Types of Reading Difficulties
As an educator I know that reading difficulty can be frustrating for students and for the adults who love them. Success in school can feel close to impossible when students cannot read. Often when children are not able to read they get bored and frustrated and often act out or drop out. So what is a caring parent or educator to do to help their child or student read? One of the first things you should do is meet with the teacher and make sure that every intervention is given to help the child succeed in school. If these interventions are not working or not working quickly enough, you may decide to have the child tested to find out which area of reading is impeding progress.
- Decoding difficulty: This could be due to a gap in phonemic awareness. This could be for several reasons. Perhaps the child was out of school due to an illness. Or maybe the student has attention difficulty. Another possibility is that the child has some form of Dyslexia. Dyslexic children are often highly intelligent and with systematic multi-sensory tutoring they can often overcome their difficulty and become very successful readers.
- Comprehension difficulty: If the child has decoding difficulty, he or she will not be able to comprehend adequately to make meaning from text. So this can be a secondary problem found with decoding difficulty. There are cases, however, where students are able to decode beautifully, but unfortunately they are not able to retain what they read and cannot make meaning from the text. This is sometimes hard to detect as they are often called on frequently in class and read like a newscaster. But when the teacher asks a question about the text they go blank. They did not pay attention to what they read. They are also often poor test takers. With proper instruction in creating mind movies, these students can become very successful at reading, retaining and comprehending text.
- Fluency or Prosody difficulty: Students who are unable to read with correct expression, phrasing or with adequate speed often also struggle with comprehension. This could be due to a decoding difficulty or it may be that they child needs more practice with fluency. Once the child is able to read with correct prosody- as if they are speaking- text will become meaningful and they will become successful readers.