One thing we work hard on in dyslexia tutoring and dyslexia treatment is addressing the bad habits that our dyslexic students have fallen into. I mentioned these briefly in my last post, and I thought I would go into more detail about one of those bad habits today. One bad habit dyslexia tutors see with their dyslexic students is the habit of guessing at words and sounds. This is a chronic issue, and one that almost every dyslexia tutor sees on a regular basis. Before they receive dyslexia treatment, a dyslexic student gets into the habit of guessing because they have such a difficult time with spelling and reading; it is a coping mechanism. They have had such difficulty for so long, that they simply start to guess to compensate. Unfortunately, this is a highly destructive habit that can take a lot of dyslexia treatment and dyslexia tutoring to correct. A good dyslexia tutoring program always addresses this issue.
Once guessing becomes a habit, the dyslexic student’s reading accuracy suffers. Since they are not accurately reading many of the words in a passage, their comprehension suffers as well. Dyslexia tutoring and dyslexia treatment help to address and correct this through the use of monitored reading. The dyslexia tutor will listen to the student read out loud and simply stop them every time they say a word incorrectly. The dyslexia tutor then has them go back and use the phonics knowledge they are gaining to sound the word out. Usually, the student will eventually start to catch themselves when they make a mistake and correct it. Once they start to do this, they are well on their way to becoming better readers and spellers.
Peter
