There has been considerable progress in learning and understanding all types of reading disabilities. For research purposes, you can recognize children with “reading impairment” with scores below the 30th percentile in basic reading skills. While 70–80 percent of children have trouble with accuracy and fluency, others have problems with recognition and weakness in phonological processing. These problems often lead to challenges incomprehension. These students have trouble learning sound-symbol coordination, sounding out words, and comprehension of spellings. This group is often referred to as dyslexic.
A group of 15% of all students who are poor readers appear to be accurate with word recognition or reading but take considerable time to do it. They have the weakness of speed in word recognition and recall for word spellings. Although they have weaknesses, they do considerably well in tests of awareness and phonological skills. As they have problems developing automatic recognition of words, they tend to spell phonetically but not always correctly. Some argue that the problem is primarily due to the timing of processing speed and others consider it to be a specific deficit of orthographic processing speed that reflects recall of letter sequence.
The last group of students who appear to be poor readers has difficulty comprehending passages. The poor readers are specifically dyslexic as they can read words properly and fast and are also good at spellings. What they have a problem with is social reasoning, abstract verbal reasoning, and language comprehension.
People with dyslexia have challenges in a few areas which are:
- Word reading accuracy
- Reading comprehension
- Reading fluency
Here is some information about the types:
1. The trouble with Word Reading Accuracy
People with reading accuracy issues struggle to break down the sounds and pronunciations of the spoken language. They also often struggle with matching sounds with symbols. This is phonological awareness.
Students with this disability often have problems decoding or reading, affecting their accuracy and fluency. When people are talking about dyslexia, they often relate to word reading accuracy. This is called the Phonological deficit.
2. The trouble with Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension means understanding what they are reading. People who struggle with reading comprehension have challenges with:
- Word meanings
- Getting information together
- Monitoring the understanding
- Concluding a reading paragraph
- Remembering what they read
Challenges with word accuracy are often overlapped with reading comprehension. Some with reading comprehension difficulties although have no trouble decoding individual words. They just do not understand what they mean together as a sentence.
People with reading comprehension disorders have more and more problems related to language disorders. The disorder impacts how they use and understand a language. They may have trouble with recollection abilities making it difficult for them to remember what they read. Other problems related to the comprehensive deficit are weak vocabulary, language-learning disorders, learning difficulties, and a deficit in abstract reasoning or logical thinking.
3. Reading Fluency Challenges
Reading fluency or Processing speed or orthographic processing deficiency. It directly affects the speed and accuracy of printed word recognition in students. Reading speed or reading rate is the number of words a person can read in a minute. Fluent readers have an accurate and good pace. When they read aloud, they can do it in a way as they understand the sentence structure and the punctuations in the sentence.
People facing trouble with fluency take longer than usual to read individual words accurately and understand their meaning. When they read aloud, the words come without expression or proper meaning. People with dyslexia have trouble with fluency and are related to slow processing speeds.
If a student has a prominent and specific weakness in either of the genres is referred to as single-deficit in word recognition. Students who have more than one weakness in word recognition are known as double-deficit. Double-deficit students are more common compared to single-deficit students. Related problems in children with deficit often have reading difficulties like the following:
- Faulty pencil grip and letter formation
- Attention disorder
- Anxiety
- Task avoidance
- Weak impulse control
- Easy distraction
- Problem with language comprehension
- Confusion of mathematical signs and computation processing
More than one-third of all children with dyslexia or similar problems have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Reading disabilities impact learning but are not a sign of lower intelligence. People with reading disabilities are as smart as their fellow classmates.
