Methods for early detection of dyslexia (A.N. Kornev) educational and methodological material on speech therapy (grade 1) on the topic

What is dyslexia in children

With dyslexia, children have trouble reading. There are several types of defect:

• phonemic form - characterized by the replacement and mixing of similar sounds: voiced with voiceless and vice versa. Possible slow spelling, distortion of words - omission, rearrangement, adding extra sound;
• semantic type - manifested by a lack of reading comprehension. At the same time, the child reads syllables and words correctly;
• agrammatic dyslexia - the child incorrectly reads the endings of words, using the wrong cases, gender and numbers. Similar errors are present in both conversation and writing;
• mnestic form - the visual perception of letters and its relationship with the acoustic image are impaired. The preschooler does not remember letters and their pronunciation;
• the optical form of the defect is accompanied by the replacement and mixing of letters that are graphically similar. A student can start reading one line and jump to another, or he reads in the opposite direction, that is, from right to left;
• tactile dyslexia properties for people with poor or no vision. When reading Braille (for the blind), they mix letters that have similar tactile sensations. They may also jump from one line to another, skip letters, syllables and words, and fail to grasp the meaning of what they read.

In children, this defect manifests itself as problems in learning speech, letters and sounds, inconsistency between oral speech and writing, difficulties in memorizing numbers, and difficulty in learning a foreign language. And also - fast reading, when due to high speed there is no understanding of what is read.

Signs of the disease also include difficulty counting; remembering the sequence of letters in the alphabet, days of the week; selecting rhymes for words; selection of words starting with the same letter; problems with remembering people, places, and spoken language. Oral speech is incoherent and lacks complex sentences.

School learning difficulties caused by dyslexia

In the first grade, children with dyslexia lag behind their classmates in terms of the pace of mastering sound-letter connections, since their alphabetic period lasts about a year, whereas normally it barely reaches six months.

The lack of formation of automaticity of sound-letter connections leads to disturbances in syllable fusion, which significantly impairs reading technique and impedes understanding of what is read. This phenomenon underlies the child’s “lag” in most school subjects that require reading skills.

The more discretely a child reads, the greater the load on working memory, which is initially less functional. This reduces the speed and quality of reading.

The child fails to timely enlarge reading units that are perceived holistically, starting from two-letter syllables and ending with a complete word. It is this process that is called the main line of reading and its development is the main target of the efforts of parents, teachers and speech therapists.

Part of the textual material is usually not read, but is guessed by the reader, which is the normal reading mechanism. At the same time, the reader controls the correctness of such guesses. However, poor vocabulary and weak self-control in children with dyslexia reduce the accuracy of such “guessing”, leading to errors that make it difficult to understand the text. Guessing normally occurs at the level of phrases and text, but with dyslexia, a syllable is guessed, which interferes with normal reading. Children, unable to merge a syllable, try to guess it, making many mistakes. The correction program in this case is focused on the formation of control over the reading result, focusing on the semantic context. In this case, guessing will be a positive component of reading skill.

Results of manifestations of dyslexia:

1. decline in academic performance;
2. decreased child self-esteem;
3. formation of “reading phobia” and “school learning phobia”;
4. disruption of the socialization process.

Timely provision of specialized speech therapy assistance helps prevent neuroticism in the child and his parents, normalize self-esteem and achieve academic performance in school subjects. It is a mistake to base a child’s assessment on his success at school, but this mistake is made by parents and teachers everywhere. For children with dyslexia, this is critical. Therefore, to successfully master the dyslexia correction program, it is necessary to create and maintain high motivation for classes, avoiding harsh coercion.

Davis technique

The author of the method for eliminating dyslexia, Ronald D. Davis, was of the opinion that the basis of dyslexia is disorientation in space, in the perception of time, hearing and vision. Therefore, to overcome dyslexia, they need to develop the skill of controlling disorientation and eliminating the causes of this phenomenon.

Controlling disorientation is achieved by teaching techniques to help the child determine when he is disoriented. This is an understanding of what is happening, for example, the patient evaluates the situation from the outside, as an observer, and analyzes and draws a conclusion. The student begins to become aware of himself in space, and in the future he will begin to adequately perceive letters and words.

Alexander Nikolaevich Kornev , Doctor of Psychology, Head of the Department of Logopathology at the St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University of the Ministry of Health of Russia, author of the Slogy method, spoke about how children develop reading skills and why years of work are needed to overcome dyslexia. Alexander Nikolaevich’s report was made at the scientific and practical online conference “School Difficulties: Strategies for Helping Children,” which took place as part of the II International Awareness Week on Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties.

Many parents dream of a “magic pill” that would save their child from dyslexia. When working with parents, I often feel that they really want to get some kind of quick-acting remedy. The emergence of such desires is understandable. But it’s unlikely to justify them. The capabilities of our brain are, of course, gigantic, but they also have certain limits.

The paradox is that none of the same parents will believe it if they are offered a “miracle method” with the help of which a child will master the entire primary school course in six months. Everyone has long understood that education is a long process: first you have to study for four years in primary school, then continue in secondary school, and this is normal. But for some reason, when it comes to learning to read, and in the conditions of special difficulties that exist for children with dyslexia, such a dream is alive and well. And this is taken advantage of by clever marketers, and simply put, by scammers. This is exactly what they are speculating on, offering absolutely fantastic methods that no professional, of course, would ever believe in. But parents who don’t know much (and sometimes know nothing at all) about the mechanisms of learning skills are ready to believe it.

To explain why such miracles do not happen, let's start from afar. Let's start with how the process of mastering literacy normally occurs. This is a multi-stage process, which for Russian children, for example, begins in preschool age. Although no one has officially charged kindergartens with teaching children to read and write, this is happening nonetheless. Many parents take their children to early development centers; most kindergartens develop in children preliminary knowledge and skills, without which they cannot master literacy. This stage is called propaedeutic: the child, before learning letters, must first recognize language as a separate substance, distinct from the objective world.

While learning to read and write, a child masters a new system of signs, in fact, a new language - a graphic code of oral speech, which he already uses.

Therefore, to begin with, the child must understand, realize that the speech he uses every day is something special. However, up to a certain age (up to about 4 years), children consider a word to be a sign of an object and treat it that way. Some even ask questions such as: “How did you know that the Moon is called Luna? She’s so far from us.” Also Soviet psychologists S.N. Karpov and I.N. Kolobova, in experiments with renaming, were convinced that children 4.5–5 years old are indeed sure that a word is a sign denoting an object. And only later do children master the skills of isolating words from a stream of speech, dividing a word into segments - syllables and sounds. It is especially important that this process is competently supervised by specialists: then children easily understand that discrete individual units are sounds denoted by letters. That is, children are not taught to name letters (as parents sometimes do and thereby spoil the normal course of this process) - they are explained how letters can represent sounds. The only correct way is to go from the sound structure of the word, from sound to letter, but not vice versa. All this takes a lot of time. On average, the entire process of mastering the alphabet lasts from 6 to 12 months. And for children with problems, such as dyslexia, it lasts even longer - often a year or more. Often, already in grades 2–3, children with dyslexia still cannot fully master these skills.

Next, children move on to the alphabetic period - they begin to master sound-letter connections. This process is also slow - depending on the child’s abilities and the methodology, it lasts from six months to a year. The child needs this time in order to remember which letters represent certain sounds and to firmly grasp this (that is, to automate these connections).

Then the next stage begins (sometimes these stages partially overlap or proceed in parallel): the skill of syllable merging occurs. This is especially important in Russian writing. At the initial stage, the syllable is the basic unit in reading. Dividing a word into syllables is the simplest type of analysis, because a syllable, as is known, is the minimum pronunciation unit. But this stage also takes from a year to a year and a half. According to our longitudinal study, it is impossible to go from basic reading to reading whole words in less than a year.

And finally comes the long, long stage of mastering strategies for semantic text analysis. Scientists around the world, including our laboratory, have been studying the mechanisms for mastering this process for many years. It is actually a long journey, lasting 5-7 years after the end of primary school. Why is it so long? Why is this taking so long?

Data obtained by scientists studying the brain using neuroimaging methods have greatly changed our understanding of the functioning of the reading brain. It turned out that all the exercises that a child, while mastering literacy, performs under the guidance of teachers, a speech therapist, or even independently, ultimately create new systems of connections in the brain, new functional systems, new synapses, new pathways, dendrites. That is, in fact (and this is not just a metaphor) a teacher, a speech therapist, in some sense, is the architect of the development of brain support for reading. I would say the same about a neuropsychologist working with a patient with aphasia. The plasticity of the brain, its ability to restructure itself, for example, in the event of damage, thanks to rehabilitation exercises and neuropsychological methods of restoring functions, has been clearly confirmed by numerous observations and experiments. In other words, the entire time the child is practicing, trying to read, improving his skills, his brain is being rebuilt. After all, the fact is that nature has not created brain structures specifically designed for literacy, so we have to use those structures that are genetically designed to serve slightly different functions. That is, during training, they undergo a kind of reconfiguration, and there is a lot of evidence-based scientific data on this matter. Obviously, this is a very serious long-term work and the brain cannot do it instantly, so the process of mastering literacy is not quick. A perfect skill at the brain level is a collection of different neural networks, subsystems (interconnected neurons), located in different parts of the brain. These changes, alas, cannot be carried out instantly or in six months (and some even in a year).

There are general patterns that create certain time limits. Scientists, in particular N.A. Bernstein , have long proven that the assimilation of any skill (both motor and mental), as a rule, occurs in two stages: first it is formed under the control of consciousness, with great expenditure of energy and effort, and then gradually, with exercise, it occurs consolidation and automation. The final result of a fully formed skill is its automation. Most speech therapists know this as a law, mandatory for the formation of speech skills. Often, for children with problems, the automation stage can be delayed and proceed much more slowly than for everyone else.

In different types of writing, the processes of mastering literacy proceed slightly differently. For example, the stage of mastering the skills of syllabification for Russian writing is especially important (compared, for example, with English writing). Therefore, Western methods of developing reading are not directly applicable to Russian writing. Without knowing this, some parents of children with dyslexia hope for success from using Western methods. But such methods were created based on the laws of the English language and writing; they are unsuitable for Russian children. Even if the technique works well in the Western educational system (for example, in an English-speaking country), it cannot be applied to the Russian language. I have seen promising advertising claims that guarantee success from the use of English-language techniques. But in reality this is impossible.

All of the above stages in mastering writing and reading skills, of course, take time. And by magic, no matter how much the parents want it, it is impossible to speed up this process without compromising the result. If they still try to do this, then in the end the house, figuratively speaking, turns out to be built on sand: by forcing the process too much, you can get a raw, non-automated skill that has not been brought to full consolidation, which will then simply be lost. This is the most typical example of what teachers call pedagogical neglect. If the teacher does not control the strengthening and automation of the reading skill, if he speeds up the rate of complication of the material, a disaster occurs for some children.

Underdeveloped skills accumulate like a snowball, and in the end the child seems to hit a wall.

He cannot learn the next most difficult skill because the previous ones fell apart because they were not automated. In other words, we need a principle of automation control: on the one hand, psychological, and on the other, didactic.

Children with dyslexia have many difficulties associated with incomplete acquisition of certain prerequisite skills. There are many of them, but we can name three main difficulties that these children face. Firstly, the formation of sound-letter connections is too slow; True, this difficulty does not arise for everyone; it is characteristic of the dysphasic form of dyslexia, which I described in my book. But the next difficulty arises for all dyslexics: this is extremely slow progress in mastering syllable fusion, syllabic reading and, of course, reading whole words. This progress is so slow that some children, even by the end of school, cannot cope with syllable combinations. This is a truly difficult, time-consuming process, and this is a compelling reason to sympathize with such children. They spend several times more effort on mastering literacy than all other children. They are often accused of laziness, of negligence, but in fact, if, figuratively speaking, you try to get into the skin of such a child, it becomes obvious how difficult it is for him to drag this cart. Conducting an eye-tracking study, we saw firsthand how much more mental operations such children perform when they need to read a word or sentence.

Our research, carried out quite a long time ago, has allowed us to create a multifactorial model of the mechanisms of dyslexia, which includes many different deficient, immature cognitive prerequisites that inhibit the development of skills. According to many scientists in Russia and other countries, it is very difficult to eliminate dyslexia; many believe that it is completely impossible to achieve this. In such children, some areas of the brain are not actively involved in the reading process. Areas of high activity of brain structures that are normally involved in the act of reading are much less involved in this process in children with dyslexia. In order to activate them, to create the necessary brain subsystems, numerous exercises that are repeated and continued for quite a long time are needed.

That is why scientists around the world are looking not only for methods of helping in traditional learning conditions, but are also making attempts to create alternative methods that would spare the weak functions of children with dyslexia, relying on more intact ones. For example, such alternative methods include global or semi-global methods.

We made a similar attempt many years ago. At first it was a candidate's dissertation, which attempted to study the mechanisms of dyslexia themselves. This then led to the creation of an alternative method of teaching reading that allowed children to bypass the most difficult component for them, that is, the skill of syllable fusion, and learn the entire syllable. To do this, a non-traditional approach is used - what is called implicit (or involuntary) acquisition. Research has shown that implicit learning is more intact in children - it is like a reserve resource that does not require conscious learning (which is especially difficult for such children). This technique has been tested for many years and applied to children with various forms of pathologies, not only to children with dyslexia, but also to children with mental retardation and speech underdevelopment.

On this basis, a digital version was developed, which is already online and available to everyone. It allows, on the basis of regular daily exercises (which are needed to enlarge reading units and automate them), to form reading skills in children with severe reading disabilities. Repeating exercises regularly, without leaving home, creates a very convenient opportunity to teach a child to read.

The program we created, among other things, also automatically individualizes the pace of introducing new material and the level of difficulty for each specific child. As a result, it is possible to do the most important thing (which, in fact, is a weak point for such children) - gradually gradually form and enlarge operational reading units. The technique allows you to form the most important prerequisites for reading: expand the amount of RAM for letters and syllables, form and develop skills in synthesizing words from phonological segments (for example, syllables), and syllable analysis skills. In addition, the program forms the most important prerequisite for reading and writing - short-term successive auditory-verbal memory (that is, memory for sequences, for rows). This function is actively used in all speech-related skills. Finally, visual attention and visual search are trained - and this is also the most important function that is always in demand in reading (similar exercises are even used in teaching speed reading to adults). In other words, this whole complex allows you to gradually achieve success. Experience shows that to achieve full results, a year or two is needed - this is the least, and in serious cases of dyslexia, sometimes it takes three or even four years. But as a result, it is really possible to achieve quite lasting results.

The ideal option is a combination of using the technique and simultaneously working with a speech therapist.

I cannot fail to mention how important it is also for parents to motivate the child, help support him, maintain enthusiasm, optimism, and psychologically support him.

Thus, the overall result is complex teamwork.

And returning to the question, are there methods that quickly get rid of dyslexia. Unfortunately, this cannot be answered positively. When some companies or individual specialists offer to change everything in a few months, to arrange everything so that the child will read, behind this lies a deception. So I appeal to parents: be careful. If you are promised quick success, then most likely this is a marketing trap. You will waste time, a lot of money, and ultimately the child will be the loser. Think about it, weigh everything I said. I believe that speech therapists, in turn, should help parents not fall into such a trap, explaining that it is impossible to fix everything so quickly, which means it is a deception. Any promises of fantastically fast results are actually fraud, for which, unfortunately, there are no penalties yet.

Kornev's technique

Kornev’s method for eliminating dyslexia is based on early diagnosis of pathology using tests. For example, the child must name objects in order and say their purpose, repeat the movements after the teacher, repeat the rhythm, identify the left and right arm/leg. The same exercises are used in classes to correct dyslexia.

The author has developed a technique that includes selecting an individual learning pace, monitoring new skills, and using a game form of learning.

Exercises to correct dyslexia in children

A set of exercises to correct dyslexia is selected individually. It is necessary to take into account the cause of the speech defect, the severity of the pathology and concomitant diseases.

Exercises to develop phonemic processes

Exercises to overcome dyslexia develop the ability to perceive and distinguish sounds. In this way, sound pronunciation defects are corrected and correct phonemic processes develop. Young children are given the opportunity to listen to the sounds of nature: they must guess who makes this sound. The same tasks can be given with everyday sounds.

Another exercise is to fill several boxes with small objects, and the boxes should be in pairs: buttons-buttons, coins-coins. The child must find the right pair by ear.

The following exercises to overcome dyslexia: pronouncing one sound loudly and quietly, slowly and quickly, abruptly and continuously; search for a pair of pictures with a similar sound (tooth and soup, nut and jackdaw), complete the poems by choosing a rhyme; repeat syllables with the same vowel (ka-pa-ta).

Exercises for the development of the speech apparatus and voice

These exercises to overcome dyslexia help develop your speech apparatus and voice. Articulation gymnastics are used:

1. First, do a warm-up by taking a deep breath and exhaling, holding your breath, then exhaling incompletely;
2. The baby is asked to imitate the sounds that animals make: a fly flies - “z-z”, a cat purrs - “mrrrr”;
3. Take a deep breath and, as you exhale, read all the consonants in a line from the book;
4. Read the pure sayings “chi-chi-chi - we lost the balls”, then sets of words “arba - harp”, “door - worm - beast”, gradually increasing the volume of the voice and tempo;
5. Read tongue twisters or proverbs.

Exercises to develop fine motor skills

Exercises are indicated for the correction of tactile dyslexia. Training fine motor skills of the hands increases the ability to tactilely perceive an object, distinguish between them, develops spatial concepts, and increases the performance of the brain.

The most effective finger gymnastics. For young children, activities in the form of a game are suitable, for example, “The White-sided Magpie” or “Berry”. Older children can do regular gymnastics and finger massage. In terms of developing fine motor skills, modeling, drawing, as well as various lacing, construction sets, and puzzles will help you out.

It is useful to let your child play with objects of different sizes, textures, and materials. You can scatter different cereals, arrange toys. The child will be interested in sorting through these items. For older children, make the task more difficult and hide objects in the cereal: let him determine by touch what kind of object it is and what it is made of.

Exercises to improve visual perception

These exercises for optical dyslexia help develop correct reading skills by developing visuospatial concepts, analysis and synthesis. An example of such an exercise: find an extra letter in the series A-B-O-Y-E, an extra syllable in the series RA-ME-LA-DA, find the common in the pair SOAP-CUTE, CHALK-MEL.

Further tasks become more complicated. For example, move the letter to the correct place: LOST-TABLE. When the student copes with this, whole sentences with such incorrect words are offered.

Exercises for agrammatic dyslexia

These exercises for correcting dyslexia in schoolchildren allow them to develop the grammatical structure of speech and enrich their vocabulary. Children are asked to make phrases from the proposed words, inflect words, agreeing on their number, gender, and case. In the future, the tasks become more complicated: you need to compose entire sentences from the proposed set of words, compose a coherent story based on the picture, insert the missing word into the sentence.

Examples of corrective exercises

The latest version of the SLOGY online platform includes 6 types of exercises that cover different problem areas that hinder the process of reading in children with dyslexia.

Digital testing

In the “Digital Testing” exercise, individual search time is diagnosed. The faster a child recognizes material, such as syllables or words, the more automated the skill is. The program uses a digital diagnostic table that records individual graphic image search times.

Syllables

In the “Syllables” exercise, the child develops syllabic reading through involuntary memorization of frequency syllables. To consistently automate a skill, the table is filled with syllables of a certain level of complexity, so the child masters them in accordance with the basic diagnostic principle “from simple to complex.”

Types of syllables:

1. SG/GS (MA/AM, LI/IL, etc.);
2. GHS (VOC, CON, NAB, etc.);
3. SSG (SVO, STO, PRO, etc.).

Monitoring the degree of automation relies on task completion time as an indicator of mastery. The reduction in search time indicates that certain syllables are recognized instantly, that is, the syllable has been mastered by the child. In this case, the table is updated, allowing you to begin mastering new syllables.

To adjust the optimal load, two levels of table complexity (9 or 16 syllables) are used, depending on the child’s individual capabilities and the results of interaction with the program.

Beads

In the “Beads” exercise, the child is given a spoken word, which he must divide into syllables and find these syllables in the table. This develops operational phonological memory, promotes automation of reading syllables and mastering the spelling of dictionary words. The exercise develops the skill of syllable analysis and trains short-term successive memory. Based on statistics obtained as a result of the child’s work with the program, the material gradually becomes more complex in length and sound-letter structure of words.

Tape recorder and Slogomet

Exercises “Tape recorder” and “Syllomet” are aimed at expanding RAM, developing the skill of synthesizing a word from graphic syllables and understanding it.

The exercises have a similar structure, but differ in the way the educational material is presented: oral and written. As mastery progresses, a graphic representation of the syllable is gradually added to the auditory presentation of words by syllable, and then the auditory representation is removed and only the graphic remains. Thus, the child gradually moves from auditory perception of syllabic units to graphic perception.

Anagrams

The “Anagrams” exercise develops the skill of guessing (anticipating) a whole word and trains working memory for rows of letters. As you master the material, it becomes more complex due to the length of the word, options for mixing letters, and the degree of mixing of the proposed answer options.

Words

The “Words” exercise is aimed at developing the skill of holistic perception of high-frequency, that is, frequently used, functional and significant words, which makes it easier for the child to read texts. A lexicon of global high-frequency graphic words is formed and their visual recognition is automated.

The program is a rather complex system of interdependent exercises, including constant monitoring of the child’s results and capabilities, on the basis of which the level of complexity and content of the exercises are selected.

Game methods for correcting dyslexia in children

Games are an essential element of helping with dyslexia. Below we describe the most popular games:

1. Find words with the same root in the list, and the words must denote the same action, object or sign: walking, walking, leaving, walking;
2. Search for words by given sound. Develops hearing;
3. You need to prepare cards with words or letters: make them yourself or purchase a ready-made set. Next, the student must find a card with a word that the teacher calls. Another option is to select a rhyme for a given word, naming words with a specific letter;
4. Drummer - pronounce words syllable by syllable, for each syllable we clap our hands or beat the drum.

Prevention measures

An important component of prevention is competent planning of pregnancy, prevention of complications of pregnancy and childbirth, traumatic brain injuries during childbirth and in the future. This will prevent brain dysfunction, which is the main cause of dyslexia.

The next method of preventing dyslexia is to develop visuospatial functions, memory, attention, fine motor skills, and analytical abilities. You need to communicate more with your baby: in everyday life, during classes. The development of spoken language plays a big role in preventing and overcoming dyslexia. Learning songs, stories, poems will help improve writing and reading skills. Read books with discussion of what you read or listen to audio books.

It is important to exclude ophthalmological pathology and diseases of the hearing organ. Impaired auditory and visual perception can cause dyslexia.

Regular testing is recommended for children at risk. This will allow timely identification of speech disorders and begin their correction.

Recommendations

This methodological manual is intended for speech therapy diagnosis of reading disorders in students in grades 2-6, to identify predisposition to dyslexia in preschool children before starting school. The manual presents age-related characteristics and norms of the main reading indicators of the Moscow population of schoolchildren. The technique is tested and relevant in speech therapy. The manual is addressed to speech therapists, teachers of Russian language and literature, and psychologists. May be helpful to parents of students with reading disabilities.

Using the technique

recommended for a wide range of pedagogical and medical workers involved in pre-school medical examination
of children
(children's psychoneurologists, neurologists, psychologists, pediatricians, speech therapists).

Authors: Kornev A.N., Ishimova O.A. Title: Methodology for diagnosing dyslexia in children. Publishing house of the Polytechnic University, year of publication: 2010.