Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia
Characteristics of People with Dyslexia
Preschool/Kindergarten
- Delay in talking; articulation problems
- Difficulty recognizing and producing rhymes
- Difficulty remembering written information, such as letter names (also phone number and address)
- Difficulty remembering and following directions
Grades 1-3
- Difficulty learning sound/symbol correspondences
- Persistent confusion of visually similar letters (b/d/p, w/m, h/n, f/t)
- Confusion of letters whose sounds are similar (d/t, b/p, f/v)
- Difficulty remembering basic sight vocabulary (e.g. color)
- Problems segmenting words into individual sounds and blending sounds to form words
- Reading and spelling errors that involve difficulties with sequencing and monitoring sound/symbol correspondence such as reversals of letters (past/pats), omissions (tip/trip), additions (slip/sip), substitutions (rip/rib) and transpositions (stop/pots)
- Omission of grammatical endings in reading and/or writing (-s, -ed, -ing, etc.)
- Difficulty remembering spelling words over time and applying spelling rules when writing
Grades 4-8
- Significant difficulty reading and spelling multisyllabic words, often omitting entire syllables as well as making single-sound errors
- Lack of awareness of word structure (prefixes, roots, suffixes)
- Frequent misreading of common sight words (where, there, what, then, when, etc.)
- Difficulty with reading comprehension and learning new information from text because of underlying word recognition difficulties
- Difficulty in comprehension of text because of underlying oral language problems affecting vocabulary and grammar
- Significant difficulty in writing related to problems in spelling and organization
High School, College, and Adult
- Continued difficulty with word recognition that significantly affect acquisition of knowledge and ability to analyze written material
- Slow rate of reading
- Continued difficulty with spelling and written composition
- Difficulty taking notes in class
- Trouble learning a foreign language
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