Seek advice from a speech pathologist

Oksana Makerova
Dyslexia

Dyslexia- partial specific violation of the reading process, due to the lack of formation (violation) of higher mental functions and manifested in repeated errors of a persistent nature.

This disease, sometimes called "word blindness", is associated with reduced brain activity in a certain area of ​​the left hemisphere. Dyslexia affects 5 to 12% of people.

Alexia- complete inability or loss of the ability to master the process of reading.

Forms of dyslexia
There are phonemic, semantic, agrammatical, mnestic, optical and tactile forms of dyslexia.

Phonemic dyslexia- dyslexia associated with the underdevelopment of the functions of the phonemic system, sound-letter analysis.

semantic dyslexia(Greek semantikos - semantic) - dyslexia, manifested in impaired understanding of the words, sentences, text read with technically correct reading.

Agrammatical dyslexia- dyslexia, due to the underdevelopment of the grammatical structure of speech.

mnestic dyslexia(Greek mnesis - semantic) - dyslexia, manifested in the difficulties of mastering all the letters, in their undifferentiated replacements.

Optical dyslexia(Greek optikos - related to vision) - dyslexia, manifested in the difficulties of assimilation and in the mixtures of graphically similar letters, as well as in their mutual substitutions. With organic damage to the brain, mirror reading can be observed. There are also literal optical dyslexia, in which there are violations in the isolated recognition and discrimination of a letter, and verbal optical dyslexia, which manifests itself in violations when reading a word.

Tactile dyslexia(lat. tactilis - tactile) - dyslexia, which is observed in blind children and manifests itself in the difficulties of differentiating tactilely perceived letters of the Braille alphabet.

Causes of dyslexia
Scientists have been studying dyslexia for over a hundred years, but there is still debate about what it is, how to recognize it, and why it occurs.

It is undoubtedly difficult for an ordinary literate person to imagine how one can not be able to read a printed text, therefore this inability is often attributed to laziness, stubbornness or parental pride wounded by the obvious failures of their child. For a long time, doctors simply diagnosed dyslexia, but this approach overgeneralizes the problem. If you think about it, the very ability of a person to read is akin to a miracle. The process of reading requires a fundamental rewiring of the visual and speech connections of the brain in order to associate sounds with certain graphic signs, for example, the letters that stand for them. In turn, it is necessary not only to hear and understand various words - it is necessary that your brain breaks them down into their component parts (sounds or phonemes) in such a way that, when you see, for example, the word "cat", you mentally hear the sounds [k] -[o]-[t] and associated them with the image of a fluffy purring animal.

Unlike speech, which any normally developed child learns by imitating others, reading must be learned. Since the ability to speak developed in humans 50-100 thousand years ago, and writing was invented relatively recently (it is about five thousand years old), special centers have not yet had time to form in the brain. Most likely, a number of other parts of the brain, which originally had a different purpose, are used for this purpose. We can say that our brain "works part-time on the side," and therefore it sometimes fails, which must be eliminated.

To understand what kind of failures we are talking about, it is necessary to have an idea about the work of the brain. It has long been known that each of its hemispheres has its own specialization: the right, among other things, is responsible for orientation in space, and the left, in particular, determines the perception of speech. This division of labor is purely arbitrary, since further specialization of departments takes place in each hemisphere. Therefore, the simplest actions, such as playing ball or reading a poem, require the complex interaction of a number of different parts of the brain.

Knowledge about the patterns of work human brain are accumulated mainly by studying people who have undergone neurosurgical intervention or have been injured in one of the parts of the brain, and this is not The best way. Even high-precision x-rays reflect only the basic structure of this most complex organ, but by no means the principle of its operation. This required a fundamentally new device that would not expose patients to radioactive irradiation and at the same time display how different parts of a healthy brain cope with a particular task.

The breakthrough came with the advent of the so-called functional magnetic resonance analyzer (MRA), which allowed us to see which parts of the brain receive more blood flow (that is, are actively working) at a certain point in time. With the help of MRA, neuroscientists were able to establish that the main role in the process of reading is played by three main zones in the left hemisphere, which are something like a "sound initiator", "analyzer" and "automatic identifier" and act simultaneously. The "initiator" is responsible for pronouncing sounds aloud (or to himself) and recognizes certain phonemes that make up the word, the "analyzer" combines them into syllables and binds them to letter designations, and finally, the "determinant" activates a certain amount of skills that allow you to visually recognize a familiar word. Curiously, beginning readers rely mainly on the first and second centers, while more advanced readers are dominated by the center of "automatic determination" of value-images. If everything goes well, there is no difficulty in reading.

However, in people with dyslexia, there is a failure of the neural connections between the first and second centers, possibly due to the dominant role of the primary recognition center. Therefore, they have difficulty in moving from the sound composition of a word to its meaning, and they read each word syllable by syllable, as if seeing it for the first time. Since word recognition is not carried out automatically, but mechanically, the reading rate is extremely low. Strange as it may seem, the most difficult words for dyslexics are the shortest ones.

According to the pediatric neurologist of the Children's Clinical Hospital named after. Filatova Elena Zhidkova, dyslexia occurs due to "uncoordinated work of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The cause may be birth trauma, disorders during pregnancy, and violations of proper motor development." According to her, reading disorders can also be caused by the fact that the child was put on his feet too early and his fine motor skills did not form.

Dyslexia is also inherited. The scientist Ruinhold believes that there is a special, congenital form dyslexia, when children inherit from their parents qualitative immaturity of the brain in its individual areas. This immaturity manifests itself in specific delays in the development of a particular function.

Reading disorder is observed very often in children with MMD, ADD, cerebral palsy, ZPR, ZRR.

Interesting is the discovery presented at the meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. It confirms the hypothesis that dyslexia is not a manifestation of stupidity or unwillingness to learn, but a very real genetic disease, violating correct work brain.

According to Dr. Albert M. Galaburda, up to 12 different genes may be involved in the development of dyslexia. Thus, to date, scientists have been able to isolate at least a quarter of the genes responsible for dyslexia, which already makes it possible to create tools for the genetic diagnosis of the disease. In all likelihood, a workable testing methodology will be created over the next few years.

Dr. Jeffrey R. Gruen of medical school Yale University in his report at a meeting of the Society described one of the genes responsible for dyslexia - the DCDC2 gene. A severely attenuated version of this gene occurs in one in five dyslexics examined, which means that their brains contain significantly less of the protein encoded by this gene. The function of this protein, according to Gruen, is not yet known.

The second gene, Robo1, discovered by Prof. molecular physics Dr. Juha Kere from the Royal Institute in Stockholm, is located on the third chromosome and is responsible for the development of axons that connect the right and left hemispheres of the brain. A decrease in the activity of this gene leads to insufficient development of dendrites in the areas of the brain involved in reading, according to The New York Times.

Speech symptoms of dyslexia
1. Replacing and mixing sounds when reading, most often phonetically close sounds (voiced and deaf, affricates and the sounds that make up them), as well as replacing graphically similar letters (x-zh, p-n, z-a, etc. ).

2. Letter-by-letter reading - violation of the merging of sounds into syllables and words, the letters are called alternately, "stacked".

3. Sound distortion syllabic structure words that appear in omissions of consonants in confluence, consonants and vowels in the absence of confluence, additions, permutations of sounds, omissions, permutations of syllables.

4. Violation of reading comprehension, which manifests itself at the level of understanding of a single word, sentence and text, when there is no technical disorder in the process of reading.

5. Agrammatisms when reading. They manifest themselves at the analytical-synthetic and synthetic stages of mastering the reading skill. Violations are noted case endings, agreement of noun and adjective, verb endings, etc.

6. Often observed in the anamnesis of a violation of sound pronunciation.

7. Poverty vocabulary, the inaccuracy of the use of words. In mild cases, this is detected only at the stage of mastering the skill of reading.

Nonverbal symptoms of dyslexia
Dyslexia is caused by the lack of formation of mental functions that carry out normal reading (visual analysis and synthesis, spatial representations, phonemic analysis and synthesis, underdevelopment of the lexical and grammatical structure of speech). This allows us to conclude that in children:

1. There are difficulties in orientation in all spatial directions, difficulties in determining the left and right sides, top and bottom.

2. There is an inaccuracy in determining the shape, size. The lack of formation of optical-spatial representations is manifested in drawing, when composing a whole from parts during design, in the inability to reproduce a given form.

3. There is a delay in the differentiation of the right and left parts of the body, late literalization or its violation (left-handedness or mixed dominant).

The psychological aspect of dyslexia
If a necessary measures not accepted on time, the student's self-esteem suffers, who sees the success of his classmates. Usually children of six or eight years old are already fluent in reading, while more gifted dyslexic children hopelessly lag behind them, begin to doubt their abilities and, under various pretexts, try to avoid attending school. Moreover, they are often ridiculed by classmates, which further aggravates the situation.

Question of diagnostics
There is no consensus on when dyslexia can be diagnosed. Someone says that in early childhood, some insist that we should wait, because in elementary school, problems with reading and writing may be due to other reasons.

AT primary school In general education schools, there are children whose process of mastering writing and reading is impaired. A partial disorder in the processes of reading and writing is denoted by the terms dyslexia and dysgraphia. Their main symptom is the presence of persistent specific errors, the occurrence of which in students of the General Education School is not associated with any decrease in intellectual development, neither with severe hearing and vision impairments, nor with the irregularity of schooling. Dyslexia and dysgraphia usually occur together. A complete inability to master writing and reading is called agraphia and alexia, respectively. The causes of dysgraphia and dyslexia are associated with a violation of the interaction of various analyzer systems of the cerebral cortex.
Dysgraphia manifests itself in persistent and repetitive writing errors. These errors are usually grouped according to following principles: displacement and replacement of letters; distortion of the sound-syllabic structure of the word; violations of the continuity of writing individual words in a sentence - breaking a word into parts, continuous spelling of words in a sentence; agrammatism; mixing letters by optical similarity.
Violation of writing in the form of dysgraphia is closely associated with insufficient readiness mental processes, formed in the course of development oral speech. It is during the period of mastering oral speech that generalized concepts of the sound and morphological composition of the word are created on a purely practical level, which subsequently, when the child moves to literacy and spelling, contributes to their conscious assimilation. For the assimilation of reading and writing and the phonetic and morphological principles the child must be able to separate the sound side of the word from the semantic side, to analyze the sound composition of the word, clearly pronounced in all its parts. For fluent oral speech, it is often sufficient to clearly pronounce only those sounds that are necessary for understanding the word (semantic sounds). Those sounds that are less related with understanding of the word by the listener, are pronounced in natural speech less carefully and definitely. Too clear articulation of all the sound elements of the word contradicts the orthoepic requirements of the language. At the same time, in the process of normal speech ontogenesis, a child acquires a fairly accurate idea of ​​the sound composition of a word, including its unclearly pronounced elements. This turns out to be possible due to linguistic generalizations that develop with the constant comparison of words with each other. In the process of correlating sound elements that reflect the difference between lexical and grammatical meanings words, the child's cognitive processes are being prepared for understanding the relationship between orthoepy and spelling. Successful mastery of writing is preceded not only by the accumulation of a sufficient vocabulary, but also by the presence in speech experience of a conscious analysis of words according to adequate signs of correlating orthoepy and spelling. So, the child must be aware that the words to fly, to fly have one root. The normal formation of oral speech is accompanied by accumulated experience cognitive work both in the sphere of elementary sound generalizations and in the sphere of morphological analysis.
Children with speech underdevelopment do not master this level of linguistic generalization and, accordingly, are not ready to master such a complex analytical and synthetic activity as writing.
Currently, it is customary to distinguish several types of dysgraphia.
1. Articulatory-acoustic dysgraphia. With this form of dysgraphia, children experience various distortions of sound pronunciation (phonetic disorders) and insufficiency of phonemic perception of speech sounds that differ in subtle acoustic-articulatory features and (phonetic-phonemic disorders). Articulatory-acoustic dysgraphia manifests itself mainly in the substitutions of letters that correspond to the substitutions of sounds in the child's oral speech. Sometimes substitutions of letters remain in the child's letter even after they are eliminated in oral speech. According to R. E. Levina (1959), this is because children with speech pathology do not develop generalized concepts about the sound and morphological composition of the word during the period of mastering oral speech. Normally, it is the creation of these generalizations that allows primary school students to consciously move on to acquiring literacy and spelling.
2. Acoustic dysgraphia. In children with this form of dysgraphia, the processes of phonemic perception are not well formed. This is manifested in the substitutions and mixtures of letters, which denote sounds that differ in subtle acoustic-articulatory features. For example, substitutions and displacements of letters denoting whistling and hissing sounds; voiced and deaf; soft and hard; r sounds and l; substitutions of letters denoting vowel sounds. In addition, children may have an unformed sound analysis and synthesis, which manifests itself in writing in the form of the following specific errors: omissions, insertions, permutations, repetitions of letters or syllables. The omissions of letters indicate that the child does not isolate all of its sound components in the composition of the word (“snks” - sled). The permutations and repetitions of letters and syllables are an expression of the difficulties of analyzing the sequences of sounds in a word ("korvom" - carpet,"sugar" - sugar). Insertions of vowels are more often observed with consonant clusters, which is explained by the overtone that appears when the word is spoken slowly during writing and resembles a reduced vowel (“girl”, “Alexandar”).
Z. Dysgraphia associated with impaired language analysis and synthesis. This form of dysgraphia is due to the fact that students do not isolate in speech stream stable speech units and their elements. This leads to continuous spelling adjacent words, prepositions and conjunctions followed by a word (“on a tree”); to separate spelling parts of the word, more often the prefix and the root (“and dut”).
4. Agrammatical dysgraphia. This form of dysgraphia is more clearly traced than others due to the lack of development of the grammatical side of oral speech in children. On the letter are violated grammatical connections between words, as well as semantic connections between sentences.
5. Optical dysgraphia associated with underdevelopment of spatial representations, analysis and synthesis of visual perception. This is manifested in the substitutions and distortions of similar letters (d - b, t- sh, i- w, p- t, x- f, l- m), incorrect arrangement of letter elements, etc. This type of dysgraphia includes the so-called “mirror writing”.
A child with dysgraphia usually has difficulty developing graphic skills, resulting in uneven handwriting. Child's difficulty in choosing desired letter give a characteristic casual look to the letter. It is full of corrections and corrections.
Dyslexia as a partial disorder of the process of mastering reading, it manifests itself in numerous repeated errors in the form of substitutions, permutations, omissions of letters, etc., which is due to the unformed mental functions that ensure the process of mastering reading. Mistakes in dyslexia are persistent. Distinguish the following forms dyslexia.
1. phonemic dyslexia. It is observed in children with unformed functions of phonemic perception, analysis and synthesis. Children in the process of reading confuse letters denoting sounds that are similar in acoustic and articulatory parameters. With the underdevelopment of the functions of phonemic analysis and synthesis, letter-by-letter reading, distortion of the sound-syllabic structure of the word (inserts, omissions, permutations) are observed.
2. semantic dyslexia due to the unformed processes of evukosyllabic synthesis and the lack of differentiated ideas about syntactic links inside the offer. Such children master the technique of reading, but they read mechanically, without understanding the meaning of what they read.
3. Agrammatical dyslexia observed in children with unformed grammatical side of oral speech. When reading sentences, grammatical errors are observed.
4. Mnestic dyslexia associated with a violation of the establishment of associative links between the visual image of the letter and the auditory image of the sound, i.e. children cannot remember the letters and compare them with the corresponding sounds.
5. Optical dyslexia due to the same mechanisms as optical dysgraphia. When reading, letters similar in outline are mixed and interchanged by children. Sometimes "mirror reading" can be observed.
Children with dysgraphia and dyslexia need speech therapy classes, which are used special methods developing writing and reading skills.

2.5. Clinical-psychological-pedagogical characteristics of children with speech disorders
Children with speech disorders usually have functional or organic abnormalities in the state of the central nervous system.
The presence of an organic brain lesion determines that these children do not tolerate heat, stuffiness, riding in transport, long swings, they often complain of headaches, nausea and dizziness. Many of them have various motor disorders: imbalance, coordination of movements, undifferentiated movements of the fingers and articulatory movements (i.e., unformed general and oral praxis).
Such children are quickly exhausted and fed up with any kind of activity (i.e., they get tired quickly). They are characterized by irritability, increased excitability. Motor disinhibition, cannot sit still, fiddle with something in their hands, dangle their legs, etc. They are emotionally unstable, the mood changes quickly. Often there are mood disorders with the manifestation of aggression, obsession, anxiety. Much less often they have lethargy and lethargy. These children tire quite quickly, and this fatigue accumulates during the day towards the evening, as well as towards the end of the week. Fatigue affects general behavior child, on his well-being. This can manifest itself in increased headaches, sleep disturbance, lethargy, or, conversely, increased motor activity. It is difficult for such children to maintain perseverance, efficiency and voluntary attention throughout the lesson. Their motor disinhibition can be expressed in the fact that they show motor restlessness while sitting in class, get up, walk around the classroom, run out into the corridor during the lesson. During the break, children are overly excitable, do not respond to comments, and after the break they can hardly concentrate on the lesson.
As a rule, such children have instability of attention and memory, especially speech, low level understanding of verbal instructions, insufficiency of the regulatory function of speech, low level of control over one's own activity, impaired cognitive activity, low mental performance.
Mental condition these children is unstable, in connection with which their performance changes dramatically. During the period of psychosomatic well-being, such children can achieve quite high results in their studies.
Children with functional deviations in the state of the central nervous system are emotionally reactive, easily give neurotic reactions and even disorders in response to a remark, a bad mark, a disrespectful attitude from the teacher and children. Their behavior may be characterized by negativism, increased excitability, aggression, or, on the contrary, increased shyness, indecision, fearfulness. All this as a whole testifies to the special state of the central nervous system of children suffering from speech disorders.

According to statistics, 60% of children have speech disorders. Every year in preschool institutions the number of children who have certain speech disorders, expressed to a greater or lesser extent, is increasing. By carrying out special correctional and pedagogical work with preschoolers, in many cases it is possible to prevent or prevent the development of speech pathology in the future. However, not all preschool children, for various reasons, are covered by this work. As a result, some children of primary school age have various difficulties in mastering written language, which in turn lead to a delay in mastering the school curriculum.

According to I. N. Sadovnikova, “the problem of writing disorders among schoolchildren is one of the most urgent, since it (written speech) becomes the basis and means of further education.”

Written speech includes writing and reading as equal components.

Reading is one of the speech activity, closely related to both pronunciation and understanding of what is read (L. F., Spirova) The perception and distinction of letters is only the outer side of the reading process, behind which the most essential and basic actions with the sounds of the language are hidden (D. B. Elkonin)

A letter is a sign system of speech fixation, which allows using graphic elements to transmit information at a distance and fix it in time. Writing is understood as a means of capturing a person's thoughts with the help of specially created symbols.

Writing disorders are called dysgraphia and dyslexia.

Dyslexia is a partial specific violation of the reading process, due to the lack of formation (violation) of higher mental functions and manifested in repetitive errors of a persistent nature.

Dysgraphia is a partial violation of the formation of the writing process, causing persistent specific errors, the occurrence of which is not associated with ignorance of grammatical rules, but is due to underdevelopment or partial damage to the brain mechanisms that provide a complex multi-level process of writing.

Reading and writing errors should not be considered ridiculous and should not be explained personal qualities students: inability to listen to the teacher's explanation, inattention when writing, careless attitude to work, etc. In fact, these errors are based on more serious reasons.

To understand the mechanisms of these disorders, it is necessary to have an idea of ​​what controls the processes of reading and writing. Written speech is formed only in conditions of purposeful learning, its mechanisms are formed during the period of literacy and improved in the course of all further learning.

It is closely connected with the process of oral speech and is carried out only on the basis of sufficient high level its development. Mastery writing is the establishment of new connections between the word heard and spoken, and the word visible and written. This is a multi-level process in which various analyzers take part: speech-motor (providing the perception and analysis of information from the speech apparatus, i.e. perception and analysis by the article, and organizing the preparation and execution of speech movements, visual (providing the perception and analysis of visual stimuli, namely controls the selection and recognition of graphemes, speech-auditory (provides the perception of phonemes as acoustic stimuli and the perception of the semantic content of the utterance of oral speech, general motor (with its help, the grapheme is translated into a kinema (a set of certain movements necessary for recording).

The regulation and coordination of the work of these analyzers is carried out in the parietal-occipital-temporal regions of the brain. Normally, at 10-11 years of life, the formation of this process ends. In the frontal parts of the brain, an impulse to act is born, that is, the motive for writing and reading, and the work of all structures involved in these processes is controlled. Only with the coordinated work of all analyzers and with the preservation of certain brain structures is it possible to successfully master the skills of writing and reading.

What are the reasons behind the writing disorders that teachers most often face at school?

Of great importance for mastering the processes of writing and reading is the degree of formation of all aspects of oral speech. Therefore, violations or delays in the development of phonemic hearing and perception, the lexical and grammatical side of speech, sound pronunciation at different stages of development are one of the main causes of dysgraphia and dyslexia.

The hereditary factor is also important, when the child is given the underdevelopment of brain structures, their qualitative immaturity. In this case, as a result of the difficulty of cortical control in mastering written language, the child may experience approximately the same difficulties as parents at school age.

Thus, the untimely formation of the process of lateralization (the establishment of the dominant role of one of the cerebral hemispheres) can serve as a source of failure in the development of written speech. By the time of learning to read and write, the child should already have a clear lateral orientation, the leading hand has been determined. With a delay in this process, with hidden forms of left-handedness, cortical control over many types of activity is difficult.

The cause of dyslexia and dysgraphia can also be a disorder in the systems that provide spatial and temporal perception.

It happens that reading and writing disorders can be caused by bilingualism in the family.

Also, the reasons for the development of junior schoolchildren speech disorders can be the lack of formation of arbitrary forms of activity, the lack of development of higher mental processes, as well as the instability of the emotional sphere and pedagogical neglect.

The first signs of the development of dysgraphia and dyslexia can be noticed by the teacher when teaching the child to read and write. It is necessary to keep in mind the following: all errors that can be attributed to dysgraphic and dyslexic are specific, typical and persistent. If a child has errors in reading and writing that can be attributed to specific ones, but they are rare, from time to time or even single, then this is most likely the result of overwork, inattention. Here further observation is needed. The main manifestations (symptoms) of violations of written speech.

Symptoms of dyslexia

1. Replacing and mixing sounds when reading, most often phonetically close sounds (voiced and deaf, affricates and sounds included in their composition, as well as replacing graphically similar letters (X - F, P - N, Z - V).

2. Letter-by-letter reading - a violation of the fusion of sounds into syllables and words.

3. Distortion of the sound-syllabic structure of the word, which manifests itself in omissions of consonants during the confluence of the machinist - machinist, in omissions of consonants and vowels in the absence of confluence, additions, rearrangements of sounds, omissions and rearrangements of syllables.

4. Violation of reading comprehension. It manifests itself at the level of a single word, sentence, text, when there is no breakdown of the technical side in the process of reading.

5. Agrammatism when reading. It appears on analytic-synthetic and a synthetic stage of mastering reading skills. There are violations of case endings, noun and adjective agreement, verb endings, etc.

The symptomatology of dysgraphia is manifested in persistent and repetitive mistakes in the writing process, which can be grouped as follows.

1. Distortions and replacements of letters. Such errors are associated with a violation of pronunciation (substitutions for hardness - softness, deafness - sonority, articulatory similarity, as well as the replacement of graphically similar letters.

2. Distortion of the sound-syllabic structure of the word, which manifests itself in omissions of consonants during the confluence of the machinist - machinist, in omissions of consonants and vowels in the absence of confluence, additions, permutations of sounds, omissions and permutations of syllables.

3. Violation of the continuity of writing individual words in a sentence: separate writing of parts of the word (prefixes are separated from the word, the continuous writing of prepositions with words, the displacement of the boundaries of the word “at dedmo Rza” - at Santa Claus.

4. Agrammatisms in writing. Violation of the connection of words: coordination and control.

The teacher needs to convince the parents to visit the consultations of a speech therapist or defectologist and a psychologist. Depending on what are the reasons for the problems in learning, classes are shown either with one specialist or with several at the same time. After consultations, if your suspicion has been confirmed, and the child has started attending classes with a speech therapist to the class teacher, it is necessary to maintain constant contact with the speech therapist and assist him in his work.

Throughout the special classes, the child needs a favorable regime. After numerous twos and threes, unpleasant conversations at home, he should feel at least a small, but success. Therefore, it is desirable that at least for a while the teacher refuses to correct in notebooks in red. This, firstly, "noises" the information, which is contained in specific errors, which interferes with the teacher. Secondly, for a child with dysgraphia, a solid red background in a notebook is an additional stress factor.

There is a technique by which the student writes with a pencil, and the teacher does not correct the mistake, but puts a mark in the margins. The student has the opportunity not to cross out, but to erase his mistakes, to write correctly.

When a child makes a lot of mistakes, parents often hear teachers recommend reading and writing more. And they do it literally. The approach to a child suffering from dyslexia and dysgraphia should be completely different. At the first stages work in progress mostly oral: exercises for the development of phonemic perception, sound analysis of the word. Dictation here will only bring harm. Numerous mistakes that will inevitably be made when writing them are fixed in the memory of the child. For the same reason, it is undesirable for children with dysgraphia to give exercises with uncorrected text. And the work on the mistakes should be carried out as recommended by the speech therapist. The bottom line is that it is undesirable for a child to see misspelled words.

If you are asked to read a text or write a lot at home, advise parents that the child does this not in one go, but intermittently, breaking the text into parts. This will enable students with writing disabilities to do better with their homework.

These are general techniques that will help teachers in working with such children, but a teacher can get more detailed advice on the methodology of working with each child from a speech therapist who leads the correction process.

Writing and reading disorders (briefly)

In the primary grades of a general education school, there are children whose process of mastering writing and reading is impaired. A partial disorder in the processes of reading and writing is denoted by the terms dyslexia and dysgraphia. Their main symptom is the presence of persistent specific errors, the occurrence of which among students of the General Education School is not associated with a decrease in intellectual development, or with severe hearing and vision impairments, or with the irregularity of schooling. Dyslexia and dysgraphia usually occur together. A complete inability to master writing and reading is called agraphia and alexia, respectively. The causes of dysgraphia and dyslexia are associated with a violation of the interaction of various analyzer systems of the cerebral cortex.

Dysgraphia manifests itself in persistent and repetitive writing errors. These errors are usually grouped according to the following principles: shifts and replacements of letters; distortion of the sound-syllabic structure of the word; violations of the continuity of writing individual words in a sentence - breaking a word into parts, continuous spelling of words in a sentence; agrammatism; mixing letters by optical similarity.

Violation of writing in the form of dysgraphia is closely related to the insufficient readiness of mental processes that are formed during the development of oral speech. It is during the period of mastering oral speech that generalized concepts of the sound and morphological composition of the word are created on a purely practical level, which subsequently, when the child moves to literacy and spelling, contributes to their conscious assimilation. In order to master literacy and the phonetic and morphological principles inherent in Russian writing, a child must be able to separate the sound side of a word from the semantic one, analyze the sound composition of a word that is clearly pronounced in all its parts. For fluent oral speech, it is often sufficient to clearly pronounce only those sounds that are necessary for understanding the word (semantic sounds). Those sounds that are less related to the listener's understanding of the word are pronounced less carefully and definitely in natural speech. Too clear articulation of all the sound elements of the word contradicts the orthoepic requirements of the language. At the same time, in the process of normal speech ontogenesis, a child acquires a fairly accurate idea of ​​the sound composition of a word, including its unclearly pronounced elements. This turns out to be possible due to linguistic generalizations that develop with the constant comparison of words with each other. In the process of correlating sound elements that reflect the difference in the lexical and grammatical meanings of a word, the child's cognitive processes are being prepared for understanding the relationship between orthoepy and spelling. Successful mastery of writing is preceded not only by the accumulation of a sufficient vocabulary, but also by the presence in speech experience of a conscious analysis of words according to adequate signs of correlating orthoepy and spelling. So, the child must be aware that the words fly in, fly in have the same root. The normal formation of oral speech is accompanied by the accumulated experience of cognitive work both in the field of elementary sound generalizations and in the field of morphological analysis.

Children with speech underdevelopment do not master this level of linguistic generalization and, accordingly, are not ready to master such a complex analytical and synthetic activity as writing.

Currently, it is customary to distinguish several types of dysgraphia.

speech disorders dyslexia dysgraphia

• 1. Articulatory-acoustic dysgraphia. With this form of dysgraphia, children experience various distortions of sound pronunciation (phonetic disorders) and insufficiency of phonemic perception of speech sounds that differ in subtle acoustic-articulatory features and (phonetic-phonemic disorders). Articulatory-acoustic dysgraphia manifests itself mainly in the substitutions of letters that correspond to the substitutions of sounds in the child's oral speech. Sometimes substitutions of letters remain in the child's letter even after they are eliminated in oral speech. According to R. E. Levina (1959), this is because children with speech pathology do not develop generalized concepts about the sound and morphological composition of the word during the period of mastering oral speech. Normally, it is the creation of these generalizations that allows primary school students to consciously move on to acquiring literacy and spelling.
• 2. Acoustic dysgraphia. In children with this form of dysgraphia, the processes of phonemic perception are not well formed. This is manifested in the substitutions and mixtures of letters, which denote sounds that differ in subtle acoustic-articulatory features. For example, substitutions and displacements of letters denoting whistling and hissing sounds; voiced and deaf; soft and hard; sounds r and l; substitutions of letters denoting vowel sounds. In addition, children may have an unformed sound analysis and synthesis, which manifests itself in writing in the form of the following specific errors: omissions, insertions, permutations, repetitions of letters or syllables. Omissions of letters indicate that the child does not isolate all of its sound components in the composition of the word (“snks” - sledges). The permutations and repetitions of letters and syllables are an expression of the difficulties in analyzing the sequences of sounds in a word (“korvom” - a carpet, “sugar” - sugar). Insertions of vowels are more often observed with consonant clusters, which is explained by the overtone that appears when the word is spoken slowly during writing and resembles a reduced vowel (“girl”, “Alexandar”).

Z. Dysgraphia associated with impaired language analysis and synthesis. This form of dysgraphia is due to the fact that students do not isolate stable speech units and their elements in the speech flow. This leads to the continuous spelling of adjacent words, prepositions and conjunctions with the subsequent word ("on a tree"); to the separate writing of parts of the word, more often the prefix and the root (“and dut”).

• 4. Agrammatic dysgraphia. This form of dysgraphia is more clearly traced than others due to the lack of development of the grammatical side of oral speech in children. In writing, grammatical connections between words are violated, as well as semantic connections between sentences.
• 5. Optical dysgraphia is associated with underdevelopment of spatial representations, analysis and synthesis of visual perception. This is manifested in the substitutions and distortions of letters similar in outline (d - b, t - w, i - w, p - t, x - x, l - m), the incorrect arrangement of letter elements, etc. This type of dysgraphia includes so-called "mirror writing".

A child with dysgraphia usually has difficulty developing graphic skills, resulting in uneven handwriting. The child's difficulty in choosing the right letter gives a characteristic sloppy look to the letter. It is full of corrections and corrections.

Dyslexia as a partial disorder of the process of mastering reading is manifested in numerous repetitive errors in the form of substitutions, permutations, omissions of letters, etc., which is due to the unformed mental functions that ensure the process of mastering reading. Mistakes in dyslexia are persistent. There are the following forms of dyslexia.

• 1. Phonemic dyslexia. It is observed in children with unformed functions of phonemic perception, analysis and synthesis. Children in the process of reading confuse letters denoting sounds that are similar in acoustic and articulatory parameters. With the underdevelopment of the functions of phonemic analysis and synthesis, letter-by-letter reading, distortion of the sound-syllabic structure of the word (inserts, omissions, permutations) are observed.
• 2. Semantic dyslexia is caused by the unformed processes of evucosyllabic synthesis and the lack of differentiated ideas about syntactic relationships within a sentence. Such children master the technique of reading, but they read mechanically, without understanding the meaning of what they read.
• 3. Agrammatic dyslexia is observed in children with unformed grammatical side of oral speech. When reading sentences, grammatical errors are observed.
• 4. Mnestic dyslexia is associated with a violation of the establishment of associative links between the visual image of a letter and the auditory image of a sound, i.e. children cannot remember letters and compare them with the corresponding sounds.
• 5. Optical dyslexia is caused by the same mechanisms as optical dysgraphia. When reading, letters similar in outline are mixed and interchanged by children. Sometimes "mirror reading" can be observed.

Children with dysgraphia and dyslexia need speech therapy classes that use special methods to develop writing and reading skills.

AT contemporary literature for reading disorders, the terms are mainly used: “alexia” - to indicate a complete lack of reading and “dyslexia, developmental dyslexia, or evolutionary dyslexia” - to indicate a partial disorder in the process of mastering reading, in contrast to those cases when the act of reading falls apart, for example , with aphasia, as a result of certain lesions of the cerebral cortex.

The concept of "dyslexia" was studied by various authors: T.V. Akhutina , M.V. Ermolaeva, A.N. Kornev, R.I. Lalaeva, R.E. Levin, I.N. Sadovnikova, M.E. Khvattsev and others.

For example, M.E. Khvattsev defines dyslexia as a partial disorder of the reading process, which makes it difficult to master this skill and leads to many errors during reading (letter omissions, syllables, substitutions, permutations, omissions of prepositions, conjunctions, word substitutions, line omissions). The Special Developmental Dyslexia Research Group of the World Federation of Neurology, which represents a complex of international studies in neurology, pediatrics, psychology and pedagogy, defines the following definition: specific developmental dyslexia is a disorder that represents a difficulty in mastering reading, despite normal learning, normal intelligence and good social cultural conditions.

However, these definitions do not allow distinguishing dyslexia from other reading disorders: from reading errors that naturally occur at the first stages of mastering reading, from reading disorders in children that are pedagogically neglected, difficult to behave, etc. In the definition of dyslexia, it is necessary to indicate the main characteristics of errors reading that would distinguish them from other reading disorders.

A feature of dyslexic errors is their typical, repetitive nature. Reading difficulties are manifested in repeated letter substitutions, permutations, omissions, etc. Reading errors can also be in a good reader due to fatigue, distractibility, etc. But these errors will not be typical, characteristic, repetitive, but will be random . The second characteristic feature of reading errors in dyslexia is their persistent nature. Reading errors are known to occur in normal children as well. Many children who begin to learn to read make such mistakes, but they are not observed for long, they disappear rather quickly. In children with dyslexia, these mistakes persist for a long time, months and even years. Thus, dyslexia is defined not by a few, often random, reading errors, but by their cumulative and persistent nature.

The definition of dyslexia, however, should include not only an indication of the manifestations of reading disorders and the specific nature of these manifestations, but also the difficulties that cause dyslexic disorders. The existence of reading errors in children does not yet prove the presence of dyslexia. As indicated, reading errors can occur in all children who begin to read, in children who are pedagogically neglected, lazy, etc. Reading disorders can be the result of behavioral disorders. Failures are observed in these children not only in learning to read and write, but also in other ways. school subjects. In these cases we are talking not about dyslexia, since reading errors are not typical and persistent, they are not the result of the immaturity of mental functions that carry out the reading process. In dyslexics, however, reading impairments are often selective and represent a clear discrepancy with success in other subjects. On the other hand, the presence of mere difficulties in mastering reading without pronounced reading errors does not yet give grounds to speak of this violation.

Dyslexia in normal children is often the result of various difficulties, each of them, existing in isolation, can be compensated, with a combination of difficulties, the possibility of compensation is reduced. So, for example, normal children may have mild phonemic disorders (impaired phonemic analysis) without obvious dyslexia. These children, despite the unformed phonemic system, compensate for the difficulties in learning to read thanks to good intellect and well-developed spatial representations. It is advisable to define dyslexia as follows: dyslexia is a partial disorder in the process of mastering reading, manifested in numerous repeated errors of a persistent nature, due to the unformed mental functions involved in the process of mastering reading.

AT European countries up to 10% of children with dyslexia are noted. According to R. Becker, reading disorders are observed in 3% of primary school children, in speech schools the number of children with dyslexia reaches 22%.

K. Makita finds a very small amount of dyslexia among Japanese children, only 0.98%. This is about 10 times less than in European countries. Based on the analysis of statistical data on the prevalence of dyslexia, taking into account the nature of writing, the author concludes that the specificity of the language used is a very significant factor in the prevalence, symptoms and structure of the defect in dyslexia. Thus, dyslexia is not only a neuropsychological problem, but also a linguistic one.

Symptoms, manifestations of dyslexia are defined differently depending on the understanding of the essence of these disorders.

S. Borel-Maisonny, M. E. Khvattsev and others, defining the symptoms of dyslexia, dwell only on the manifestations of reading disorders directly. Violations of oral speech, motor skills and spatial representations that accompany dyslexia are considered as pathogenetic factors of dyslexic disorders. K. Lonay, M. Kuts and others believe that reading disorders are not an isolated disorder, but are only one of the symptoms associated with impaired oral speech, motor skills, and spatial orientation. At the heart of all these violations, as M. Kuts points out, is a disorder of that area cerebral cortex where the synthesis of auditory and visual excitations takes place. K. Lonay suggests that with dyslexia, practical and gnostic processes, auditory and visual, are violated, mainly in the speech system. Some authors who study dyslexia include symptoms and affective disorders.

However, it seems more correct to define the symptoms of dyslexia only as a direct manifestation of reading disorders, not including those disorders (immaturity of spatial orientation, motor disorders, etc.), which, although often accompany dyslexia, are, however, factors of a pathogenetic nature, i.e. The mechanism of this violation.

Dyslexia is manifested in the slowness of reading. Reading of a child with dyslexia is characterized by large quantity various errors. When assimilating letters, there are difficulties in mastering them, various mixtures of both graphically similar letters and letters denoting sounds that are acoustically similar. It is noted that students with dyslexia do not have difficulties in mastering vowels. Sometimes with dyslexia, mirror reading is observed, i.e. reading from right to left.

Dyslexia can also manifest itself in permutations of sounds, in jumping from one line to another, in the inability to carry out sound synthesis when reading words. In the process of reading words, a student who can read well easily combines syllables into words. A child with dyslexia has difficulty synthesizing words, even if he has read all the syllables of a word correctly. He often fails to grasp the meaning of the word he is reading.

The global perception of the word in dyslexia is possible, but it remains undivided and erroneous. In severe cases, dyslexia is characterized by the inability to read groups of two or three letters. Reading will then be guessing.

R.E. Levina classifies the following errors in reading as typical manifestations of dyslexia: insertion of additional sounds, omission of letters, replacement of one word with another, errors in pronunciation of letters, repetition, addition, omissions of words.

In the literature, there are also attempts to systematize the manifestations of reading disorders. So, for example, R. E. Levina identifies the following main types of manifestations of dyslexia: insufficient assimilation of letters, insufficient merging of letters into syllables, incorrect reading of words, phrases.

A.N. Kornev dwells on two types: incorrect recognition of letters and incorrect combination of letters in a word. According to the manifestation, two forms of dyslexia are distinguished: literal, which manifests itself in the inability or difficulty in learning letters, and verbal, which manifests itself in the difficulties of reading words. However, this division is arbitrary, since both forms can be found simultaneously in the same children.

I. Dyslexia associated with impaired oral speech.

II. Dyslexia associated with poor spatial representations.

III. mixed cases.

IV. Cases of erroneous (false) dyslexia.

Children of group I have insufficient auditory memory, impaired auditory perception. These children find it difficult to establish a connection between auditory and visual perception, between sound and letter. In mild cases, these perceptual disturbances appear only at the stage of mastering written speech; in severe cases, these disturbances also affect the process of mastering oral speech. In oral speech, such children have a variety of disorders.

Revealing the mechanism of this type of dyslexia, the author reduces the whole complex picture of speech underdevelopment of such children to sensory (hearing) disorders, to impaired auditory memory, perception. S. Borel-Maisonny considers oral speech, first of all, as an auditory function. However, many modern research prove that even the process of speech perception is carried out by the interaction of speech-auditory and speech-motor analyzers. In addition, speech is a complex multi-level process that cannot be reduced only to elementary auditory perception and motor reproduction. speech function has a complex system structure. The multi-level structure of the speech functional system I suggests that violations of both oral and especially written speech cannot be reduced to elementary disorders of the sensorimotor order. In most cases, reading disorders are determined by the underdevelopment of higher order functions, the underdevelopment of the symbolic language level and the underdevelopment of language generalizations.

In group II children, there are disturbances in the perception of shape, size, location in space, definition of the top, bottom, right, left side, in severe cases - kinesthetic memory disorders, inability to imagine unusual positions of the arms and legs in space, violations of the body scheme. These children sometimes also have phenomena of motor discoordination, dyspraxia, which are especially noticeable in writing.

Mixed cases of dyslexia ( III group) are the most numerous. At the same time, children have both visual and auditory perception disorders, as well as motor lag. Children with a mixed form of dyslexia incorrectly pronounce many sounds, words, build phrases poorly, select words for a long time, mix right and left, and poorly distinguish figures in shape and size. Their movements are often awkward, synkinesis, sluggish reactions are observed.

Group IV includes children who do not have any speech disorders, nor underdevelopment of spatial representations. However, these children did not learn to read well for various reasons (due to incorrect teaching methods, unfavorable environmental conditions, pedagogical neglect, etc.).

Difficulties in mastering reading may arise when parents use the wrong method of teaching reading: the global method (whole words) or the subjunctive method (m + a = ma).

Reading difficulties appear when young children learn to read. If children six years of age easily master reading, then children 3-4 years old are not yet ready to master reading. Therefore, attempts to teach young children to read are accompanied by natural difficulties and errors in reading.

In this regard, it is not recommended to start learning to read too early or too late, to use different methods of teaching reading at school and at home. It is very important to identify among children who do not read well, true dyslexics, with whom a systematic, purposeful work according to a specific method. Teaching these children to read has been more than long time, at a slower pace.

R.I. Lalaeva, L.V. Benediktov, phonemic, optical, optical-spatial, semantic and mnestic dyslexias are distinguished according to the disturbed mechanisms. They believe that children have only phonemic and optical dyslexia. Other forms are organic lesions brain, with aphasia.

phonemic dyslexia. With this form of dyslexia, children cannot learn to read correctly within 2 to 4 years. Some learn individual letters with great difficulty, but cannot merge them into syllables, words. Others learn letters without much difficulty, but in the process of reading syllables and words they make a large number of errors. In these children, according to R. I. Lalaeva and L. V. Benediktova, “the letter is not a signal of a generalized speech sound (phoneme), and, therefore, is not a grapheme (generalized graphic sign)” . The poor connection between sound and letter is due to poor phonemic awareness. The speech sounds of these children are fuzzy, unstable, they do not distinguish them well, especially oppositional ones, similar in sound. Therefore, letters are learned with great difficulty.

In the process of reading words, children find it difficult to merge sounds into syllables and words by analogy with already memorized syllables, they poorly recognize syllables in a “face”.

Optical dyslexia, according to M.E. Khvattsev, consists in “not recognizing letters as generalized graphic signs of the corresponding phonemes, that is, letters are not recognized as graphemes.” Thus, a violation of the formation of ideas about the connections of a phoneme with a grapheme is noted both in phonemic and optical dyslexia. The difference in the mechanisms of disruption of the connection between the phoneme and the grapheme in these two forms of dyslexia has not been clearly shown.

According to the manifestations, M. E. Khvattsev distinguishes between literal dyslexia (individual letters are not recognized) and verbal (individual letters are acquired, but words are not recognized). The main reason for the poor assimilation of letters is the fuzziness of their perception, the instability of ideas about the letter. Usually, in the visual image of a letter, first of all, its general structure is preserved, certain details fall out. The letters match up. Most often, substitute letters in their graphic image simpler than letters that they replace. The more similar the letters are graphically, the more often they are replaced, especially if these letters are located close to each other in the word. In this regard, according to the author, visual stereotypes of words are brought up with great difficulty, word recognition slows down.

Children with optical dyslexia have visual disturbances outside of speech. Some of them have difficulty distinguishing familiar faces, similar objects, and draw poorly.

With damage to the right hemisphere, the author notes, there are difficulties in reading the left part of the word (Masha - porridge), mirror reading, the word is read from right to left, permutations of letters and words are noted when reading.

T.V. Akhutina also notes the variety of types of reading disorders. She considers it possible to group them into the following types: 1) congenital verbal blindness, 2) dyslexia, 3) bradylexia, 4) legasthenia, 5) congenital weakness in reading. However, this classification is not based on the pathogenesis of dyslexia, but rather the degree of manifestation of reading disorders.

O.A. Tokareva considers violations of written speech, depending on which of the analyzers is primarily impaired. Taking into account the violation of the auditory, visual or motor analyzers, the author distinguishes acoustic, optical and motor reading disorders. The most common, according to the author, are dyslexia associated with acoustic disorders. Consider these types of dyslexia.

With acoustic dyslexia, there is a lack of differentiation in auditory perception, insufficient development of sound analysis. Children hardly merge letters into syllables and words, since the letter is not perceived by them as a phoneme signal. Frequent are mixtures of sounds similar in articulation or sound (whistling and hissing, voiced and deaf, soft and hard).

Acoustic reading disorders are noted both with underdevelopment of oral speech (dysarthria, dyslalia), and with delays speech development. Thus, with. sufficient reliability establishes a connection between the development of oral and written speech, which are considered as different, closely related sides of a single process of speech development.

The definition of this reading disorder as an acoustic reduction of this type of dyslexia to a violation of elementary auditory gnostic functions is probably not entirely justified. Clear acoustic perception is one of the necessary conditions formation of oral and written speech. However, the process of mastering written speech presupposes, as the main conditions, the presence of linguistic generalizations in the child, primarily phonemic ones, and the formation of higher symbolic functions. One of the necessary prerequisites for the formation of a reading skill is the ability to single out a phoneme from the whole variety of sounds as a specific generalization of the semantic features of a sound, to correlate a phoneme with a certain symbol, icon, i.e., a letter, to analyze words into phoneme components, i.e. to differentiate phonemes and phonemic analysis. The formation of phonemic differentiation and phonemic analysis is a process of language development, a process of formation of language generalizations. It cannot be reduced to sensory function alone. In addition, it is known that the formation of speech analyzers occurs in close cooperation with other analyzers, in the course of which the influence of one on the other is constantly carried out. So, when differentiating sounds and sound analysis words are simultaneously involved in both speech-auditory and speech-motor analyzers.

The second type of dyslexia is optical. In this form, the instability of visual perception and representations is noted. In the process of reading, children do not learn individual letters well, do not establish a connection between the visual image of a letter and sound, they do not have a clear visual image of a letter, so they perceive the same letter in different ways. Children often mix letters that are similar in design (P - N, N - I, Shch - C, Sh - Shch, S - O). In the process of reading words in children, verbal dyslexia is observed, word recognition is impaired when reading.

With motor dyslexia in children, there are difficulties in eye movements when reading. In the process of reading, as is known, various movements of the eyeball occur, in normal readers, mainly in the direction of the lines. The act of reading is carried out only under the condition of coordinated, interconnected work of the visual, auditory and motor analyzer. Disorders of coordination of these analyzers cause various reading disorders, says O. A. Tokareva. With motor dyslexia, there is a narrowing of the visual field, frequent loss of a line or individual words in a line. In other cases, motor speech reproduction is impaired. This is manifested in the fact that children cannot reproduce the necessary articulatory movements in the process of reading in the absence of paralysis and paresis. At the same time, the inability to remember the necessary speech movements is noted.

At modern view on the systemic structure of higher cortical functions, the classification of dyslexia should take into account not so much analyzer disorders as the nature of violations of higher mental functions, violations not only of the sensorimotor level, but also of the higher, symbolic, linguistic level.

Thus, the most reasonable is the selection the following types dyslexia in children with normal intelligence: optical (O. A. Tokareva, M. E. Khvattsev), phonemic (R. E. Levina, L. F. Spirova), agrammatic (R. I. Lalayeva, L. F. Spirova ) .

Optical dyslexia is manifested in the difficulties of assimilation of letters due to the fuzziness of their perception, the instability of ideas about the visual images of letters. Especially often in the process of reading, children mix letters that are similar graphically. With optical dyslexia, there may also be violations of the visual analysis of the structure of the word, rearrangement of letters and words when reading.

Phonemic dyslexias are caused by the underdevelopment of phonemic generalizations in a child, primarily by the unformed function of phonemic analysis. Phonemic dyslexia manifests itself in distortions of the sound and syllabic structure of a word (omissions, permutations, additions, substitutions of sounds when reading).

Agrammatical dyslexia is caused by the underdevelopment of grammatical generalizations in a child. They manifest themselves in distortions and substitutions of certain morphemes of the word in the process of reading (suffixes, endings).

Knowledge of general and particular patterns in the pathogenesis and manifestations of dyslexia in various groups children allows you to more accurately diagnose reading disorders, correctly build speech therapy work on the prevention and elimination of dyslexia in the complex process of rehabilitation of abnormal children.