Dr Angela Fawcett,
Prof Emeritus, Swansea University, UK, Vice President, British
Early identification of dyslexia can help children improve their logical and learning skills
The world of dyslexic children is quite complex. An innovative system for screening has to be in place for empowering the teachers to quantify the problems being faced by such children. Teachers can evaluate the strength and weaknesses of the dyslexic children through these screenings and can teach the children in ways that will lead to best possible results.
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that mainly affects the development of literacy and language related skills. The dyslexic children often have problems in putting the words together, they are unable to spell or write. The wonderful news is that appropriate teaching can bring about an improvement in the logical skills, spelling, and also the confidence of the dyslexic children. But the bad news is that with lack of support, the child experiences continuous failure and the problems become intense and generalised. A cost effective solution has to be made to help the children in improving skills.
Our aim is to identify problems before the children fail. All the screening tests for dyslexia are done by school teachers who are working on the basis of systems that have been developed with an eye on Indian realities. So, it’s being specially developed for India by professionals like teachers, psychologists and special educationists. It helps schools to offer an inclusive learning environment where there exists a support system to facilitate the learning of every child.
As the testing methodologies also dwell on reading, spelling and writing skills the test leads to earlier identification of problems. It also provides a cost effective solution. The screening allows the teachers to see just how the term works under the developed profile and why the child is anxious.
We hope that DSTJ India will facilitate policy making that will eventually make it mandatory for children with dyslexia to be included in the traditional classroom learning with adequate support and concessions across all states and national boards.
