Challenge of learning

When I am talking about my language learning, I often find myself talking about my dyslexia. It is ofcorse natural because it made me little bit different learner than many others.

Sometimes people get suprised when I tell that I study to become to be a teacher of languages and literature even if I have learning difficulty. But I feel that it is something what I can use with my own

teaching. I have experiences about this kind of things, so I believe I can support students in their way of learning.

The brains of person with dyslexia does not actived as fast as normal brains when they see letters or codes. Brains does not regonize that they are watching a text instead of picture or faces. That is the reason why students with dyslexia often are slower readers or they have problems to spelling words right. Dyslexia have different levels: "easy", "medium" and "difficult". Reading as hobby often helps, because that way brains get used to letters and codes and they will active faster. Often dyslexia affect the most when student try to use second language because new order of letters make brains confused.

I will give some examples how dyslexia have affect to my language learning:

When I learned new words, I really needed to learn them well. To me it did not matter how many times I read words, because after reading I could not repeat them. If the word was long I was usually able to remember the first letters and some other letters, but I was not able to put them in the right order. When I made exams I used to take an extra paper and write every letter I think the word had. Then I kept writing them in different orders until I felt that it looked like a word I should know. But I need to say that it was not so effective. Most of the times the only thing what I was able to see was that word was not right, but I did not had an idea how to fix it.

When I studied for word tests I tried to put words to shorter pieces. Sometimes I also make up some memory rules. I needed to spent a lot time to trying to make all new difficult words familiar to me. For example:

I one of the word in the word list was "exhibit".

So I put it in 2 pieces: "ex" = former and "hibit" = word that is like "hobit", but with "i".

Then I draw picture of the old hobit that was in exhibit. Then I made different sentences where a word existed.When I get used the word long enough, I was able to repeat it later.

 I also needed to have lots of different kind of games or rules just for bringing words in different places and contexts. I often tape words in places where I needed to see them often. I also make memorygames about words I needed to learn. When I learn new words, I try to use them as often as possible after that. Using words often enough sometimes helps. Because it was difficult to me to learn long list of words at once, my teacher often gave me opportunity to do two vocabulary exams instead of one.

It is also important to realise that the student with dyslexia are not always able to see their own mistakes. If teacher see that student make same error over and over again, it is not use just mark the word with red pencil and trust that student understand what teacher mean.  Couple times I have learn a word wrong way and I have keep making same mistake years... until someone pointed the word and told me exactly where the error was. I wrote "beautiful" as "beatyful" and "girl" as "gril" way too long time. Until someone told me that these words are not same. I had friends who often read my essays with me and they did not only correct my errors to paper, they also told me how to fix them. That was huge help with my learning process.

In my opinion this is the most important advice to teachers with students with dyslexia:
Do not expect that dyslexia-students are not able to learn same things than other people. Do not try to make things "more simple" and do not get this idea that these students are some way stupid. Dyslexia is not connected about intelligence of person and it does not make person want to learn any less.
Be prepared that students with dyslexia might need more time and they might need to use different kind of studing methods.
It is important to try to raise motivation about learning and make sure that students accept that mistakes are part of the process of learning. Dyslexia does not limit students possibilities to learn.