Repetition, Patience, Success:
Bernie’s Journey with Severe Dyslexia
A Story Shared by Fremantle Tutor Campbell
Bernie is a 28-year-old dyslexic who had learned to write his first name, last name, and date of birth but was unable to write his middle name or address. He knew the sounds made by most letters of the alphabet, but the letter “Q” was a complete mystery to him, and he was uncertain about the sounds made by some other letters. He could not recite the alphabet.
Most people know that dyslexics have trouble with letter order and differentiating the letters “b” and “d,” but many dyslexics also have poor short-term memories. Bernie is an extreme example of this; he is unable to recall more than three random digits after hearing them.
Bernie attended a special school for children with learning difficulties throughout his school career. I believe teachers might have considered Bernie unteachable, as he would not be able to recall something he had been told 10 seconds earlier. However, given that Bernie could speak as well as anyone, he must be able to transfer information to his long-term memory if he hears it repeated often enough—otherwise, how would he have learned to speak? Perhaps he could learn to read using this approach.
Our first aim was to make Bernie intimately familiar with the alphabet, including being able to recite it and recall the names and sounds of each letter without hesitation. Bernie achieved this after many weeks of repetition, repetition, repetition, and we then commenced sounding out simple three-letter words.
Eventually, we embarked on learning two-letter phonemes. As his name contained the “er” and the “or” phoneme, these seemed like a good place to start. After a few weeks, Bernie seemed to remember “er” and “or,” so the next week I tried introducing “ar,” “ir,” and “ur” all in the same session. This was a huge mistake; at the end of an hour, Bernie was completely confused and had not learned any of the new phonemes.
From then on, the rule was to introduce only one phoneme at a time, and this approach has been successful. I have been tutoring Bernie for 16 months now (two sessions per week), and he now knows 23 two- and three-letter phonemes and is reading books like The Cat in the Hat reasonably well.
Initially, two-syllable words were simply not possible, as by the time he sounded out the second syllable, he had forgotten the first. However, now that he has increased the speed with which he can sound out syllables, he is doing quite well with two-syllable words.
Nearly all of our tutoring has been conducted over the internet using the Messenger app, as Bernie lives in a distant suburb. Prior to tutoring, Bernie shared a phone with his carer (but did not know his phone number) and did not have any other digital devices. He now has his own phone and an iPad, which he uses for tutoring.
He can write his full name, address, date of birth, and phone number. His self-esteem is greatly improving, and I am thrilled when he tells me how he can now sometimes read text messages and Facebook comments from his mates—and even post short replies.