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Dyslexia in Adulthood: Personal and Professional Observations

Jenni Beard

Student Support Adviser, University of Buckingham jenni.beard@buckingham.ac.uk

Abstract

I have for nearly 12 years been working with adult undergraduate dyslexics, the majority are young, 18 -25 years, but among these there have also been a substantial group of more mature dyslexics. I came into the work as have many others because of a dyslexic child and at that time realised that I too was dyslexic. However it is only very recently that I have had the courage to be assessed myself. The personal viewpoint of a dyslexic can be helpful to those studying dyslexia, but it is also dangerous if the dyslexic thinks that all dyslexics are the same as them. For the last year I have been following a part time masters programme in biography. The course requires a lot of reading and writing and this work has altered my perception of studying as a dyslexic. The standard study skills methods have had to be refined and adapted and obviously this has altered my teaching methods. In my teaching I have always had to bear in mind that my dyslexia may not be as others and my present experiences have to be carefully filtered to suit groups of dyslexics or individuals in a one-to-one situation. Teaching intelligently is always a difficult matter but is improved when the methods have to be tested by ones self. Some of the main areas I am coming to terms with are: Coping with a heavy reading load; Record keeping; Keeping on task; Time management and Writing and proof reading.

I wrote the following words whilst writing a dissertation knowing that I would be taking part in this BDA conference. I am sure the feelings portrayed are not original and may not even be particular to dyslexics but I suspect the constancy of the frustration is peculiar to the dyslexic brain.

Trying to read

You sit down; you know what you want to read, what you want to get out of the reading.

The text is difficult, the print is small, the paper that old yellow colour, the sentences long and convoluted. The words begin the run together, actually to merge. The beginning of the sentence is forgotten so the sense has completely gone. This has happened in the first couple of minutes so your brain takes a hike.

Trying to copy

First you try to memorise a group of words, maybe half a line, you may forget this half way through, or your brain knowing its limitations goes on to auto check. Then you type what you think is there, which may only be partially correct, suffixes are left off or altered. Punctuation is generally ignored so has to be added later which involves reading the quote very carefully looking for those illusive little marks. Of course you then have to keep finding your place in the quote, your eyes run up and down the line looking for where you were. Why not use a scanner you may say, yes, but like all electronic aids they too have their drawbacks and when you are only trying to copy a few lines you can't be bothered. On rereading you find whole chunks left out when you thought you had read the piece word for word.

Using factual information

You have read the article/letter/email you know the content but for the life of you can't remember the exact facts, or even the chronology. The only way to work is to have all the bits of paper to hand, and physically keep referring to them. This however will probably mean that:

• The grammar will go.
• That you will have copied an item without quoting the source.
• Questions will arise, should you put in the footnote, endnote then? But if you do you may loose the plot. You get a headache and have to stop anyway.

But original source material is very exciting so you do come back, but do your students?

It took me a long while to discover that I was dyslexic, in fact it is only about a year ago that I finally found the courage to be assessed. I grew up in the fifties when classes in primary schools were enormous; there were 53 of us in my first class. I was the youngest of a fairly large family and I soon became a school refuser and was quite capable of making myself ill. I didn't enjoy school until I was about 14. I was considered to be a good little girl but rather thick, I became adept at being the milk monitor. I think I learnt to read when I was about 7 after my mother refused to read to me any more, and if it hadn't been for Enid Blyton I don't think I would ever have read.

Having trained as a teacher in the 1960s I was aware of dyslexia but I thought I couldn't be dyslexic because I could read, now of course I recognise all the other symptoms in myself, which were and are to large extent still there.

When my youngest child, a very bright little boy, started school and was not developing his literacy skills we were forced to face the fact that he might be dyslexic. Through finding out about him realised I too had the disorder. (My son says I shouldn't use the term 'disorder' as it is too negative and I agree but it is difficult to come up with a positive description.) At that point, after being prompted by David McLoughlin my son's assessor, I decided to train as a teacher for dyslexics and soon found myself working with dyslexic undergraduates.

About ten years later I made the decision to attempt an MA in Biography. There were several not very sensible reasons for my decision and luckily I was able to undertake the course at the university where I work. The course has involved a lot of reading, and more to the point for me, a lot of writing. I had not previously studied in the full knowledge that I was dyslexic nor had I previously used the coping strategies that I teach others. During the two part-time years I went through every emotion known to all students and particularly dyslexic ones. I am glad to say I am now a Master of Arts.

My work with the students has fallen into three parts: the identification of dyslexics, teaching coping skills and counselling. The relevant area for today is obviously coping skills. A part of my initial course was the teaching of study skills and this has been the basis of the work I do with my undergraduates. In the early days I tried to teach study skills courses, which I still do with non-dyslexic undergraduates but I have found that with dyslexics it is important to teach a skill as it is needed. This is not easy as it sounds, as the student may be too busy, to worried, or even to lazy to come for help at the best moment. I therefore try to second guess the student by teaching what I consider to be the most important skills as soon as I get hold of them, these would be: reading skills and note taking, during these sessions I slip in some diagrams, usually mind maps. Ideally I think it is best if the young adult has been taught study skills at secondary school or may be even earlier, however with a dyslexics the teaching will only 'stick' if it is relevant and works so it is often necessary to teach over and over again until the penny drops. I think dyslexics get bored easily so re teaching always has to seem new and exciting.

So has my teaching changed since I put myself through the trauma of doing an MA in Biography? Yes, but to completely assimilate the experience and turn it into 'changes' is going to take some time and the changes will not be huge but subtle, but I hope beneficial to my students.

My thoughts so far

The research done into to reading efficiently by people like Buzan is very relevant and is the basis of all study skills programmes. However when a student has a huge amounts of reading to undertake, as with a Masters course, the lengthy formulae we would encourage the earlier learners to undertake are just plain not practical. When the student has isolated the sections to read after a lot of scanning and overviewing, the reader just has to read on, highlighting, marking, taking notes and, heaven forbid, rereading when necessary. The pitfall to this technique is not noting sources, it is very easy to read on without noting page, section etc.

Concentration will also go: sometimes because the reader is tired and needs a break, but often because their brain has gone off on another tangent. I have noticed that these trains of thought are not irrelevant but important to the work in hand or another parallel project. It is vital to make a note of these ideas as otherwise they will disappear. I have started asking fellow dyslexics if this phenomenon happens to them and so far they have all agreed. They too are now taking notes.

Just as with long sentences, it is difficult for a dyslexic to keep the whole gamut of work in their head. Plans and time lines become an essential part of working. Presumably everyone writing more than a few thousand word essay has to write in sections and linking the sections together however it is difficult to keep the thread of the argument. The student's supervisor needs to be particularly aware of how difficult a dyslexic finds it to remaining aware of the thread of the argument and to keep on track.

Research: for most students this is the fun bit so does not present any great difficulties. Going to libraries may however be a problem, new buildings, new catalogues are disorientating. Libraries need to be used but the supervisor may not be aware that there are difficulties and the student is unlikely to volunteer the information. Accompanying a sympathetic fellow researcher might be a remedy.

Referencing: from the onset a student must use the correct form of referencing and then repeat by cutting and pasting. To most this is obvious but I found I could write the reference as many times as is possible and corrections at the end were a nightmare.

In writing biographical pieces I had to follow a handbook called the MHRA, a little blue book that became the bane of my life. Bibliographies are a new language, the ultimate sequence, a secret language of initials, punctuation, brackets, and spelling. One of the first assignments we had to undertake was an annotated bibliography, which most sensible people did as part of their dissertation but I had to be clever and wrote mine on my Special Paper, which was to do with dyslexia. When it came to submitting me dissertation I had forgotten all the rules, just like I have forgotten and relearnt my tables more times than I can remember. Computer programmes didn't work; the items hand written on cards and shuffled into order did but then had to be copied almost letter by letter. A friend tried to help but he thought having shown me how to organise a couple of entries that I would be able to follow the rules for the rest. I managed in the end but with great difficulty and I suspect some errors.

Proof reading: how often have we talked to our students about this, I had no idea how difficult it was to hand over my baby to someone to correct. It felt like criticism, like cheating, it opened up all sorts of issues of trust. I don't think I have yet come up with an answer. The proof reader at MA level has to be good, but also tactful and someone the dyslexic does not feel ashamed of showing their inadequacies to. It must not be under estimated how difficult this is.

A few things worked on self-proof reading.

• The age old leaving a lot of time between writing and reading.
• Changing the fonts on the whole piece of work, the text then looks different and the errors stand out, but beware this method can do odd things to the endnotes.

However self proof reading requires the writer to know where they have gone wrong and in my case I an not always aware of me errors.

Although my thoughts so far have been for the supervisor and the writer, perhaps the remainder is more important for the supervisor as they will have seen numerous dissertations and should have more all round view of what is needed.

• The dyslexic writer will come up with numerous good ideas, they may be verging on the brilliant, but this doesn't mean they will know how to carry the ideas out.
• The supervisor will come up with helpful suggestions but the writer will only hear what they want to hear.
• The supervisor may have to be quite brutal and lay down a plan of do's and don'ts.
• It may be necessary for the supervisor to discuss the language of the dissertation and decide how academic it needs to be.
• Decisions will have to be made as to structure: the supervisor encouraging the writer to make a detailed plan.
• It may be necessary for the supervisor and the writer to mutually decide on a suitable proofreader.
• The supervisor may need to explain that achieving the word count does not necessarily mean the job is done.

The above actions requires care and tact, recognising that the dyslexic probably feels fairly raw and emotional, not an easy job.

The writer will probably rush at the deadline, feeling that they have to achieve this goal, after all how often will they have heard that dreaded word in the past 'deadline'. However as we all know dyslexics cannot read, analyse, be objective about their own work when it is first completed. I think it maybe important to encourage the writer at this moment to apply for an extension, especially if the supervisor can see that this is perhaps not the writer's best piece of work. If that precious dissertation/thesis is left for a few weeks on revisiting the writer may see the errors. Obviously at this stage the piece will already have been through several draft copies, but even so a rereading some weeks after completion could make all the difference.

The writer when they eventually do hand in their work should be prepared for some very odd sensations. A state of panic may ensue over a small error that is quite out of proportion to the event and instead of elation they may well feel depressed.

Disclaimer: all the abstracts presented here have satisfied the academic committee as appropriate for presentation at an international conference. However, the material reflects the views of the authors, not necessarily those of the academic committee or the BDA. No endorsement of any approach, product or service is intended or implied.

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