Monday, April 18, 2011

Dyslexia - is the teachng method at fault - 2

We have read about many famous dyslexics in my blog and other sites on the internet. Here is another successful dyslexic author, Debbie Macomber.

Debbie Macomber was born on October 22, 1948 in Yakima, Washington, U.S.A. She is a dyslexic, and when she first decided to write a novel she had only a High School Degree and also was the very young mother of four active children.

No one believed she had what it took to write a book. At the age of 10 she was still unable to read. Today, with more than 150 million copies of her books in print, Debbie Macomber is one of the world’s most popular authors.

Her dyslexia did not deter her from pursuing a lifelong dream of becoming an author.

I urge you to ask yourself as to how/why Macomber and other dyslexics like her  who could not read in school become successful readers later in life.

How is it that Tom Cruise is now able to read? He says, "Everything fell into place" when he was converted to Scientology. "Many people had tried to teach me, but no-one had taught me how to learn or how to study", until he used L. Ron Hubbard’s learning method of "Study Technology".

If Tom Cruise had phonological awareness deficit how was someone able to teach him when he was an adult?

Whoopi Goldberg, one of my most favourite actresses had said, When I was a kid they didn't call it dyslexia. They called it... you know, you were slow, or you were retarded, or whatever. And so, I learned from a guy who was running a program who I met one day and he had written out on a board a sentence. And I said to him, "You know, I can't read that." And he said, "Why not"? And I said, "Because it doesn't make any sense to me." So he said, "Well, write down what you see under each. Whatever you see, write exactly what you see underneath." And so, he brought me to letters by coordinating what I saw to something called an A, or a B, or a C, or a D, and that was pretty cool.”

A DYSLEXIC mum of six who was ostracised in her community for returning to school has scooped an award in recognition of her determination to grab an education.

Monaka persevered and is now in her first year at Birmingham University, studying law, with the aim of one day becoming a duty solicitor.

Vince Flynn is a best-selling American author of political thriller novels. In an effort to overcome the difficulties of dyslexia, Flynn forced himself into a daily writing and reading regimen. Quotes Flynn: "I started reading everything I could get my hands on,

  • Ponder if part of the reason for the success of these dyslexics is the fact that they were finally able to realize WHY they had been unsuccessful. 
  • Is it possible that if they had been made to realize this at an earlier age they would have done better in school? 
  • Is it possible that all the above and many more dyslexics suddenly realise or were made to realise by teachers that they were having a problem with reading in English simply because they were trying to make sense of a language that is not logical/orthographically inconsistent? 
  • Is it possible that they could at a later age see that many of the alphabets (graphemes) in English had more than one sound (phoneme) and could finally accept this fact which had possibly shut them down earlier? (Refer to my earlier articles on why children shut down.)
  • Is it possible that the Western world is misleading the public saying that dyslexics have a phonological awareness deficit when in fact the reason is that they shut down because they cannot make sense of what is being taught?

Let me know if you have an answer to any of the questions above.

No comments: