 1. | The underlying talent. | 3 |
| Chapter 2. | Learning disability. | 8 |
| Chapter 3. | Consequences of disorientation. | 15 |
| Chapter 4. | Dyslexia in action. | 21 |
| Chapter 5. | Compulsive decisions. | 28 |
| Chapter 6. | Problems with reading. | 33 |
| Chapter 7. | Problems with spelling. | 39 |
| Chapter 8. | Problems with math. | 42 |
| Chapter 9 | Problems with handwriting. | 46 |
| Chapter 10 | Newest Disability: ADD | 54 |
| Chapter 11 | Clumsiness. | 62 |
| Chapter 12 | . Real solution. | 66 |
Part two. Little P.D. - evolutionary theory
dyslexia
Chapter 13. Where does dyslexia come from? 75
Chapter 14. Two-year-old child and kitten. 80
Chapter 15. Ages from three to five years. 83
Chapter 16. First day of school. 86
Chapter 17. Age of learning disability. 92
Part three. Gift
Chapter 18. Understanding talent. 102
Chapter 19. Curiosity. BY
Chapter 20. Creative abilities. 113
Chapter 21. The gift of mastery. 117
Part four. What do we do about it
Chapter 22. How can this be determined? 122
Chapter 23. Symptoms of disorientation. 127
Chapter 24. The Mind's Eye. 132
Chapter 25. Performing Davis procedures. 138
Chapter 26. Assessment of perceptual ability. 145
Chapter 27. Switching. 155
Chapter 28. Discharging and testing. 184
Chapter 29. Fine tuning. 192
Chapter 30. Coordination. 200
Chapter 31. The main form of the “Mastering of Symbols” technique. 204
Chapter 32. Three steps to easy reading. 220
Chapter 33. “Mastering symbols” in relation to words. 229
Chapter 34. Continuation of the process. 244
Glossary 251
Pointer 259
Preface
In my twenty-five years of working with students who have learning disabilities, I have found that it is always the student who teaches me what I need to know. So it comes as no surprise to me that a dyslexic would undertake to teach us what we need to know about dyslexia.
As a student, Ron Davis suffered the injustice, mistreatment and humiliation that most people with a unique learning style called "dyslexia" are familiar with. The combination of talent and inability described in Ron's book will be immediately recognized by others who have this unique combination of skill and handicap.
As a teacher, Ron Davis provides us with personal and experiential insight into how faced by a dyslexic student. In words we can understand, he describes how learning is different for someone with dyslexia. It makes sensations real and, in doing so, gives us the internal understanding of the process necessary for effective learning.
preface
Ron's Achievement Keys opened four different locks on his learning path:
The key to understanding is that the way a dyslexic learns is, in fact, a talent.
The key to understanding dyslexic spatial awareness.
Key to conceptualizing disorientation.
The key to techniques for controlling confusion and therefore controlling the symptoms of dyslexia.
Some dyslexics find that they absolutely cannot learn to read. As adults, they still struggle with sounds and letters, putting them together to decipher words. They cannot remember the characters or combination of characters. The words they know don't look familiar on the page. Their word recognition ability is typically rated below third-grade level, even though they may have worked on reading for years.
Preface
Fine. When they read aloud, everything sounds clear. But these students discover that they do not understand what they are reading. They have to read the sentence several times to get any meaning out of it. They tend to have great difficulty writing and find the symbols of language very discouraging.
Both types of dyslexics experience the same humiliation and frustration. (Translator's note: frustration- psycho., a deep, chronic feeling or state of insecurity, despondency, and dissatisfaction as a consequence of unfulfilled desires, internal conflicts, or other unresolved problems). They are technically illiterate and limited in their freedom to make the written word work for them.
These people have always been of particular interest to educators and researchers. Their inability to read and the use of their mental abilities in the traditional way has motivated our organization to continue to seek answers and solutions to their discomfort. In an effort to help our clients, at the Melvin-Smith Training Center we study each and every new method that comes up.
In 1983, the parents of a student with dyslexia in our school's program took him to the Ron Davis Research Center. This was our first acquaintance with a truly unique program. When the student returned to school, he felt “in heaven” with his success. He claimed that for the first time he could concentrate and focus on completing a task to completion.
I I immediately asked him why it had changed him so much. "I can't tell you, Dr. Smith," he replied. "You
Preface
This can make you feel sick. Only people with dyslexia can do this. It makes other people feel nauseous." I now understand that he was referring to the Orientation Guidance program he completed, and the side effect of nausea that sometimes causes disorientation in non-dyslexics. But then While I was both confused and skeptical, I decided to wait and watch him to see if there were any lasting changes in his learning.
There was a student in front of me whose ability to concentrate in class had clearly improved. By the end of eighth grade, he had been accepted into a prestigious high school, and it was obvious that he was making progress. While completing the Word and Symbol Mastery program, he demonstrated correspondingly increased confidence and gradual changes in his reading and writing skills.
Two years later, I met another student who was about to take the Reading Research Center program. This time the situation was different. I was asked to go with her and learn the techniques that would be used to be her supervisor after she completed the program. My curiosity was already piqued, so I was eager to experience the program first hand.
After what I saw, I decided to learn the Davis Orientation Guidance and Davis Symbol Mastery techniques. Then some other teachers on our staff received this training, and we
Preface
We use these methods all the time at the Melvin-Smith Training Center.
Davis's concept of "orientation" is most easily understood by educators and psychologists as "attention." “Providing guidance for orientation control” provides the client with a stable state and reference point for focusing attention. This is important to prevent disorientation and confusion when working with symbols for good reading, writing, spelling, speaking and calculations. There is a strong visual stabilization that promotes focus and creates the feeling of “control” that most clients report. Gaining control and responsibility for your learning system is essential to learning, especially when learning something as complex as reading.
Presenting the way dyslexics learn as a talent is correct. Over the years, we have noticed that people who experience symptoms of dyslexia are people with high intellectual development. On the other hand, talents that cause sensitivity to the confusion of information carried by symbols are a valuable quality. For example, people who “see” the spatial characteristics of our world intuitively understand how things work. They discover that they have an innate ability to fix things, understand motors, electronic devices, plumbing systems, construction, art, and other related fields. Tasks that require the ability to visualize something in a creative or other way are often
Preface
They are simple for people with such gifts. This is most likely why so many inventors, scientists, athletes and creative people discover that they too have symptoms of dyslexia.
The Orientation Guidance program is followed by Ron Davis' Symbol Mastery, which is designed to help students improve their reading and writing skills primarily by eliminating confusion about letters, words, numbers, punctuation, and mathematical symbols. These techniques have an excellent basis in learning theory. They engage each of the senses in learning and provide a concept of integration. Students see, touch, discuss, and conceptualize the information they are learning. The use of the Intensive Mixed Perception Method provides stimulation to important areas of the brain and promotes long-term retention.
When clients receive information after their assessment, they often say, "This is it. This is what I
-
Preface
I feel it." At this point, their isolation and confusion disappear. They are ready for the changes that may accompany the therapeutic program.
The combination of student and teacher that Ron shared with us in his book has enriched our understanding of the millions of people who have a unique learning pattern known as dyslexia. Ron's work has given us a means of understanding the student with dyslexia. He has developed a number of effective techniques to meet the unique needs of learning, which in turn has given us newfound hope for success.
Joan M. Smith, Doctor of Education, Licensed Educational Psychologist, Licensed Speech-Language Pathologist
Dr. John Smith is a Doctor of Education, affiliated with the Melvin-Smith Learning Center, headquartered in Sacramento, California. She is the author and co-author of numerous books and articles on special education issues. Her latest publication is called "You Don't Have to Be Dyslexic."
The Gift of Dyslexia is specially printed in larger font and with as few hyphens as possible so that it can be easily read by a dyslexic person.
Introduction
(scene from my life in 1949)
The clock on the wall in the classroom is ticking slower and slower.
Teak. . . teak. . . teak
"Please, faster! Please, faster!
Please - please - please, faster!" The little boy barely whispers these words. All the muscles of his body are tense. His arms twitch and tremble. His tightly clenched knees shake and touch the wall in the corner. He slowly rocks back and forth, but tries not to move his folded a white handkerchief, his label of contempt, thrown like a flag over his head.
"Please please!" - he whispers again. Then he takes a deep breath and jerks his leg. But that doesn't help; nothing can help. After a few minutes it starts, a thin trickle at first, and then everything else. He quietly hopes that it won't be so much that it forms a puddle on the floor.
He leans over, pressing his face tightly into the corner. His hands are crossed on his knee, so he hopes to hide the wet spot. Now he is glad that he will not leave school then,
Preface
When the other children leave. Perhaps they will all have already left when he leaves, and no one will see; no one will tease him. He had cherished this dream at least a hundred times before, but perhaps this time he will not hear these terrible words:
"Backward!"
"Backward!"
"Look at the retard."
"The retard wet his pants again."
He is startled by the bell signaling that the school day is over. In the corner, amid the stomping and noise of leaving children, a boy sits without moving, hoping that no one is looking in his direction. If he could become invisible, he would become it. And until there is silence in the class, he does not dare to move, he does not dare to make a sound.
The noise gets quieter and the clock ticks louder. Teak. . . tick, tick!
Barely audible, the boy whispers something that only he should hear.
If he hadn't already done this, he would have wet his pants again by now. He crouches in the corner as much as possible and tries to become very, very small.
One of the hands that put him in the corner grabs his shoulder and pulls him out of there. "What you said?" - the voice demands.
“I asked God to make sure I didn’t sit in the corner anymore.”
This children's prayer is the main reason why I wrote this book.
Expressions of gratitude
Even though this book has my name on it and name Eldon Brown, we are not its only creators. My wife Alice has worked as hard to get this book into your hands as each of us. She was not only our editor, she also reconciled us in our conflicts, smoothed ruffled feathers and healed bruised pride.
Two other people deserve special thanks: Dr. Fatima Ali, who has been the chief executive officer of the Reading Research Center and my supervisor since 1981, and Larry J. Rochester, without whose help we would never have begun this work.
Here are the names of other people who gave us inspiration, were dedicated and helped us:
Rakaya Ansari Courtney Davis
Dr Richard Blasband Sarah Derr
Elise Helmick Davis Jim Evers
Expressions of gratitude
Bill and Charlotte Foster Dr. Louis Genn Jeff Gershaw Dr. Albert Geise Larry and Susan Gilbert Dr. Brian Halevy-Goldman Rev. Beth Gray Chris Jackson BettyAnne and Delisle Judah
Kate and June Monehan Vicki Morgan Jacqueline Pratt Dana Rahlmann Marilyn Rosenthal Dr. Barry Schwartz Dr. John Smith Jill Stovall Dorothy Towner
Finally, I extend my gratitude to the thousands of dyslexics who have walked through the doors of the Reading Disabilities Research Center, and to those who continue to come each week. They are the ones who answer my prayer and help me finally get out of my corner.
COWARDLY WINKERBEAN
LISTEN, BODEN. . . IF THIS TEST SHOWS YOU HAVE DYSLEXIA, IT DOESN'T MEAN YOU ARE DUMB!
OH YEAH? WELL, NAME ME ONE/MANY PERSON WHO HAD DYSLEXIA!
NAME ANOTHER TWENTY-FOUR!
CHAPTER 1
Underlying talent
Usually when people hear the word dyslexia, they only think about the reading, writing, spelling and math problems the child has at school. Some people associate it only with turning words and letters around, while others associate it only with struggling students. Almost everyone believes that it is some form of learning disability, but learning disability is only one facet of dyslexia.
Once, when I was a guest on a television show, I was asked a question about the "positive" side of dyslexia. Part of my answer was that I listed about a dozen names of famous dyslexics. The show's host then commented: "Isn't it amazing that all these people were able to become geniuses despite having dyslexia."
She didn't understand the main thing. Their genius did not take place despite dyslexia, and thanks to dyslexia!
What
| Famous | dyslexics |
| Hans Christian Andersen | Bushy Goldberg |
| Harry Belafonte | Bruce Jenner |
| Alexander Graham Bell | William Lear |
| George Burns | Jay Leno |
| Stephen J. Cannell | Greg Louganis |
| Cher | General George: Patton |
| Winston Churchill | Nelson Rockefeller |
| Leonardo da Vinci | Charles Schwab |
| Walt Disney | Jackie Stewart |
| Albert Einstein | Quentin Tarantino |
| Henry Ford | Woodrow Wilson |
| Dani Glover | W. B. Yeats |
Having dyslexia will not make every dyslexic a genius, but from a self-esteem perspective, it is good for every dyslexic to know that their brain works in exactly the same way as the brains of great geniuses. It is also important for him to know that having problems with reading, writing, spelling or math does not mean that he is dumb or stupid. The same mental function that causes genius can also cause these problems.
The mental function that causes dyslexia is a gift in the truest sense of the word: natural ability, talent. This is something special that emphasizes a person’s individuality.
Not all dyslexics develop the same talent, but they all share certain mental abilities. Here are the main properties that are common to all dyslexics:
Underlying talent
They can use the brain's ability to change and create perceptions (primary ability).
They are highly aware of their surroundings.
They are more curious than ordinary people.
They think mainly in images rather than words.
They have highly developed intuition and insight.
They think and perceive in a multidimensional way (using all their senses).
They can perceive thought as reality.
They have a vivid imagination.
The gift of mastery develops in different ways and in different areas. For Albert Einstein it was physics; for Walt Disney it was art; for Greg Louganis, it was mastery of the sport.
Model change
To stop seeing dyslexia as a disability and instead see it as a talent, we must start with a clear and precise understanding of what dyslexia actually is and what causes it.
By doing this we will identify both the positive and negative aspects of the situation and we will be able to see how
Dyslexia develops.
Then the thought of correcting it will not seem unnatural. By taking a step beyond correcting the problem, we can also recognize and explore this condition for the gift that it truly is.
Before a dyslexic can fully understand and appreciate the positive side of dyslexia, it is necessary to understand its negative side. This does not mean that the positive side will not surface until the problems are resolved. The gift is always there, even if it is not recognized as such. In fact, many dyslexic adults use the positive side of dyslexia in their lives without even realizing it. They just think they have it inclinations to something without realizing that their special talent comes from the same mental abilities that make it impossible for them to read well, have good handwriting, or write correctly. The most common impairments associated with dyslexia occur in reading, writing, spelling, or doing math; but there are many others. Each case of dyslexia is different from the other because dyslexia is self-created state. No two dyslexics would create it in the same way.
In order to understand gift of dyslexia, we need to look at the learning disability known as "dyslexia" from a different perspective.
Dyslexia is a result of perceptual talent. In some situations, talent becomes a necessity. The person is not aware that this is happening because the use of talent has become an integral part of his
6
Underlying talent
Thought process. It started very early
periods of life even now seem as natural as
breath.
7
CHAPTER 2
Learning disability
Term dyslexia - it was the first general term used to describe various learning problems. Ultimately, these problems were divided into groups and categories so that different types of learning disabilities could be described. Therefore, we can call dyslexia the mother of various types of learning disabilities. Currently, more than seventy names are used to describe its various aspects.
Initially, researchers believed that people with dyslexia had some type of cerebral or nervous system disorder, or that it was an inherited dysfunction that inhibited the mental processes required for reading.
Then, in the late 1920s, Dr. Samuel Torrey Orton redefined dyslexia as “cross-brain lateralization.” This meant that the left hemisphere
What is dyslexia really?
The brain did what the right hemisphere would normally do, and the right hemisphere did the work of the left hemisphere. It was only a theory, and after a while he decided that it was not correct. Then he proposed a second theory, arguing that dyslexia is “mixed hemispheric dominance.” This meant that Sometimes the right hemisphere of the brain did what the left hemisphere was supposed to do, and vice versa.
Today there are many different theories about what dyslexia is and what causes it. Most of them were formulated to be able to explain the symptoms or characteristics of dyslexia - and the causes of the disability.
New approach
The theories and techniques described in this book were developed not to explain the origin of the problem, but to explain why can it be corrected? Theories were developed during and after the development of the corrective techniques described in the last chapters. Because I have applied the hindsight principle, and because I have had personal experience of what it is like to be dyslexic, my approach is completely different.
Here's what I discovered: Dyslexia is not the result of a cerebral or nervous system disorder. It is also not caused by a malformation of the brain, inner ear, or eyeballs. Dyslexia is a product of thought and a particular way of responding to feelings of confusion.
Two Kinds of Thought
A widely accepted view is that people
Learning disability
They think in two different ways: “verbal conceptualization” and “non-verbal conceptualization.”
Verbal conceptualization means thinking with sounds or words. Nonverbal conceptualization means thinking with mental images concepts or concepts.
Verbal thought is linear in time. It follows the structure of language. Using it, a person composes mental sentences word by word. Verbal thinking occurs at approximately the same speed as speech. The speed of normal speech is approximately 150 words per minute, or 2.5 words per second. An experienced radio announcer or auctioneer can speak at a speed of 200 words per minute. Electronically generated speech can remain intelligible to an attentive listener at speeds of up to 250 words per minute. In fact, this is the maximum limit of verbal conceptualization.
Nonverbal thought is evolutionary. The image "grows" as the thinking process adds more concepts. Nonverbal thought is much faster, perhaps thousands of times faster. In fact, the process of nonverbal thinking is difficult to understand because it happens so quickly that you are not aware of it while you are doing it. Typically, nonverbal thinking is subconscious, or below the level of conscious understanding.
Humans think both verbally and nonverbally, but as humans we tend to specialize. Each person will use one method as his primary one, and the other method will have a secondary use for him.
What is dyslexia really?
During the period of time when the aspect of dyslexia that we call "learning disability" is developing (between the ages of three and thirteen), the potential dyslexic should be a predominant non-verbal person, i.e. a person who thinks in pictures.
To see how this way of thinking contributes to a dyslexic's learning disability, we must look at our language. We can consider language to be a mirror of the thought process. Otherwise, it would be too difficult for anyone to learn.
Language is made up of symbols. The symbols consist of three parts:
What does the symbol sound like?
What does the symbol mean?
What does the symbol look like?
Listening to a sentence mentally can help comprehension because all the symbols (letters and words) usually do not appear in a sequence that reveals the meaning of the sentence in the same way as when it is read. For example, you cannot tell whether a sentence in Russian is a statement or
learning disability)
A question until you get to the last word and see what comes after it - a period or a question mark, right?
If we use nonverbal conceptualization, we think in terms of the meanings of language, forming mental images of its concepts and concepts. Images are not simply visual. They are rather more like 3D multi-sensory movies. They change and develop as the sentence is read. The process occurs many times faster than verbal conceptualization. But this actually poses a problem because some parts of language are easier to represent as concepts or concepts than others.
Remember that dyslexics have little or no internal monologue, so they don’t they hear what they read if they don't read out loud. Instead, they form a mental image by adding to it the meaning—or image of the meaning—of each new word that comes before them.
Two kinds of words
Words that describe real things do not cause many problems for dyslexics.
In non-verbal thinking, we can easily think using a word elephant, if we know what an elephant looks like. The animal we call "elephant" is the true meaning of the word elephant. When we look at its image, we see its meaning. We can think using the word house, if we can imagine the place where we once lived. We can think with nouns such as school, book, paper And pencil, because
What is dyslexia really?
We know what they look like. We can think with verbs like fly, sleep, watch and the like, because we have seen or felt the actions described by these words.
A person who uses nonverbal thinking cannot think using words whose meaning cannot be depicted. If we know what it looks like V, that doesn't mean we can think with V. As well as knowing what it looks like And or This does not allow us to think with these words. When we see letters THIS for the word This, that doesn't mean we see its meaning. The only image we have is the shape of the letters themselves. When we use the visualization process characteristic of nonverbal thinking, we cannot depict the meaning of a word as an object or action.
If we read a sentence using verbal conceptualization, then when we see words like in and And This, it won't be a problem for us because we know what they sound like. We will create an image of the meaning of the sentence only after we finish reading the sentence. Even if we don't know the exact meaning of these words, we won't have a problem because the general meaning of the sentence will be clear after we read it and listen to it mentally.
Reading the same sentence when using
nonverbal conceptualization will cause symptoms
Dyslexia. The picture of the meaning of a sentence develops as we read it. The evolutionary development of the image formed by a sentence stops every time the meaning of an unknown word cannot be
Learning disability
Include in the big picture. The problem will become more complicated every time we encounter a word whose meaning does not have a corresponding mental image. As a result, we end up with a series of unattached images with spaces between them.
With nonverbal conceptualization, each time the image creation process stops, the person will experience a feeling of confusion because the image being created becomes more incongruous. By resorting to concentration, the reader can skip the gaps and continue, but the further he reads, the more and more confusion he will feel. Eventually he will reach his goal threshold of confusion.
And here the person becomes disoriented.
Disorientation means that the perception of symbols changes and becomes distorted so that it becomes difficult or impossible for a person to read or write. It sounds ironic, but this perceptual bias is precisely the mechanism that dyslexics have found useful in recognizing real-life objects and events in their environment before they begin to learn to read.
CHAPTER 3
Consequences of disorientation
Under orientation refers to a state in which you know where you are relative to your surroundings. From a perceptual point of view, this means that you identify the facts and conditions of your environment and place yourself in the proper position in relation to them. When you see, hear, or experience the world around you from a particular perspective that makes sense to you, you are in a state of orientation. The job of an aircraft or ship navigator is to determine the orientation of the aircraft or ship relative to its surroundings.
People orient themselves visually, looking at the world with Two Eyes. The brain compares the two images that the eyes see and uses the difference between them to form a three-dimensional mental image that tells us how far away things are from us. Ears do the same thing
Consequences of disorientation
To determine where the sound is coming from. This method is known as triangulation. It works equally in both the perception and navigation domains.
The strictly defined point from which your perception occurs is not visually located on the lenses of your eyes, because these are two different points. In fact, it is a mental "screen" in the brain. Usually people have the impression that they look at the world from a point located somewhere behind the eyes.
Mind's Eye
There is also a point mental perception from which a person looks at mental images and thoughts. If you close your eyes and look at an imaginary mental image, that point of perception is where you are looking from, or it is what you are using to look at. This is not the same as a visual point, but the basic principle of operation is the same as the principle of vision: something is looking at something else. This "epicenter of perception" is what I call the "mind's eye." When it shifts, it causes disorientation of all physical sensations. This is explained in detail in chapters 23 and 24. For now, let's just find out for ourselves what disorientation is and how a person feels in this state.
Disorientation is common. With very few exceptions, every person finds himself in this state from time to time. Confusion is a natural function of the normal brain. It happens when we are overwhelmed by stimuli or thoughts. It also happens when the brain receives contradictory messages.
What is dyslexia really?
Information from different senses and tries to correlate it.
Disorientation criterion
During my freshman year of college, I caught a very bad cold that caused serious complications in my middle ear. I lay delirious in the hospital for two days and then woke up in a state of uncontrollable disorientation. The sounds were so loud that it hurt me to hear them. I saw many images in front of me. My fingers didn't want to do what I wanted them to do. When I opened my eyes, all my senses told me that I was spinning in space.
When I asked the doctor what was happening to me, he told me that I was in this state because my brain was receiving and sending out conflicting sensory perceptions.
"Your inner ears have two organs that tell your brain what's up," he explained. "The right organ works, and the left one tells your brain that it's up.- This is some other direction. These two signals don't match each other, so you feel like you're spinning."
“But I see that I am spinning,” I said. "Why is this so?"
"Your senses cannot be in disagreement"
- said the doctor. "Apparently, this is exactly how it was designed
brain. Your vision makes adjustments so that the signals
corresponded to each other. That spin you see
- this corresponds to the distortions of your sense of feeling
balance."
At that time, it helped to understand that my sensations were the result of an illness, and that the distortions would pass. Later,
Consequences of disorientation
When I started studying disorientation, this criterion stuck in my mind. I explained why the distortion of one perception caused corresponding distortions in other perceptions.
If you stand up and quickly turn around ten times, you will feel disorientated in the form of nausea. If you look at a spinning disk with a spiral drawn on it, you will experience disorientation in the form of perceived movement. If you're sitting in a car at a stop sign and the car in front of you rolls backwards, you'll likely have the physical sensation that your car is moving forward and you'll slam on the brakes harder before you know it.
When disorientated, your brain sees objects moving when they don't, or your body feels like you're moving when you don't. Your sense of the passage of time may slow down or speed up. Your brain changes your actual perceptions, and you experience the altered perceptions as reality.
Each time a state of disorientation occurs, all sensations (except the sense of taste) change. The brain no longer sees what the eyes see, but instead sees an altered perception of images. The brain no longer hears what the ears hear, but instead hears an altered perception of sounds. And so on for the rest of the senses, including touch, balance, motion, and time.
The dyslexic dilemma
While disorientation is common
What is dyslexia really?
A phenomenon that goes far beyond the ordinary for dyslexics. They don't just feel disorientated, they cause it without realizing it.
Dyslexics use disorientation on a subconscious level to gain multidimensional perception. By distorting sensations, they can perceive numerous images of the world. They can perceive objects from several different perspectives and obtain more information from these perceptions than other people.
It is clear that in early childhood they somehow found a way to detect the function of disorientation in the brain and incorporate it into their thinking and recognition processes. For babies who cannot easily move around to explore their environment, the ability to “fill in the gaps” comes to the rescue and they see objects in their minds from several different perspectives.
Since altered perceptions give
Recognizing objects that would otherwise not be recognized, disorientation becomes a normal part of the thought process of dyslexics. When disorientated, dyslexics are unaware of what is happening because it happens so quickly. They only realize what is happening when they use disorientation: a higher degree of recognition of three-dimensional objects, sounds and tactile stimuli. In addition to using Disorientation to resolve states of confusion, dyslexics also use the altered perceptions that come with disorientation for creative imagination. When it is used to solve a problem during nonverbal conceptualization, it
Consequences of disorientation
It can be called intuition, ingenuity or inspiration. When done for fun, it is called fantasizing or daydreaming.
More about congenital talents dyslexics will be discussed further. For now, suffice it to say that incorporating disorientation into the thinking process may make dyslexics more perceptive or give them a richer imagination than the average person. When they start using language, it also creates the opportunity for a learning disability to develop.
Until now, the dyslexic has used disorientation to permissions states of confusion. This has worked well when applied to real physical objects, so it is likely that the dyslexic becomes disoriented subconsciously when confronted with a confusing symbol. Unfortunately, when a dyslexic person looks at a printed word at the top or back of a page, or when it is broken down into its components, the word causes even more confusion than usual.
When a dyslexic learns to read and the confusion begins to worsen, he quickly reaches his confusion threshold. When this happens, the dyslexic no longer sees what is actually written on the page, but instead sees what he thinks is written on the page. thinks is on the page. Since a symbol is not an object and only represents the sound of a word that describes an object, action or concept, disorientation will not assist in recognizing it. Since the symbol is not recognized, the dyslexic will make a mistake. These errors are the primary symptoms of dyslexia.
CHAPTER 4
Dyslexia in action
There are about 300 basic words in the Russian language, which pose a problem for most dyslexics. They are in the dyslexic's spoken vocabulary, but the dyslexic cannot create mental images of their meanings. This means that the average dyslexic uses over 300 words in their speech that they cannot actually think with. These little words, which seem like the simplest words in the language, are the triggers, or triggers, of the symptoms of dyslexia.
Trigger words have an abstract meaning, and often They have several different meanings. For dyslexics, they become a trap because they do not represent visual objects or actions. These also happen to be the words that appear most frequently in everyday speech and writing. A complete list of trigger words is given in Chapter 33.
Dyslexia in action
Origin of the list of trigger words
I didn't make this list up. Like many other discoveries related to my work, it caused some surprise and the thought: “This is so obvious, I should have known all this.”
Soon after my first discovery about perception, it became apparent that confusion triggered disorientation, and that confusion occurred whenever a person did not recognize a symbol. I thought that every dyslexic should have a small, unique list of trigger words. Our programs included teaching students how to recognize confusion when it occurs and to create a list of their own trigger words so that they know which word to master.
When I made my list, I was surprised. It was nothing like what I had imagined. I was confused by the fact that it included all one-letter words, all two-letter words, and mostly four-letter words. I felt better when I saw that the lists made by our clients included the same words, but I still wondered why this was the case.
One evening in August 1982, I was looking through Dolch's list (Dolch), which provides the basic words used by teachers in primary schools. I checked a few words and wondered why some of them (e.g. in, and and this) triggered disorientation, while others (for example home, food, friend) did not cause symptoms of dyslexia. I began to carefully study my thought processes as I read each word. Like in a cartoon, where suddenly a light bulb comes on above my head, coming to me
What is dyslexia really?
understanding illuminated my world. I discovered that I had no mental images for the trigger words. I couldn't picture them, so I couldn't think with them.
From Dolch's list, I was able to select 196 words that cause disorientation. Today, the number of words on the list has increased to 217. Most of the added words are shortened forms or other forms of words from the initial list.
How Trigger Words Cause Problems
To put the puzzle pieces together, let's look at a typical scene of a child with dyslexia trying to read aloud.
A simple sentence like the one below would be easy to read for a ten-year-old child who thinks in words or sounds. But for a 10-year-old with dyslexia, who creates mental images of the scene as each word is read, the process is more complex.
This brown horse jumped over the stone fence and ran across the pasture.
For a ten-year-old dyslexic, the first word This, caused a gap in the mental imagination because there was no image for it. Blank image is the essence of confusion; nothing a person experiences can match the confusion it causes. However, using concentration, the child makes his way through the gap in the image and says “this”, then forces himself to move on to the next word.
Dyslexia in action
Word brown creates a mental image of color, but it does not have a specific shape. Continuing to concentrate, he says "brown."
Word horse converts a brown picture into a horse of this color. Concentration continues and the word “horse” is pronounced.
Word jumped over causes the front of the brown horse to rise into the air. He continues to concentrate, saying "jumped over."
Word through causes the back of the brown horse to rise. Still concentrating, he says "through."
Word stone creates a mental image of a block of stone, but without a specific shape. Doubling his concentration, he says "stone".
The next word fence, transforms stone as a material into a stone fence. Still in a state of redoubled concentration, he says “fence.”
The next word And, again causes a gap in the image. This time the threshold of confusion is reached. So the child becomes disoriented. The child stops again, in a state of even greater confusion, redoubled concentration, and now also disoriented. The only way he can continue is to try to concentrate even more. But now, because he is also disoriented, he will develop symptoms of dyslexia. It is very likely that he will skip and not say the word "and", or it is just as likely that he will say "a" or "c" instead. Now he no longer has an accurate perception of the words on the page.
Now he spends a huge amount of effort and energy concentrating just to continue.
What is dyslexia really?
The next word ran he replaces with the word will run because he is now disoriented. He sees an image of himself running, which is absolutely not connected with the image of a running horse. And he says "will run."
The next word By, again causes a gap in the image. The child stops again, even more confused and still disoriented. He has only one way out - to quadruple his concentration. While doing this he skips and doesn't say a word By. By this point, his disorientation had caused him to feel akin to dizziness. He feels sick and the words and letters float across the page.
For the last word, pasture, he must catch each letter in turn so that he can pronounce the word. Having done this, he sees an image of a grass-covered area. Although he is disoriented because he spent extra effort and energy trying to catch and pronounce each letter, he pronounces the word correctly - "pasture".
After finishing his sentence, he closes the book and pushes it away. I've had enough of this!
If you ask him what he just read about, most likely he will say something like “about the place where the grass grows.” He has an image of a horse in the air, a stone fence, himself running, and a grassy area, but he cannot string the individual elements together into a sentence to create a mental image of the scene described.
It will be obvious to anyone who saw or heard him read a sentence or hear him answer a question that he did not understand anything of what he had just read. And it doesn’t bother him that he didn’t understand it. He is grateful to have survived the torture of reading out loud.
Dyslexia in action
brown concentration continues brown color brown
Concentration continues brown horse horse
jumped over concentration continues front part jumped over
The horse rises
through
concentration continues back through
The horse rises
block of stone stone
stone double concentration
fence
double concentration
stone fence fence
space
the image creation process stops; disorientation occurs; concentration triples
(misses a word?)
will run
ran
disorientation continues running
Triple concentration
space
By
the image creation process stops; disorientation continues concentration quadruples
(misses a word)
pasture disorientation continues covered in grass pasture quadruple concentration place
What is dyslexia really?
If he had been a little older, he would have realized that he had just read something he didn't understand. Then what would he most likely do? Read it again. It seems natural that if we read something again, we will understand it better - doesn't it? Look again at the scene described above and ask the question: “What changed to make the sentence read differently the second time?”
Nothing!
When reading important information or technical data, adults with dyslexia will reread the material three to ten times before they feel that they understand what they have read, or they will give up.
Is it bad to be in a state of concentration?
Here I must clarify something about concentration: most people consider it a positive ability, but too much of anything, even something positive, can be harmful. The amount of concentration required for a dyslexic to get through a gap in the image definitely has negative consequences.
When people concentrate on something, they transfer a large part of their consciousness to it. When they concentrate intensely, they limit your consciousness only Before this object.
This is the basic tenet of hypnotism.
It is this mechanism that hypnotists use to introduce
A person is in a state of trance. When dyslexics are intense
They concentrate in order to read something, they
Are in a state of hypnosis, which increases difficulty
Reading comprehension and also increases
The period of time required to understand it.
CHAPTER 5
Compulsive decisions
Once disorientation becomes the cause of errors, the child with dyslexia enters a state of frustration. No one likes to make mistakes, so around the age of nine, a child with dyslexia begins to search, identify and adapt different methods to solve the problem. Even though this may seem like a good thing, it actually demonstrates how a reading problem becomes a real learning disability.
The solutions that dyslexics come up with do not solve the real problem of distorted perceptions; they only provide temporary relief from frustration. They are roundabout methods for coping with the effects of disorientation. They end up slowing down the learning process and creating a real learning disability.
These "solutions" are ways to
What is dyslexia really?
Something to do, and the tactics used to understand or remember something. They quickly become compulsive behaviors. (Translator's note: compulsive - psycho, imposed, forced). Once a dyslexic person adopts one of these methods, that method becomes the only way in which he will be able to perform that particular function. During the dyslexia correction process, I start calling them "old solutions" because they are no longer needed.
Although many dyslexics begin to develop compulsive decisions before the age of nine and continue to develop them for the rest of their lives, most of these “learning crutches” are developed between the ages of nine and twelve. For dyslexics they usually number in the hundreds, if not thousands.
Here are some common examples of compulsive decisions.
Alphabet song
A common children's solution is to sing the alphabet. (Translator's note: Chanting the alphabet to a certain melody is a common way of learning it in English-speaking schools). If a song is learned at home or in kindergarten simply for the sake of learning, within two years most children will be able to recite the alphabet without having to sing the song or mentally rehearse it. But if a child accepts a song as a solution to a case where he is unable to learn the alphabet, then he will never be able to Tell the alphabet unless he sings the song out loud or mentally produces it.
Compulsive decisions
They only know the song; the song knows the alphabet. So when using a song it can seem that they know the alphabet. Every time they want to look up a name in a phone book or look up a word in a dictionary, they will resort to a song. It became a compulsive behavior.
High degree of concentration
Of all the compulsive decisions that
a dyslexic has, probably the worst is
"concentration". Without learning to concentrate,
Most dyslexics are unable to read at all. Once they learn to achieve a high enough degree of concentration, they actually learn how to read - slowly and tediously. The problem is that reading will become an unpleasant and painful experience for them. If what they are trying to read is important, they will have to read it over and over, many times, to make sure it is correct. They will not read for pleasure, because at such a high degree of concentration there is no pleasure.
Probably the most common characteristics of dyslexia in adults are slow reading, reading the same material over and over again, and tension-related headaches caused by the intense concentration they have to do to be able to read.
For dyslexics, there is a clear difference between the concept to focus on and concept note. Paying attention to something interesting is pleasure. Concentrate on something that threatens
What
What is dyslexia really?
Your life is not fun at all. In fact, it is a very strong tension. For a person with dyslexia, the inability to read and write often feels life-threatening.
"Do it for me"
For dyslexic adults, there is an easier solution than high levels of concentration - getting other people to read and write for themselves. You may have already fallen into this trap when someone asked you, “Could you read this and tell me what you think of it?”
Do you remember how this person tried to get more information? It was a ploy, even if you may not have noticed it. He wasn't really interested in your opinion; he was interested in the information contained in the material he asked you to read. Your ability to read was exploited by a dyslexic who couldn't decipher the words on the page and caught you to interpret them for him.
Some pronounced dyslexics have become chief executives of large companies due to their intuitive abilities to “see” the right strategy and mobilize the workforce. They will always invest heavily in state-of-the-art audio and video equipment - anything that conveys information in a form other than written form. They will charge trusted subordinates with the responsibility of reading materials for them and conveying messages that must be conveyed in writing. And all because they are hidden functionally illiterate individuals.
Compulsive decisions
For better or for worse?
Ironically, many of the "best" teaching and guidance techniques used to help
For dyslexics, they do nothing but instill and reinforce compulsive behaviors. This is understandable because the dyslexic eventually seems to learn.
It's just an illusion. In fact, the child is placed in conditions under which he mechanically performs actions that he does not actually understand. This pattern will become a lifelong disability if not corrected at some point in the future.
Dyslexia is quite common and is a disorder in the development of higher mental functions of the brain, which, in turn, causes certain difficulties with reading and writing.
Dyslexia can manifest itself in several forms, but any type of disease can be corrected using various methods. One of the most effective and popular methods is considered to be the Davis technique.
The author of the technique, Ronald D. Davis, is the founder of the Center for Research on Reading Problems, which works at the Dyslexia Correction Center in the United States of America. The uniqueness of the program is that its creator himself is dyslexic and has proven the effectiveness of his method. According to Davis, dyslexia is not a disease, but a special gift that must be learned. The Davis Method is aimed specifically at teaching dyslexics how to properly use the gift of dyslexia.
Dyslexics are quick thinkers and imaginative people, but their ways of understanding the world around them are very different from what other people are used to. Dyslexics tend to use disorientation to build images of objects and their cognition. Davis's technique is aimed at turning off disorientation by establishing a special “orientation point,” thereby tuning the imagination to create the most realistic images of the surrounding reality.
The Davis method helps in correction in most cases, regardless of the age of the dyslexic, and includes a set of measures, which conventionally consists of such elements as:
- assessment of perceptual ability;
- switching;
- discharge and verification;
- fine tuning;
- coordination;
- mastering symbols;
- sequential reading;
- mastering symbols relative to words.
The schedule of classes according to the Davis program is compiled by specialists of the medical institution, taking into account the individual characteristics of the patient. Although the desired results are visible even with gradual and longer treatment, it is recommended to carry out a course of intensive training in a shorter period of time.
Assessing Perceptual Ability
At the first stage of applying the technique, specialists assess which areas concern the dyslexic child more than others. Children with dyslexia often worry that they have difficulty connecting with peers and that their learning problems make them look backward in the eyes of teachers and classmates. Next, specialists need to determine the degree of difficulty in perception.
While working on this problem, the child learns to use the so-called “mental eye” to study the surrounding reality and build mental models.
The exercise is aimed at enabling the patient to imagine a particular object in his palm. By asking questions about the color, shape, size and other parameters of this object, the doctor helps the child build a more detailed image of the object in his head.
Next, the child learns to “transfer” his visual center and mentally examine an imaginary object from all sides, after which he can begin playing with the object, changing its size, shape, color in his imagination, or moving the object from one hand to the other.
If this exercise was given to the child without any particular difficulties, you can proceed to the following exercises to correct dyslexia.
Switching
The main manifestation of dyslexia is disorientation, which must be “turned off” to obtain accurate images. It is possible to disable the symptoms of disorientation by creating an “orientation point,” which is a certain space in which the patient’s vision is mentally fixed.
The position of this point can be calculated as follows. It is necessary to imagine a straight line emanating from the object in the palm and passing through the tip of the nose and the back of the child’s head, ending 15-30 cm above the back of the head - this is where the “orientation point” area is located. In other words, the child will imagine that he is looking from the eyes of an imaginary person standing behind him.
To more accurately anchor the “mind’s eye” point, you can imagine an anchor formed by imaginary lines tending to the “orientation point” from the child’s ears and forehead. Once the image of the anchor is fixed in the head of a dyslexic, the need to visualize all the lines will disappear, and the child will be able to receive the image as other people see it.
This effect is achieved due to the fact that the brain cells responsible for disorientation in dyslexics are located in the upper part of the brain, and by placing the “mental eye” in this area, the patient turns off the disorientation, thereby turning off dyslexia itself.
At the same time, it is important to train the processes of turning on and off disorientation, but this must be done carefully, without overtiring the child and avoiding headaches.
Discharging and checking
Disorientation leads the dyslexic's body into a state of confused consciousness, in which the patient tries to simultaneously reset the “orientation point” and keep it in a fixed area for as long as possible. The process of holding the “mental eye” at one point is quite tedious, so many patients quickly begin to feel headaches and muscle pain in the neck. To get rid of unpleasant sensations and not lose control of the “mental eye”, you need to defuse your consciousness.
Discharge is carried out using the same visualization. The patient needs to create in his imagination a feeling of relief and relaxation and spread it throughout the head and at the “orientation point”. Within a short time, tension in the neck muscles will disappear, and the headache will also disappear.
After the discharge, you need to make sure that the “mental eye” has not moved from the fixed space. To do this, the doctor asks the patient to point his finger at an imaginary “orientation point.” The check is considered successful if the point is specified correctly. If the patient points to another area, it is necessary to fix his finger at the correct point, thereby correcting the position of the “mental eye” after the discharge.
A patient who has mastered the skill of releasing and checking the position of the “mental eye” can move on to the next level of the dyslexia correction program.
Fine tuning
At the initial stages, the “orientation point” is in a floating state, so the patient needs to fine-tune its position. This occurs by mentally moving the "mind's eye" around a conventional "point of orientation", which allows the patient to determine the most optimal location of the "mind's eye".
As a rule, having found such a point, the dyslexic experiences relief and the ability to maintain balance, which is lost when the “mental eye” moves to other positions. Having found the required point, the patient must fix its position using an imaginary anchor.
Fine-tuning is a must-have exercise for dyslexics, as the optimal “orientation point” periodically changes its position under the influence of various factors. The ability to tune one's "mental eye" will allow the patient to avoid unwanted disorientation.
Coordination
All dyslexics suffer from problems with coordination and correctly identifying right and left. An exercise aimed at training coordination will allow the patient to get rid of clumsiness and confusion about where the right is and where the left is. This exercise must be performed regularly after fine-tuning the “mental eye”.
Before starting the exercise, you need to check whether the “orientation point” is correctly fixed, after which the patient must balance his body while standing on one leg. After balance is achieved, small balls are thrown to the patient, which he catches first with his right and left hands alternately, and then simultaneously.
The next stage of this exercise is to throw the ball with a slight deviation to the right or left, which forces the patient to go beyond the axis of symmetry of his body in order to reach the ball. Regular performance of this exercise contributes to significant progress in normalizing coordination. It is also recommended to practice with balls in between exercises for mastering symbols.
Mastering symbols
The dyslexic's imagination perceives only a three-dimensional image, while almost the entire educational process is based on printed two-dimensional images.
Various numbers, prepositions or other printed characters confuse a dyslexic and make the learning process, built mainly on working with printed media, unbearably difficult.
In order for the patient to learn a particular letter of the alphabet or a number, he needs to independently recreate this figure in a three-dimensional image and compare the hand-created model with its printed counterpart. Plasticine is well suited for creating models.
Next, it is important to carefully work out this particular element, studying its position in the alphabet or number series. After the element is fixed in the mind, you can move on to a new element that causes difficulties in reading.
It is much more difficult for a dyslexic to learn symbols such as punctuation marks or arithmetic symbols. It is important not only to compare the three-dimensional and two-dimensional images, but also to understand the purpose and reason for placing a certain sign. In addition, the patient must learn to give examples of the use of these symbols.
Sequential reading
The consciousness of dyslexics is designed in such a way that printed or written information is perceived as a whole, and not letter by letter. Looking at a whole word, a dyslexic child tries to guess what object or phenomenon this word means. At the initial stage, it is necessary to teach the child sequential reading from left to right, isolating individual groups of letters or syllables. However, reading comprehension is not yet necessary.
To practice reading, you need to choose an extremely simple book and take breaks from time to time, remembering to check the position of the “orientation point.”
At the next stage, the patient must learn to repeat the word read. If he fails, you need to ask him to read the word several times and explain what this word means.
Next, it is important to develop an understanding of the meaning of whole sentences. To begin with, you can explain to the child what semantic load the read sentence carries, and then ask him to model the read situation in his imagination.
Mastering symbols in relation to words
Some language elements can be difficult to define. Exercises with these words are structured as follows.
- To begin with, it is important to study the lexical meaning of this word in an explanatory dictionary.
- It is very important for dyslexics to immediately master the correct pronunciation of certain words, so the next step is to study the transcription of the required word.
- To master an unfamiliar word, you need to carefully work with its definition, making sentences with it and simulating situations in your imagination.
- It is recommended to model a situation related to this word using plasticine. For example, to master the meaning of the preposition “y,” you can sculpt one figure located next to another.
- A plasticine model of the letters that make up this word will also make it easier to understand.
- A dyslexic person needs to recreate molded models in their imagination.
- To practice an unfamiliar word, you need to say its meaning out loud several times.
At this level, it is especially important to remember that the speed of thought in dyslexics is very high, so it is important to teach the child to read gradually and slowly for better understanding of what they read.
If a child is born into a family who is distinguished from others by the gift of dyslexia, it is necessary to pay sufficient attention to activities aimed at correcting dyslexia so that the child can adapt to the world around him. Although it is better to start correction from childhood, it is never too late to take up exercises to eliminate dyslexia. The Davis method gives good results when practiced at any age.
This book is taken from the site http://davis-method.narod.ru/
Ronald D. Davis
Dyslexia
In honor and memory of Harold Joseph Anderson, a man who cared.
Foreword by Dr. Joan Smithvii
Introduction xv
Expressions of gratitudexvii
Part one. What is dyslexia really?
| Chapter 1. | The underlying talent. | 9 |
| Chapter 2. | Learning disability. | 11 |
| Chapter 3. | Consequences of disorientation. | 14 |
| Chapter 4. | Dyslexia in action. | 17 |
| Chapter 5. | Compulsive decisions. | 20 |
| Chapter 6. | Problems with reading. | 22 |
| Chapter 7. | Problems with spelling. | 25 |
| Chapter 8. | Problems with math. | 26 |
| Chapter 9 | Problems with handwriting. | 28 |
| Chapter 10 | Newest Disability: ADD | 32 |
| Chapter 11 | Clumsiness. | 35 |
| Chapter 12 | Real solution. | 37 |
Part two. Little P.D. - evolutionary theory of dyslexia
Part three. Gift
Part four. What do we do about it
| Chapter 22 | How can this be determined? | 59 |
| Chapter 23 | Symptoms of confusion | 61 |
| Chapter 24 | Mind's Eye | 63 |
| Chapter 25 | Performing Davis procedures | 66 |
| Chapter 26 | Assessment of Perceptual Ability | 69 |
| Chapter 27 | Switching | 73 |
| Chapter 28 | Discharging and checking | 84 |
| Chapter 29 | Fine tuning | 87 |
| Chapter 30 | Coordination | 91 |
| Chapter 31 | The main form of the “Mastering of Symbols” technique | 92 |
| Chapter 32 | Three steps to easy reading | 98 |
| Chapter 33 | "Mastering symbols" in relation to words | 101 |
| Chapter 34 | Continuation of the process | 107 |
| Recommended references | 108 |
|
| Glossary | 110 |
|
Preface
In my twenty-five years of working with students who have learning disabilities, I have found that it is always the student who teaches me what I need to know. So it comes as no surprise to me that a dyslexic would undertake to teach us what we need to know about dyslexia.
As a student, Ron Davis suffered the injustice, mistreatment and humiliation that most people with a unique learning style called "dyslexia" are familiar with. The combination of talent and inability described in Ron's book will be immediately recognized by others who have this unique combination of skill and handicap.
As a teacher, Ron Davis provides us with personal and experiential insight into what a dyslexic student faces. In words we can understand, he describes how learning is different for someone with dyslexia. It makes sensations real and, in doing so, gives us the internal understanding of the process necessary for effective learning.
Ron's Achievement Keys opened four different locks on his learning path:
The key to understanding is that the way a dyslexic learns is, in fact, a talent.
The key to understanding dyslexic spatial awareness.
Key to conceptualizing disorientation.
The key to techniques for controlling confusion and therefore controlling the symptoms of dyslexia.
Some dyslexics find that they absolutely cannot learn to read. As adults, they still struggle with sounds and letters, putting them together to decipher words. They cannot remember the characters or combination of characters. The words they know don't look familiar on the page. Their word recognition ability is typically rated below third-grade level, even though they may have worked on reading for years.
Other people can read words relatively well. When they read aloud, everything sounds clear. But these students discover that they do not understand what they are reading. They must read a sentence several times to get any meaning out of it. They tend to have great difficulty writing and find the symbols of language very discouraging.
Both types of dyslexics experience the same humiliation and frustration. (Translator's note: frustration- psycho., a deep, chronic feeling or state of insecurity, despondency, and dissatisfaction as a consequence of unfulfilled desires, internal conflicts, or other unresolved problems). They are technically illiterate and limited in their freedom to make the written word work for them.
These people have always been of particular interest to educators and researchers. Their inability to read and the use of their mental abilities in the traditional way has motivated our organization to continue to seek answers and solutions to their discomfort. In an effort to help our clients, at the Melvin-Smith Training Center we study each and every new method that comes up.
In 1983, the parents of a student with dyslexia in our school's program took him to the Ron Davis Research Center. This was our first acquaintance with a truly unique program. When the student returned to school, he felt “in heaven” with his success. He claimed that for the first time he could concentrate and focus on completing a task to completion.
I immediately asked him why it had changed him so much. "I can't tell you, Dr. Smith," he replied. "It might make you sick. Only people with dyslexia can do it. It makes other people sick." I now understand that he was referring to the Orientation Guidance program he completed and the side effect of nausea that disorientation sometimes causes in non-dyslexics. But at the time, I was both confused and skeptical. I decided to wait and watch him to see if there were any lasting changes in his learning.
There was a student in front of me whose ability to concentrate in class had clearly improved. By the end of eighth grade, he was accepted into a prestigious high school, and it was obvious that he was making progress. While completing the Word and Symbol Mastery program, he demonstrated correspondingly increased confidence and gradual changes in his reading and writing skills.
Two years later, I met another student who was about to take the Reading Research Center program. This time the situation was different. I was asked to go with her and learn the techniques that would be used to be her supervisor after she completed the program. My curiosity was already piqued, so I was eager to experience the program first hand.
After what I saw, I decided to learn the Davis Orientation Guidance and Davis Symbol Mastery techniques. Several other teachers on our staff have since received this training, and we use these methods regularly at the Melvin-Smith Learning Center.
Davis's concept of "orientation" is most easily understood by educators and psychologists as "attention." “Providing guidance for orientation control” provides the client with a stable state and reference point for focusing attention. This is important to prevent disorientation and confusion when working with symbols for good reading, writing, spelling, speaking and calculations. There is a strong visual stabilization that promotes focus and creates the feeling of “control” that most clients report. Gaining control and responsibility for your learning system is essential to learning, especially when learning something as complex as reading.
Presenting the way dyslexics learn as a talent is correct. Over the years, we have noticed that people who experience symptoms of dyslexia are people with high intellectual development. On the other hand, talents that cause sensitivity to the confusion of information carried by symbols are a valuable quality. For example, people who “see” the spatial characteristics of our world intuitively understand how things work. They discover that they have an innate ability to fix things, understand motors, electronic devices, plumbing systems, construction, art, and other related fields. Tasks that require the ability to visualize something in a creative or other way are often easy for people with these gifts. This is most likely why so many inventors, scientists, athletes and creative people discover that they too have symptoms of dyslexia.
The Orientation Guidance program is followed by Ron Davis' Symbol Mastery, which is designed to help students improve their reading and writing skills primarily by eliminating confusion about letters, words, numbers, punctuation, and mathematical symbols. These techniques have an excellent basis in learning theory. They engage each of the senses in learning and provide a concept of integration. Students see, touch, discuss, and conceptualize the information they are learning. The use of the Intensive Mixed Perception Method provides stimulation to important areas of the brain and promotes long-term retention.
When clients receive information after their assessment, they often say, "This is it. This is what I feel." At this moment, their isolation and confusion disappears. They are ready for the changes that may accompany the therapeutic program.
The combination of student and teacher that Ron shared with us in his book has enriched our understanding of the millions of people who have a unique learning pattern known as dyslexia. Ron's work has given us a means of understanding the student with dyslexia. He has developed a number of effective techniques to meet the unique needs of learning, which in turn has given us newfound hope for success.
Joan M. Smith, Doctor of Education, Licensed Educational Psychologist, Licensed Speech-Language Pathologist
Dr. John Smith is a Doctor of Education, affiliated with the Melvin-Smith Learning Center, headquartered in Sacramento, California. She is the author or co-author of numerous books and articles on special education issues. Her latest publication is called "You Don't Have to Be Dyslexic" ("YouDon"
tHavetoBeDyslexic ").
Author's note
The Gift of Dyslexia is specially printed in larger font and with as few hyphens as possible so that it can be easily read by a dyslexic person.
Introduction
(scene from my life in 1949)
The clock on the wall in the classroom is ticking slower and slower.
Teak. . . teak. . . teak
"Please, faster! Please, faster!
Please - please - please, faster!" The little boy barely whispers these words. All the muscles of his body are tense. His arms twitch and tremble. His tightly clenched knees shake and touch the wall in the corner. He slowly rocks back and forth, but tries not to move his folded a white handkerchief, his label of contempt, thrown like a flag over his head.
"Please please!" - he whispers again. Then he takes a deep breath and jerks his leg. But that doesn't help; nothing can help. After a few minutes it starts, a thin trickle at first, and then everything else. He quietly hopes that it won't be so much that it forms a puddle on the floor.
He leans over, pressing his face tightly into the corner. His hands are crossed on his knee, so he hopes to hide the wet spot. Now he is glad that he will not leave school when other children leave. Perhaps they will all have already left when he leaves, and no one will see; no one will tease him. He had cherished this dream at least a hundred times before, but perhaps this time he will not hear these terrible words:
"Backward!"
"Backward!"
"Look at the retard."
"The retard wet his pants again."
He is startled by the bell signaling that the school day is over. In the corner, amid the stomping and noise of leaving children, a boy sits without moving, hoping that no one is looking in his direction. If he could become invisible, he would become it. And until there is silence in the class, he does not dare to move, he does not dare to make a sound.
The noise gets quieter and the clock ticks louder. Teak. . . tick, tick!
Barely audible, the boy whispers something that only he should hear.
If he hadn't already done this, he would have wet his pants again by now. He crouches in the corner as much as possible and tries to become very, very small.
One of the hands that put him in the corner grabs his shoulder and pulls him out of there. "What you said?" - the voice demands.
“I asked God to make sure I didn’t sit in the corner anymore.”
This children's prayer is the main reason for writing this book.
Expressions of gratitude
Although this book bears my name and Eldon Brown's name, we are not the sole creators of it. My wife Alice has worked as hard to get this book into your hands as each of us. She was not only our editor, she also reconciled us in our conflicts, smoothed ruffled feathers and healed bruised pride.
Two other people deserve special thanks: Dr. Fatima Ali, who has been the chief executive officer of the Reading Research Center and my supervisor since 1981, and Larry J. Rochester, without whose help we would never have begun this work.
Here are the names of other people who gave us inspiration, were dedicated and helped us:
Rakaya Ansari
Courtney Davis
Dr Richard Blasband
Sarah Derr
Elise Helmick Davis
Jim Evers
Bill and Charlotte Foster
Dr. Louis Genn Jeff Gershaw
Dr. Albert Geise
Larry and Susan Gilbert
Dr. Brian Halevy-Goldman
Rev. Beth Gray Chris Jackson
BettyAnn and Delisle Judah
Kate and June Monegan
Vicki Morgan Jacqueline
Pratt Dana Rahlmann
Marilyn Rosenthal
Dr. Barry Schwartz
Dr. John Smith
Jill Stovall Dorothy Towner
Finally, I offer my gratitude to the thousands of dyslexics who have walked through the doors of the Reading Disabilities Research Center, and to those who continue to come every week. They are the ones who answer my prayer and help me finally get out of my corner.
COWARDLY WINKERBEAN
LISTEN, BODEN. . . IF THIS TEST SHOWS YOU HAVE DYSLEXIA, IT DOESN'T MEAN YOU ARE DUMB!
OH YEAH! WELL, TELL ME ONE SMART PERSON WHO HAD DYSLEXIA!
NAME ANOTHER TWENTY-FOUR!
“D. Davis’s Method for Eliminating Dyslexia”
The article was prepared by a teacher - speech therapist of Municipal Educational Institution Secondary School No. 51
Barashikova Natalia Viktorovna, living in the city of Tver.
Ronald D. Davis is an engineer, businessman and sculptor, founder of the Center for the Study of Reading Problems at the Dyslexia Correction Center in California, USA. Like many dyslexics, he had a difficult time at school, and teachers unanimously declared that he was “retarded.” Despite this, Davis was gifted with an unusual talent for creativity and imagination, and, having independently coped with his problem, he achieved great success in life. At the age of 38, he made a sensational discovery that allowed him to eliminate his reading problems, and for the first time was able to read a book from cover to cover without much difficulty in just a few hours. By developing his technique, Davis has helped countless people with dyslexia overcome their learning obstacles and benefit from the natural gifts it can provide. The Davis technique gives successful results in 99% of cases of its use.
The essence of the technique: help the child master the mechanism of “turning off” disorientation by establishing the so-called “orientation point”, from which, with the help of a rich imagination, one can see the world around him without distortion. This system helps the child master the most difficult to perceive two-dimensional printed words and symbols and obtain their figurative expression in his imagination, thereby eliminating unnecessary gaps in perception.
Physiological basis of the Davis technique
The development of dyslexia is a very complex process, so its occurrence can be regarded as a real miracle.
A special form of information perception in dyslexics manifests itself in infancy. Even then, his brain is capable of mentally “completing” the image of his mother just by the sight of her hand or elbow. The brain function that allowed the baby to compare the image of a face seen before with the image of a part of a hand and reproduce the image of the whole person is precisely responsible for the symptoms of disorientation. Sounds too fantastic. If such work was performed by the brain of an adult, then we could explain it with analytical reasoning and logic. But before us is a three-month-old baby, recognizing things in his environment that he should not be able to recognize for another three years! And yet, he sees not an elbow, but a real person, that is, the face in his brain appears as if he saw it with his own eyes.
The next stage of development for dyslexics is around 2 years of age. At this age, the child shows extreme curiosity. There are no longer any objects in the apartment that would escape his prying eyes. If a new thing appears in the room, he immediately notices it and unmistakably determines what it is. In seconds, his brain does a tremendous job of examining an object from all sides, and in his imagination the child received about 2000 options for what the proposed thing could be. If he has not seen such a thing before, it will cause confusion. Here, a dyslexic child automatically and subconsciously uses the disorientation function to recognize objects in his environment as the only correct solution.
The developmental stage of a child of three to five years old includes the formation of analytical reasoning and logic skills. But a dyslexic already has his own system, which gives quick and accurate results compared to those provided by analytical reasoning and logic. A dyslexic person does not need such skills, which means that these functions do not develop in him. Therefore, he recognizes objects not consciously, like other children, but with the help of the same disorientation.
Next, children begin to develop verbal conceptualization skills. In fact, the verbal process is many times slower than the mental process. Therefore, when a normal child begins to speak, he automatically begins to think more slowly. A dyslexic, in whom thoughts fly faster than speech, produces a rapid, slurred stream of words. The process of developing verbal conceptualization skills (thinking with the sounds of language) can take up to two years. Once fully developed, it will become the primary way of thinking for most children. So by the age of five, around the time kindergarten begins, typical children have already begun to think with the sounds of words. This may happen slowly, but it will come in handy as they begin to learn to read. Meanwhile, the dyslexic has never heard one of his own thoughts. He was too busy thinking in images, busy with a process of thinking that happens so quickly that he doesn't even notice he's doing it.
At the age of six or seven, when children go to school and begin to learn the alphabet, difficulties await dyslexics. Printed words do not evoke in his brain the images that the word implies. The consideration of all variants of spelling of a letter or word and its absolute incompatibility with the image that it denotes automatically begins. In this case, confusion occurs, the child feels nausea and dizziness. By this point in time, confusion automatically activates a part of his brain that changes his perception. At nine years of age, frustration reaches its limit, and the dyslexic exhibits a complete learning disability. Lessons become torture. In order to somehow catch up with his peers, he begins to find his own compulsive solutions - memorization, rote memorization and associations of sounds, songs, rhymes, concentration. All this allows him to function in the world of words, although such lessons cannot be called real learning. However, in other areas - sports, drawing, applied arts - the child shows remarkable abilities, because they are explained orally or with the help of a visual demonstration. With age, the problem gets worse.
But! Despite everything, the child does not lose the original gift that he developed. The gift of looking at an object or situation and “just knowing” what it is. As the dyslexic continues to observe the world, he also develops a keen intuitive understanding of how things work. He has a developed imagination and inventiveness. It is visually and kinesthetically oriented. He can think on his feet and react quickly. All these abilities are a great gift that many people lack!
Davis technique is a comprehensive program to help those suffering from dyslexia, helping to quickly cope with difficulties with perception, disorientation and problems with reading and writing.
The technique consists of several procedures, which can be divided into the following components:
- assessment of perceptual ability;
- switching;
- discharge and check;
- fine tuning;
- coordination;
- mastering symbols;
- three steps to easy reading;
- mastering symbols in relation to words.
Davis Method Exercises
Referral Program
for orientation control using the Davis system.
The first question that arises for many is: “What should the lesson plan be?” Of course, for each child, the lesson schedule must be individual and determined by a specialist from the medical center. To achieve quick and effective results, an intensive course in program implementation is recommended. However, with a more extended schedule, good results are also achieved, but the total amount of time spent due to the loss of “pace” of classes will be much greater. If you do the program “little by little”, then in some cases this may negatively affect the overall goal of real correction of dyslexia.
1. Assessment of perceptual ability.
This is an initial procedure with which you can determine in which specific area of difficulty the child wants to achieve improvement.
Many parents are surprised to learn that it is more important for their child to overcome difficulties with communication or the ability to make friends than with reading or literacy in school. By applying techniques, you can help him eliminate obstacles in both industries.
The technique teaches the child to create mental images and see the world around him using the so-called “mental eye”. It consists of helping the child imagine a piece of cake or an object on his hand that he can easily imagine with his eyes closed. Using various questions about the shape, color, and location of the object, the specialist determines a clear mental image of the object on the child’s hand. For a more figurative representation, the specialist seems to place the child’s vision in his own finger. By moving the finger, the child can move his mind's vision and "look" at the object from different angles. By the end of the lesson, the child can be distracted from the appearance of the object that he sees with the help of his “mental eye” and restore the original appearance of the object, mentally examining it at the level of his own eyes. He may imagine that an object has disappeared from his left hand and appeared in his right, or has changed shape or size. If the child has successfully completed the exercise provided, then you can safely move on to the next stage.
2. Switching.
The second stage of dyslexia correction is switching (visualization exercise).
The process of correcting dyslexia begins with providing control over perceptual perceptions. This means that the child can learn to consciously turn disorientation on or off. It was said above that the symptoms of dyslexia are symptoms of confusion, so once a dyslexic learns how to turn off confusion, he will be able to “turn off” all of its symptoms. After completing this exercise, it may mistakenly appear that the problem has been solved, but orientation is only the first step in the process of correcting it.
So, after the child has learned to “look” at objects with his “mental eye,” it is necessary to imagine that the mental eye is at the so-called point X, which is the point of orientation for him. This mental point is located at the end of an imaginary line running from the previously imagined object on the patient’s hand through the nose, head and is located approximately 30 centimeters from the top of the back of the head. An anchor, which is the intersection of imaginary lines going to point X from the ears and the frontal part of the head, will help to “fix” this particular place for viewing with the “mental eye” at this point. Once the child imagines this place, there is no need to keep in mind the imaginary object and the line coming from it. Now it represents only the intersection of the remaining lines and the place where the "mind's eye" will need to be placed to turn off the disorientation.
In fact, the specialist is interested in a group of brain cells located in the upper part of the brain and responsible for disorientation. When these cells turn off, the brain sees exactly what the eyes of non-dyslexic people see. That is, if the patient places his mental eye at this point, then he automatically “turns off” his disorientation. The process of placing the "mind's eye" on the point of orientation must be repeated constantly to prevent disorientation from confusing the mind. The process of keeping the mental eye exactly at this point, but without tension, is also important, otherwise the child may get a headache.
3. Discharge and check.
This is the stage at which the child learns to give relief to a tired imagination, which cannot hold the “mental eye” for long at the point of orientation and can shift its imaginary location.
Keeping the mental eye at the point of orientation and not letting it jump is a rather difficult task. The point is that the mental eye “jumping” does not happen on its own. When the patient finds himself in a state of confusion, he tries to move the mind's eye and at the same time tries to prevent it from moving. This process is called "holding." When a child tries to keep the “mental eye” motionless for a long time, he will involuntarily rub the back of his neck, complain of a headache, and frown. Then you need to “discharge”.
The feeling of release is the same feeling you experience when you sigh. If the breath is deep, then the discharge is felt throughout the body, right down to the tips of the fingers and toes. This is the same sensation that a tired “mental eye” should feel. To do this, you just need to want such a feeling to arise in your mental eye. You will immediately feel relief in the neck muscles. If you transfer the feeling of relaxation to your head, the headache will disappear.
After some time, the orientation point established in the first lesson may change its location. You can check this by asking the child to place his finger at this point. If the point is shifted from the correct location, then you need to make a small adjustment by placing your finger in the desired location. When the orientation point has been "adjusted", you can move on to the next step
4. Fine tuning.
This is a procedure by which the child can find his optimal orientation point, that is, the point at which the orientation will be sufficiently accurate.
It is important to remember that this procedure must be carried out when the manifestations of “swimming” of the mental eye relative to the orientation point stop. By moving the mental eye around the existing point of orientation, you can determine its optimal location for the child.
You can move your mind's eye in any direction, but every time you move it, the child will feel a loss of balance. If the point of orientation is shifted to the right, then the body loses balance, leaning to the right. However, with a slight shift, the child can find his own mind's eye location where he feels most comfortable. Then he will have an ideal sense of balance, and he will be able to stand on one leg without making additional movements in the foot. In addition, dyslexics typically experience a deep sense of well-being.
If the optimal point has been found, it is necessary to strengthen it with an anchor. However, the optimal location may change from time to time. By performing the fine-tuning exercise, the child will be able to easily adapt and find “his” orientation point again.
5. Coordination.
A method with which you can forever eliminate the confusion in the concepts of “right” and “left”.
This process aims to address dyspraxia or clumsiness. Coordination must be carried out periodically after the Fine Tuning procedure.
First you need to check the child’s orientation point. Then ask him to stand on one leg and balance his body. Taking 2 small soft balls, you need to throw them so that he catches them with different hands (one with one hand, the other with the other hand), first in turn, then simultaneously, and then simultaneously with a tilt to the right or left so that the child crosses the line of symmetry your body in order to catch both balls. He must catch them without losing his balance. By periodically performing this exercise, clumsiness can be reduced to nothing. This exercise is also good to do during a break when using the following “Mastering Symbols” technique for small words.
6. Mastering symbols.
Difficulties in reading and writing, as well as problems in understanding printed text, can also be solved. It was previously said that a dyslexic child has problems perceiving printed symbols, which in his understanding are not perceived as images. These can be prepositions, interjections, individual words that are difficult to imagine. As you know, a misunderstood or misunderstood word leaves a void in perception, and a piece of the text you read simply flies out of your head. What should a child who studies at school do, because he has to read, learn poetry, formulas and theorems?
A dyslexic's perception is such that it only accepts a three-dimensional image. A two-dimensional and also incomprehensible symbol can cause confusion and disorientation. Let us conventionally call such words and symbols “triggers” of dyslexia. For most dyslexics, symptoms of confusion can be triggered by certain letters of the alphabet and punctuation marks, mathematical symbols and numbers.
Solution.
According to statistics, 20% of what a person hears, 40% of what he sees, and 80% of what a person does himself is absorbed. So, for best mastery, the child must make letters, words, signs, numbers himself in a three-dimensional, tangible image and identify it with ordinary printed letters and numbers. After this, the child must check whether the letters are located correctly and whether they are in the same sequence. He must be able to recite the alphabet in forward and reverse order. If some letters cause him difficulties, then he needs to work with these letters. The child must say how the molded and written letters differ, what letters come before and after it, in a word, work with this letter until it no longer causes difficulties.
With symbols it’s a little different. The child must learn to find punctuation marks in the text and know what to do when he sees such a sign in the text. It is important to be able to give examples of how a punctuation mark or other sign or symbol is used.
7. Three steps to easy reading.
The attention of dyslexics is somewhat scattered. Looking at an object, they will perceive it not in parts, but only as a whole. Therefore, they also look at the word as one whole. And they learn to read by looking at whole words and guessing what a given word is. Such guessing eliminates the sense of certainty necessary to gain confidence in one's abilities.
First step
- spell it out.
Goals:
- teach your child to look from left to right when reading;
- help learn to recognize groups of letters as words.
At this stage, reading comprehension is not necessary. The main goal: learn to recognize letters in a word and read them in the order in which they are written. This technique trains the brain and eyes to move through a word from left to right when reading.
Dyslexics have trouble reading if they either try to read too quickly or focus too much on the material they are reading. Therefore, it is necessary to choose the easiest book so that it can be read without stress. If a child becomes confused at the sight of a large number of words, then you can cover the text below the readable line with a piece of paper.
It is very important not to miss the moment when the child becomes disorientated. Then you need to check the location of the orientation point and take a short break.
Second step
- run your eyes, read by letter.
Goal: to continue the process of moving the gaze from left to right and recognizing words.
If the child cannot pronounce what he has just read, then you must first ask him to spell the word again and tell him what it means, and then ask him to repeat it. Once you recognize most letters, you need to move on to a more complex level of reading.
Third step
- punctuation in images.
Goal: understanding the material being read.
In any language, after every completed thought there is a punctuation mark, with their help it stands out. Every complete thought can be depicted or felt. After reading, the child needs to add meaning to what he just read. When you encounter a punctuation mark, you need to ask him to imagine in his mind what he just read. If a child comes across a word that is not a trigger of disorientation, but it is not understood, then it is necessary to master the very meaning of the word by reading it in a simple dictionary.
8. Mastering symbols in relation to words.
Most people do not know the definitions of common words, which are the most commonly used words in a language. For example, many find it difficult to give any other definition of the word “in” other than that it is a preposition.
The procedure of the “Mastering of Symbols” technique consists of several stages:
- look up the word in the dictionary;
- find out how it is pronounced (transcription);
- read the first definition out loud along with the example sentence;
- establish a clear understanding of the definition, discuss it, create sentences or phrases using this word with such a definition;
- make from plasticine a model of the concept described by the definition (for example, to depict the preposition “in”, you can sculpt the image of a “fork in a socket”, or the scene of “children playing a game”);
- make a symbol or letters of a word from plasticine and make sure the spelling is correct;
- create a mental image of what was created;
- say out loud: “This word means definition (It is high means more than normal height)”, say out loud to a word or symbol: “It says (word) ...”
You must continue to compose sentences and phrases until you can do it easily and without stress.
Development of reading technique in schoolchildren with dyslexia
A person remembers not what is constantly before his eyes, but what flashes. Therefore, in order to master some skills and bring them to automatism, it is necessary to carry out not long exercises, but short ones, but with great frequency. An hour and a half of training will not give any benefit and will even suppress any desire in the child to read. It is much better to do them for 5 minutes several times a day and even before bed.
1. The buzz reading method is very interesting. With buzz reading, you read with your child at the same time out loud, in a low voice, each at your own speed, for 5 minutes.
2. Reading before bed gives good results. The fact is that the last events of the day are recorded by emotional memory, and during sleep a person is under their impression. The body gets used to this state. It is not without reason that 200 years ago it was said: “Student who lives by science, learn the psalter for the coming sleep.”
If a child does not like to read, then a gentle reading regime is necessary: one or two lines are read, then a short rest is arranged. This mode occurs when a child watches filmstrips: he read two lines under the frame, looked at the picture, and rested. Filmstrips should have entertaining content (fairy tales, adventures).
The development of reading techniques is hampered by underdeveloped RAM: after reading three or four words, the child already forgets the first and cannot understand the meaning of the sentence. This situation can be corrected with the help of visual dictations developed by Professor I. T. Fedorenko (Kharkov). Each of the 18 sets contains 6 sentences: the first (“The snow is melting”) contains only two words of 8 letters, and the last contains 46 letters; the length of the sentence increases gradually, one letter at a time. What is the best way to conduct visual dictations? Write down on a piece of paper for the child either 5 sentences at once, which are opened one at a time, or one is written. A certain time is allotted for reading each sentence, which is indicated after it. Your child reads the sentence silently and tries to remember it. Invite him to close his eyes and imagine how it is written, and repeat it to himself. Then remove the piece of paper with the written sentence. The child writes down the text. Visual dictations should be written daily.
Texts of visual dictations (according to I. T. Fedorenko)
Dictation 1
1. The snow is melting. (8 letters)
2. It's raining. (9)
3. The sky is gloomy. (10)
4. Kolya got sick. (eleven)
5. The birds began to sing. (eleven)
Dictation 2
1. The field is empty. (12)
2. The frost is crackling. (12)
3. I'm looking for strawberries. (13)
4. A spruce grew in the forest. (13)
5. Autumn has come. (14)
Dictation 3
1. The days have become shorter. (14)
2. There are many birches in the forest. (15)
3. The birds have arrived. (15)
4. The sun is shining brightly. (16)
5. Lida wiped the board. (16)
Dictation 4
1. Streams run merrily. (16)
2. A sharp wind blew. (16)
3. Zoya studies diligently. (17)
4. The woodpecker was pecking at the tree. (17)
5. I want to plant flowers. (18)
Dictation 5
1. Frost fluffed up the trees. (18)
2. Without water, flowers wither. (19)
3. The hot summer has flown by. (19)
4. A spruce tree was planted near the house. (20)
5. The sun is shining and warming. (20)
Dictation 6
1. Fedya solved the problem at the board. (21)
2. The dawn lit up in the sky. (21)
3. Frost sparkled on the trees. (21)
4. The city of Kyiv is located on the Dnieper. (22)
5. They are picking strawberries in the forest. (22)
Dictation 7
1. In winter, the river became covered with ice. (23)
2. The boy gave his mother flowers. (23)
3. Peasants are working in the meadow. (23)
4. The attendants wiped the dust off the board. (24)
5. The chickens got out of the box. (24)
Dictation 8
1. We lived near a birch grove. (24)
2. The sky was covered with gray clouds. (25)
3. The children planted an acacia tree in the yard. (25)
4. Grandmother bought an ABC book for her grandson. (25)
5. The earth was warmed by the warm sun. (26)
Dictation 9
1. My sister works in a factory. (26)
2. The spring sun gently warmed. (26)
3. It's raining. (10)
4. We love our Kyiv. (14)
5. Take care of your school things. (17)
Dictation 10
1. Andrey has a blank notebook. (20)
2. Help your friend. (21)
3. The waters of the seas taste salty. (22)
4. Our country is fighting for peace. (22)
5. These boys are funny guys. (24)
Dictation 11
1. The children went to the forest to pick mushrooms. (23)
2. A big change has begun. (23)
3. Boys are future excellent students. (24)
4. The streets of our city are beautiful. (24)
5. Moscow is the capital of our Motherland. (24)
Dictation 12
1. Schoolchildren water the seedlings. (24)
2. Deputies gathered for the congress. (24)
3. We must be honest and truthful. (25)
4. Stars shine on the Kremlin towers. (25)
5. In the summer our family lived on the Volga. (25)
Dictation 13
1. Thick rye is earing merrily. (25)
2. The fields were covered with white snow. (25)
3. We read an interesting story. (25)
4. The scientist worked a lot and hard. (25)
5. New houses are growing very quickly. (26)
Dictation 14
1. Mitrofan Fomich got out of the car. (26)
2. The boys brought dry branches. (26)
3. Rye and wheat are ripening in the field. (26)
4. Young people came to the construction site. (24)
5. Children of all countries want to live in peace. (27)
Dictation 15
1. A fresh breeze blew cool. (28)
2. Lightning flashed and thunder roared. (28)
3. Farmers have long since mowed the meadows and fields. (28)
4. The squirrel climbed onto the top branch. (29)
5. The sun was shining brightly, and the children were swimming. (thirty)
Dictation 16
1. The whole nation is proud of the heroes of space. (29)
2. Grandfather Philip tends a large herd. (thirty)
3. I love to watch the sunrise in the field. (32)
4. A large gray cloud rose across the river. (32)
5. Evenki hunters live in the distant taiga. (33)
Dictation 17
1. Everyone was happy to meet the astronauts. (33)
2. The scouts set off on a dangerous journey. (33)
3. A friendly family will turn the land into gold. (34)
4. Shoes should always be cleaned of dust. (34)
5. Our cheerful garden will bloom and turn green. (34)
Dictation 18
1. Blueness appeared between the thinning tops. (35)
2. The free wide steppes of Ukraine are good. (35)
3. The dog barks at the brave, but bites the cowardly. (36)
4. The school tells us to work, the squad teaches us this. (36)
5. Our people want to live in peace with all nations. (37)
Dictation 19
1. In the taiga there are predatory animals: wolves, lynxes. (36)
2. The moon makes its way through the wavy fogs. (36)
3. Schoolchildren are preparing for the new school year. (37)
4. Lots of work in the school garden in early spring. (36)
5. There is a holiday camp on the seashore. (34)
Dictation 20
1. Soon the sky will be covered with clouds and it will drizzle. (38)
2. One day, in the cold winter, I came out of the forest. (38)
3. Water came out from under the ground, and a spring was born. (39)
4. Builders built a highway from the city to the taiga. (37)
5. The flowers were unfamiliar, like bells. (40)
Dictation 21
1. Cool water is good for refreshing tired guys. (41)
2. The waves play, the wind whistles, and the mast bends and creaks. (42)
3. Victory over the enemy filled the warrior’s chest with happiness. (42)
4. Every day thousands of people move into new apartments. (43)
5. Schoolchildren grow tangerines, lemons, and oranges. (44)
Dictation 22
1. A border guard is walking carefully along an overgrown forest path. (45)
2. The boss went to the window and saw a house under construction behind it. (46)
3. Our country lives in peace and friendship with other nations. (43)
4. Part of Siberia is covered with steep and steep mountains. (43
5. The beautiful full-flowing Yenisei River flows through our region. (46)
Reading at the pace of a tongue twister is intended fordevelopment of the articulatory apparatus , special attention is paid to the clarity of reading the endings of words.
We are constantly working on development of phonemic hearing , using purely sayings, tongue twisters, proverbs, sayings.
An indispensable condition for improving reading technique is constant systematic work on analysis and synthesis of words.
Basic techniques and methods of working with dyslexic children:
Breathing, visual and articulation gymnastics.
Method of kinesiological correction.
Stimulating massage and self-massage of hands and fingers.
Rhythmic-speech, music and vitamin therapy.
Mirror-symmetrical drawing with both hands.
Exercises for the development of visual-motor coordination, operational reading field, anticipatory perception of words.
Modified visual dictations by Fedorenko-Palchenko.
Intellectual and educational verbal games: anagrams, isographs, , cryptograms, shapeshifters, magic chains, word labyrinths, matryoshka words and others.
Search tables for the words "Photo Eye".
The method of "voice" reading.
Method of verbal anagrams.
Automation of operational reading units using special syllabic tables.
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