You can attribute that to lack of coffee and typing on an iPad, corrected

Like Barnacle, I was reading aged two and had joined the local library. Once I went to infant school my method of coping with English lessons was to decide that I had done my work for the day and walk home.

I never did understand how my mum somehow always seemed to meet me on the way and escort me back to school.

I too read everything I could get my hands on, any books at home (and there were lots) were there for all to read, much to the dismay and horror of various Grammar School English teachers.
Dismay, because it meant that there was a good chance I had already left the concepts shown in the set books behind, and spent almost all of my time bored out of my skull, with obvious problems for the teacher.
Horror too, because in those days some books were considered totally unsuitable for the under 21s to pick up - much less read. This was a time before the famous Lady Chatterley's Lover trial.


In my time at school the emphasis was still on (literally) beating education into children and in the case of my senior school, turning out good servants of a no longer existing empire, and getting as many pupils into Oxford and Cambridge to satisfy the headmaster's vendetta aginst the local public school.

Small wonder that I too fought hard not to go to university at that time, instead choosing to find a company who would pay me to get equivalent qualifications.

Years later, in the 1980's when my son was at school many education authorities (including Hampshire) were saying that there was no such thing as dyslexia, only stupid children, so at least some progress has been made.

I am convinced that a large part of the problems some people have with language stems from poor teaching due to preoccupation with school league tables.
This also works aginst the interests of the brightest children too: the system is geared around the average child and those at either end of the spectrum suffer.

I wasn't ever an avid reader, but I could read before I went to school. Fortunately, in those days they hadn't introduced weird phonetic counter-measures, so I survived very well. I always found it offensive subsequently when schools put pressure on parents not to teach their preschool kids to read. "That's our job, and we prefer it if you don't interfere."

It's offensive because it presumes that their method is better and preferable by default, while all along many kids are doing fine, thank you very much, with traditional methods. It's the schools that need to adapt, not the kids.

I more or less assumed that everyone else in my class was fine with reading and writing too, so I grew up with no impression of dyslexia at large, but it could have been there - I just didn't notice.

I have never understand quite why it is a good idea to teach down to the lowest common denominator, or even the median.

I shall be doing the best I can - with the full approval of her parents - to ensure that Granddaughter can read before she starts school - ideally trilingually. Mind you, she's in a country where English is *taught* rather than assuming it will be acquired somehow by osmosis.

Never mind dyslexia, what about grammar?

I do suffer from my brain going quicker than I type then re-readIng things and noticing that I missed things.

I also tend to miss things when I read them back after typing, but yet when I come back an hour later I can clearly see the errors.Just the way my brain is wired. My spelling and grammar is poor but I blame that on poor teaching/teachers in the 1970's/80's

Saying that my logical abilities are outstanding. Give me a programming language and I am like a pig in the proverbial.

And I am sure that cases of poor teaching /understanding are put down to dyslexia. Schools get extra funding for special need children.

I imagine that Andrewr is most likely to be either high functioning autistic or to have aspergers.

She's outside in the garden, enjoying the sun.

Sorry, I of course meant to say 'I have never understanded...'

I Am Dyslexic, although it effects my reading more so than my writing.

Sure my spelling is bad, while writing posts I am constantly checking my spelling on google and to be honest writing posts takes a fair bit of time for me and sometimes I end up not posting due to the time involved!

I've just had re-read the above paragraph 5 times because I couldn't get the the end without my brain crashing!

I sometimes find myself reading lines over and over, as the info just doesn't go in!

It effects people in different ways.

I didn't do well at school due to the above but that doesn't make one any less capable, infact quite the opposite!

I think schools need to address this issue earlier to give people like me a better start! I left school with shocking grades, which in the short run gives you little prospects! (Oh no what college course can I do etc)

For me its all about being practical and creative, thats what I'm good at. Sit me down and ask me to do a maths and english exam and I'll fail big time!

However this doesn't go to say that I couldn't get an A in an exam, I know I could. But its the way I was taught.

The current state school structure requires you to sit in this clinical environment hour after hour listening, writing and reading. Thats my worst nightmare. There was no possible way for me to learn and take stuff in!

Let me give you and example. When I was a child I was massively into birds (not the female kind that came later)
I could of named every single bird in the British isles, weather it was the male or female of that species and about 90% through their call alone. I could tell you what bird made a perticular nest, I could tell you which bird layed that egg etc etc

Now that isn't the work of a brain that is incablable of learning, it was how I was learning.
I was looking at bird books, seeing a photo of that bird and reading the simple name underneath. Going out to nature reserves and going about the whole thing in a practical way.
I was living an breathing the learning process.
Thats how my brain it wired up to work, not stuck in a dingy classroom looking cross eye'd at a page of text.

I haven't actaully got time to carry this post on, its already taken me 1 hour and I got to go to work!

Anyway, food for thought...

Mart

What seriously pissed me off ws attending a "teacher"-parent evening for Ms RK's little girl.

I challenged her "English" teacher why he didn't correct her spelling, punctuation, grammar and use of words such as "c oz" and "woz". He informed me that it was the content of her writing that was important, not the manner in which it was presented.

When I pointed out I would reject an illiterate CV out of hand he said very little. He said even less when I asked him why the French teacher religiously corrected spelling, punctuation and grammar in her French homework and questioned if this meant it was more important for her to communicate on paper in French rather than English.

Frankly, it appears to me there are people out there who would not appear semi-literate, or dyslexic, if they'd received decent teaching at school.

However in his favour, apparently he was "cool" and drove a Smart car.

Just a small addage to the thread does being left handed increase your chances of haveing dyslexia?

I am a leftie? http://biggsuccess.com/2011/04/01/left-h...sful-leaders-2/

That all sounds pretty normal to me - at least, well within normal limits. I wouldn't claim that I am dyslexic, but I have always found it hard work to read a book. I have a frustrating tendency to see the words rather than the meaning. It has taken me a large part of my adult life to work through that problem.

But it isn't dyslexia. It is an inordinate level of self-consciousness when trying to read a book.

Regarding left-handedness, etc. Until about ten years ago I needed to use my left ear to converse by telephone. If I used the right ear I felt completely disconnected with the person I was talking to. Over the past few years I find that has gone. I can use either ear equally well.

Today's Puzzler!

My job specially involves making reasonable adjustments for dyslexics on behalf of my organisation. All of the above examples you've listed fall within typical signs of dyslexia. As a condition it varies in both degree and presentation from person to person and whilst there are common traits, it's difficult to list specific signs of dyslexia.
However, mixing up similar sounding words, not spelling their mistakes phonetically, having short term memory problems are all relatively common and not a lack of education, ignorance or intelligence.

I'm afraid the ignorance here isn't on the part of dyslexics.

I openly admitted my ignorance of the details of dyslexia when I started this thread, but are you suggesting that every single person who has countered criticism of their spelling/grammar with, "I'm dyslexic" was telling the truth?

That sounds like an ignorance of basic statistics and human nature to me.

I am inclined to agree. The behaviour of the teacher was appalling - but seems to be standard.

The argument that - irrespective of *spoken* English - standard written English improves clarity and decreases ambiguity is somehow ignored.

An interesting English language test I found on t'interwebs - intended, for graduate level students in general but not easy even for me: I missed one correct answer on each section and four on the last (though I claim that there was ambiguity!). However, it's reassuring to think that it thinks that I'm proficient... I did all the sections to see what it was like; it would have been quicker to have started with the hardest. There is at least one spelling mistake in there; I think it's obligatory.

http://www.uefap.com/test/index.htm

Barnacle

To resolve this whole issue, regarding the spelling and grammer on the forum could a simple spell check, grammer adjustment tool be applied into the forums script?

This would remove the need for certain members to be critical on the matter?

My gut feeling is yes based on my own experiences with students - there is of course a crossover when people do some things with LH, others with RH. My own experience which I can at least vouch for is that while I kick a ball, shoot arrow from bow, fire rifle and can play some tt with left hand [or foot], I'm right-handed for writing.

Main annoyance is in a heated discussion I get words jumbled up, I have to keep really calm or have a glass or two of alcohol to loosen up. Writing I can control because I can see it afterwards - the discipline/coping mechanism is to try and read it from your head if you get my gist.

So in general I try not to fall out with Mrs Ed.....

Firefox and IE both have spell-checkers, either as standard, or as free add-ons

Jonny, I'm sure after reading this thread [and credit to the OP for that] a lot more of us can live with it.

True, but it would take less time having it directly on the forum tools

Don't talk rot, of course I'm not suggesting that. As far as this subject is concerned I suspect I'm somewhat less ignorant than you.

Dyslexia is very common (some studies suggest that upto 10% may suffer from it to a greater or lesser degree)

Whilst not every person incapable of spelling is dyslexic, I'd personally be very wary of calling persons that claim to be so, liars.

So does a dictionary!

This is again, an example of laziness.

I wanted to know what a word meant or how it was spelt when I was a kid, my Mum used to go and make me look it up in the dictionary and that helped me to learn words, spellings and meanings.

Another example is the 'times table'. How many people learnt this? How many people are taught it now?

Jonny,

As Nigel says - there are automated spelling tools on both IE and Firefox[1], and they operate in real time as you type (when you hit a space, they will indicate if they don't like the previous line), but they suffer from a common fault in that (a) they are generally incapable of identifying a word which is correct but in the wrong place (e.g. 'there' instead of 'their') and (b) on the words they do recognise as incorrect, their tendency is to offer words based on an error model which in no way matches that of your good self or that of other dyslexics.

The problem is that a standard spelling checker either assumes you can spell but can't type, and so attempts to swap in, say, adjacent keys from the keyboard to create the suggested word list, or it assumes you can type but you can't spell, and it tries to find words that *sound* similar to what you wrote.

The data I have seen suggest that with dyslexics, the errors are both more subtle and more complex - in particular, it has highlighted missing repeated syllables (e.g. 'rember' for 'remember' - Firefox offers 'ember', 'member', and couple of others, but not 'remember'). They don't cope well with run-on words, where a space or punctuation may be missed, nor with words broken by an embedded space, and they can't do anything about grammar errors or missing complete words.

There are spelling correctors intended to deal specifically with these kinds of errors, but they're not something that could be implemented behind the scenes on a forum; they're far too processor-intensive and they're probably dependent on training for a particular user.[2]

That said - Sam's spelling improved no end when he got into the habit of using the checker, though naturally he still gets some homophones wrong (Sam, that's *not* a criticism, just an observation!) and his writing is much easier to read than it was when he first started using the forum. Your own spelling in this thread, while it has had one or two glitches, has not been bad at all.

What I will repeat (with my mod hat on) is an implicit forum rule: it is not acceptable behaviour to pick on a forum user on the grounds of their spelling or grammar. If it happens, tell a mod.

[1] Firefox flags its own name; it prefers 'Firefly'.
[2] If you're bored, my dissertation describes the similar but not identical problem of identifying errors in optical character recognition systems. They too find errors which confuse standard spelling correctors, and I came up with a way to isolate such errors and statistical methods to correct them; I don't take any account of grammar, though.
http://www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk/ocr/Dissertation.pdf

I was taught both the times tables - up to twelve, though I complemented it when I learned that
which meant I only had to remember up to 10 - and also how to use a dictionary.

The problem with a dictionary is that it is only able to confirm the spelling for a word you already know most of, and will rarely include all the affixes. So if you wrote 'seamed' when you meant 'seemed' a dictionary will tell you that you got the spelling right but the meaning wrong, but it won't tell you, unless you're lucky enough to glance at it on the same page, that there's another word which is spelt almost the same and which means something completely different.

A checker that can find that has to be a wondrous beastie indeed; it would have had to have analysed the whole discussion plus the respondent's previous writings (in both original and corrected forms) to have even a chance of deriving the context and from that the best choice of correction - and that's from a word which is correctly spelt!

Trust me when I say that spelling checkers are hard to write; grammar checkers are even harder; and contextual checking - proof-reading, if you like - is hardest of all. With a good one, I believe you are getting something close to artificial intelligence.

I can't read this thread any more, reminds me of my mate Bob. He was an alcoholic Dyslexic, poor guy. Choked on his own vimto last year. This came after being found asking for sex in a warehouse!

Thank you Mr Pinin. Mind the door on your way out.

and that was easier?

Yes, because all the numbers come out of the 1-10 times table. This was pre-calculators, m'boy!

e.g 13*17


The thing is, the second one I can do in my head without really thinking about it. It's geometrical - Isaac Newton would have approved.

Just realised 221 is both the sum of two primes *and* the sum of two squares...

You, like me, are an old fudd!

I do however like your style!