SYMPTOMS

You can recognize many of the common symptoms of reading, spelling or
comprehension difficulties.

Students need help visualizing letter patterns in words if they:

Students need help understanding concepts (comprehension) if they:

Have to reread material several times and often remember only a few details rather than the “whole”
Have trouble expressing their thoughts in an organized manner (orally or in writing) or
Have trouble comprehending oral language and are often labeled poor listeners.

Students need help processing phonemes or speech sounds if they:

Add, omit, and switch sounds while reading and spelling (read or spell “gril” for “girl,” or “subtute” for “substitute”)
Memorize words and are not able to effectively read a non-memorized word
See the first letter of a word and say another word with similar letter composition (“mike” instead of “milk,” or “apples” instead of “applause”)
Rely heavily on pictures to read a story (young readers)
Try to attack a word as a whole instead of seeing its individual parts (e.g., can’t see the familiar suffix “tion” in the word “station”)
Don’t know the rules of written language or how to apply them
Avoid reading, especially aloud.