Dyslexia Support in English

Helping native and non-native English speakers to succeed in English

BLOOM WHERE YOU  ARE  PLANTED

Dyslexia Support in English serves two types of individuals, native English speakers

and non-native speakers struggling with English, dyslexia or dyslexic tendencies. 

• Native English speakers

• Non-native English speakers

Individuals come to me knowing that they are struggling with English.  They may also have dyslexia or dyslexic tendencies.  Above all, they are not receiving the support needed to succeed in school, whether that is an international school, a typical Dutch school or a university.  I help students succeed so that they can become successful independent learners.  I only use strategies, methods and programs that have been proven to work via scientific peer-reviewed research. 

I do assessments to inform my teaching and determine the needs of the students.  Assessments tell me many things about the individual needs of a student, e.g., level of reading comprehension, knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences and known spelling patterns.  I cannot teach someone without assessing their needs. I analyze the results of the assessments and write specific learning objectives for each student. The learning objectives provide the framework for each lesson that I teach.   

What are dyslexic tendencies?

Dyslexia can appear in various forms: phonological dyslexia, rapid naming deficit, and double deficit dyslexia.
Some people struggle with reading and spelling (phonological dyslexia);  others with retrieving information from memory which hinders their ability to pull words from memory (a rapid naming deficit); and finally, some people struggle with both and additional skills (double deficit dyslexia).  Some individuals will never learn to read without extra support, while others can have some degree of dyslexia but have enough adaptive skills to never be diagnosed with dyslexia.  Yet almost every learner with dyslexia can benefit from extra support. 

Signs of dyslexia include the following:

 (From The Mayo Clinic, Dyslexia Symptoms)

For children younger than five years

• Late talking
• Learning new words slowly
• Problems forming words correctly, such as reversing sounds in words or confusing words that sound alike
• Problems remembering or naming letters, numbers and colors
• Difficulty learning nursery rhymes or playing rhyming games

For elementary school children

• Reading well below the expected level for age
• Problems processing and understanding what is heard
• Difficulty finding the right word or forming answers to questions
• Problems remembering the sequence of things
• Difficulty seeing (and occasionally hearing) similarities and differences in letters and words
• Inability to sound out the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word
• Difficulty spelling
• Spending an unusually long time completing tasks that involve reading or writing
• Avoiding activities that involve reading

For teens and adults

• Difficulty reading, including reading aloud
• Slow and labor-intensive reading and writing
• Problems spelling
• Avoiding activities that involve reading
• Mispronouncing names or words, or problems retrieving words
• Spending an unusually long time completing tasks that involve reading or writing
• Difficulty summarizing a story
• Trouble learning a foreign language
• Difficulty understanding and solving word/story problems in math
  
  

Note: I do not diagnose individuals with dyslexia or carry out formal testing to determine a diagnosis.

Educational psychologists have the training to determine a diagnosis.

Autumn 2024: My schedule is almost full after school; contact me and see if we can figure something out.