Has the cause for dyslexia and its cure been found?

WHILE there is no known cure for dyslexia, its affected community was a-buzzed a few weeks ago when news came out from a research laboratory in University of Rennes in France that the possible cause for dyslexia has been found and that this cause is both treatable and preventable.

The research’s article is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in http:// rspb.royalsocietypublishing. org/content/284/1865/20171380 under the title ‘Left–right asymmetry of the Maxwell spot centroids in adults without and with dyslexia’.

Judging by the huge number of forwarded messages to my handphone, the research’s claims seem to excite many parents of children with dyslexia. The research claims that the tendencies of people with dyslexia to read or write numerals or letters in lateral or vertical inversions can be easily corrected with ocular modulations.

Its claims about dyslexia being strongly associated with atypical ocular dominance and that people with dyslexia have atypically long visual persistence, and they misperceive mirrorimage letters such as b and d have been studied for decades and discredited. Also, the above research was done among a small sample of adults (university students). The authors assume their subjects’ eyes were this way since birth. However, eyes are living tissues which change over time based on function and use.

So, please remember that dyslexia IS WAY MUCH MORE than inversions. While only a few affected children have this difficulty which can be easily corrected with tactile or kinaesthetic activities, most do not.

From my personal experiences in working with affected children, their main difficulty in reading and writing is in phonological processing - in hearing and discriminating sounds of different letters (for e.g. /m/ and /n/ sound the same), in blending letter sounds, segmenting syllables or words into their respective sounds, reporters@theborneopost.com (file attachments will not be accepted). identifying the linear order of sounds, manipulating letter sounds and rhyming.

As a young child with symptoms of dyslexia in school, I could hear the first sound clearly but the rest of the sounds came in a messy mesh. Inevitably, I would be the first from behind in spelling tests. I cannot recall having any problems with mirror images.

Many of the children attending intervention and learning support sessions at our centre have similar phonological issues. Children with dyslexia also have difficulties with sequencing, directions, body coordination and others which cannot be corrected with the said ocular modulation.

Be aware that this research needs to be corroborated by others. The ocular modulation might ‘cure’ some of the problems in dyslexia, if at all, but clearly, not all its manifestations. Still, the best intervention for children with dyslexia is to expose them to a highly structured, systematic, cumulative, multi-sensorial and phonics-based instructional programme to learn to read and write.

A significant minority of our children in schools are not reading and writing at their ageappropriate levels not because of any vision problems, but because they were taught to read in a whole language method where letter names were used and where there were no attempts to improve the children’s sense of phonemic awareness and phonological processing skills.

Although phonics has been introduced in the English language curriculum in our primary schools, its pedagogical approach remains ad-hoc and unstructured. When a small group of primary school teachers were asked about what they understood about phonics, almost all of them said teaching letter sounds from a to z. They did not understand about blending and segmenting processes.

The Dyslexia Association of Sarawak (DASwk) has developed SMARTER*phonics and foniks*PINTAR programmes which are effective for all children, including emergent and struggling readers, to learn to read and write in English and Bahasa Melayu respectively.

It has collaborated with the State Education Department to train all its preschool teachers statewide in SMARTER*phonics programme with a grant from the state government.

Anecdotal evidence shows that the teachers love this programme and many had expressed that this is what they really need to teach English correctly and effectively.

These teachers have also asked for training in foniks*PINTAR programme to elevate their children’s skills to read and write in Bahasa Melayu.

DASwk applauds the state government for its bold and visionary commitment to improve the level of English language proficiency among students in schools and employing SMARTER*phonics programme in all preschools is the right way forward.

DASwk will be happy to continue to collaborate with the State government to train its Primary 1 English language teachers for continuity of SMARTER*phonics and also in the BM’s foniks*PINTAR programme. Dr Ong Puay Hoon President of DASwk