Dyslex­ia is char­ac­terised by ex­treme dif­fi­cul­ty in learn­ing to read, write and spell in spite of ad­e­quate in­tel­li­gence. Even mild­ly dyslex­ic stu­dents ex­pe­ri­ence school as stress­ful and un­ful­fill­ing from the day they en­ter school. With their learn­ing needs un­met, most dyslex­ic stu­dents nev­er go on to achieve their po­ten­tial.

Many of these stu­dents spend long hours hav­ing ex­tra lessons where they are taught by the same tech­niques that have al­ready failed them in the class­room. How­ev­er, dyslex­ic stu­dents need more spe­cif­ic help if they are to suc­ceed in school. Un­less teach­ers are ad­e­quate­ly equipped, and stu­dents have ac­cess to these "dif­fer­ent" meth­ods which match their "dif­fer­ent" learn­ing styles, we will con­tin­ue to fail the many gift­ed po­ten­tial states­men, artists and sci­en­tists hid­den among our dyslex­ic stu­dents, cur­rent­ly be­ing frus­trat­ed by a sys­tem which does not recog­nise their spe­cial needs.

The Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion of­fers train­ing to teach­ers in three main ar­eas of lit­er­a­cy in­struc­tion. These pro­grammes are suit­able for teach­ing chil­dren and adults.

1. Neu­ro-de­vel­op­ment of Words NOW! Foun­da­tions for Speech, Lan­guage, Read­ing and Spelling

We now know that the best pre­dic­tor of read­ing suc­cess is the abil­i­ty of chil­dren to "play" with the sounds of lan­guage (phono­log­i­cal aware­ness). How­ev­er, many read­ing-dis­abled stu­dents are un­able to dis­crim­i­nate, sep­a­rate and blend the in­di­vid­ual sounds of words de­spite ad­e­quate hear­ing. This is true of dyslex­ic stu­dents as well as chil­dren who have had poor lan­guage stim­u­la­tion in the home or who have had a his­to­ry of chron­ic mid­dle ear in­fec­tions.

This pro­gramme us­es the feel and shape of the mouth to help stu­dents de­vel­op phono­log­i­cal aware­ness. This train­ing leads to im­pres­sive gains in speech, lan­guage, read­ing and spelling.

2. Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion Train­ing in Meth­ods for Teach­ing Dyslex­i­cs

This train­ing course is ide­al for teach­ers who can work with small groups in a tu­to­r­i­al set­ting. It is a struc­tured phon­ics pro­gramme that ide­al­ly meets the needs of Dyslex­i­cs, build­ing in flu­ent re­spons­es to let­ters and let­ter strings for read­ing, and au­to­mat­ic writ­ten re­spons­es to sounds in words for spelling.

3. Com­pre­hen­sion NOW! Men­tal Im­agery for Com­pre­hen­sion, Ex­pres­sive Lan­guage and Think­ing

There are a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of stu­dents who con­tin­ue to strug­gle with com­pre­hen­sion even af­ter their de­cod­ing dif­fi­cul­ties have been ad­dressed. Many stu­dents al­so con­tin­ue to show de­lays in ex­pres­sive lan­guage skills.

Re­search has shown that stu­dents la­belled as poor lis­ten­ers, and peo­ple who have to read and re-read ma­te­r­i­al sev­er­al times, and who still do not re­mem­ber more than a few de­tails, have prob­lems cre­at­ing a pic­ture for lan­guage. For these stu­dents, words just seem to go "in one ear and out the oth­er." The usu­al tech­nique of teach­ing com­pre­hen­sion by prac­tic­ing in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult pas­sages does noth­ing to im­prove these stu­dents' com­pre­hen­sion be­cause it does not at­tend to the core deficit.

This in­no­v­a­tive pro­gramme teach­es stu­dents to cre­ate "movies" as they read so en­hanc­ing com­pre­hen­sion and mem­o­ry. The pro­gramme has a strong com­po­nent of ex­pres­sive lan­guage so that writ­ing skills are al­so en­hanced.