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THE DYSLEXIA
SOLUTION
Volume 4 • #7 •
August 2005
NEWSLETTER
Regular readers of these newsletters will have noticed
that there wasn’t any for July. A couple of family
reunions, one in North Carolina and one in Maine (we do get
around) took up not only my time, but what little thought
I could have drummed up in the middle of the heat waves we
have been having.
Meantime, a bright student cooked up what may finally be
an effective way of teaching one of the hardest phonics facts
in English for a right-brained reader-- the difference between
the lower-case letters, b and d , which are mirror images
of each other. For a right hemisphere which doesn’t give a hoot about the
difference between left and right, there is no important difference, especially
since it isn’t associating a sound with either orientation.
So I try all the tricks I have ever heard of, and when
they don’t work,
I fall back on that piece of advice that sometimes works but just as often annoys
classroom teachers: USE A CAPITAL LETTER. THEY DON’T LOOK ALIKE. I have
always thought it was better to spell the word correctly with a capital letter
in the middle of a word than to use the wrong letter. But an occasional teacher
won’t let a student do this, and I don’t want to add yet one
more reason for a teacher to get after the hapless dyslexic student in her
class.
The other problem with this solution is that half the time,
the kid doesn’t
wake up and realize which noise he is making anyhow, so even if he knows the
difference in looks between B and D, if he doesn’t hear the difference,
it doesn’t help.
This was the case with the student I mentioned above, so
I went to some trouble to point out to him that the letters
were formed differently in your mouth: when you say /d/,
you put the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth
in front and then spit out some air. But when you say /b/,
you have to start with your mouth closed, then pop your lips
apart and then spit out the air. So you only have to notice
which way you start. I wrote a d and a b on a piece of paper
and a B and a D below them. Whereupon the student took the
pencil and finished the picture as you see here!
Well, I don’t know whether this works for anybody
else, but this kid, at least, hasn’t confused the two
since!
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