All About Dyslexia

[Gin]

busymum0607:

my ds has dyslexia, just went P1 few days ago. can anyone shed light about how to go about dropping chinese language? he cant seem to remember the pictorial form of the words. and i do not want to stress him with this language as it only gets harder as yrs goes by.

Hi busymum0607,

Sorry, just a quick note.


Has your son been officially diagnosed as having dyslexia? I think you can discuss your situation with the school administration of the school your son is attending.

I know of one school (SAP) where they tried to discourage my dyslexic student from dropping CL (Chinese Language). So, the poor boy had to go through the first few years failing his CL. Of course, his family knew it was really tough for the boy, so they did not stress him out. He too had made up his mind that he was not going to stress over CL. Just focused on Maths, Science and English. Finally, in P5, the MOE approved of him dropping CL. Well, I must say, sitting and enduring those Chinese lessons in school has its good points as well. At least he is able to understand and speak Mandarin He is strong in Maths and Science but his English is borderline. Wish I could be of help but I only teach him Maths and Science. However, I really do think he is capable of better results for English, if he is properly guided in his English learning.

In the end, parents who work closely with their children know what is best suited for their kids. Brave on! Focus on our child's areas of strength and encourage improvement of areas of weakness.

Personally, my daughter is taking French instead of CL. I wrote to MOE - filling up Form 5-FL (Application to offer Foreign Language/Asian Language) from her school. As my husband is not local (he is not French though), I had to give proof of my proficiency in the French Language. MOE approved the application after about 6 weeks. She now attends lessons at Alliance Francaise - once a week). She is doing fine with English and Maths. P2 this year.

All the best.

[3boysdad]

[quote]
I know of one school (SAP) where they tried to discourage my dyslexic student from dropping CL (Chinese Language). So, the poor boy had to go through the first few years failing his CL. Of course, his family knew it was really tough for the boy, so they did not stress him out. He too had made up his mind that he was not going to stress over CL. Just focused on Maths, Science and English. Finally, in P5, the MOE approved of him dropping CL. [/quote](edit: There are SAP primary schools, wahhh, i am out of touch). The application to exempt from mother tongue is made to MOE though the school. If MOE approves, nothing the school can do about it. Of course the primary school can still request the exempted students to sit in the class and participate while the Chinese lesson is going on.

A school would be thrilled to exempt a weak performer from MT as exemption means that the weak student will not affect its PSLE results. There is no reason for the school to discourage the student from dropping CL. (unless the school believes that his poor performance is due to lack of effort)

I find it hard to believe that if a student is diagnosed with dyslexia in P1, he apply P1, P2, P3, P4 to MOE, cannot get exemption, then suddenly P5 get exempted. Maybe the truth is that the parents never got him tested for dyslexia until P5.

[ngl2010]

My niece is suspected to have dylexia. She lives in Hong Kong and attends local school there. There isn’t much article on how to teach Chinese characters to dyslexics. Can anybody share tips on how to help her?


Also, she is very prone to forgetting things. How to help improve the condition?

Thank you in advance.

[Mrs Brainy]

ngl2010:

My niece is suspected to have dylexia. She lives in Hong Kong and attends local school there. There isn't much article on how to teach Chinese characters to dyslexics. Can anybody share tips on how to help her?


Also, she is very prone to forgetting things. How to help improve the condition?

Thank you in advance.

There isn't much research on how to help dyslexics in Chinese. Chinese is even more difficult than English for them. They have to struggle with recognising Chinese characters and ultimately they have to give up learning Chinese. That's what happened to my son. His Chinese results had been dropping, so I had to apply exemption from Chinese for him.

My son has the same problem too. He will come back home with missing pencil, sharpener, etc. He does not even remember where he left them.

[ammonite]

I find that kids with poor vision processing skills have difficulties with Chinese characters. But at the same time, dyslexic children are supposed to be creative and imaginative. What I have attempted is to try to go back to the hieroglyphic roots of the characters to help my child remember the words and to distinguish similarities through this illustrative method. This is quite slow and effort intensive, but it works for my son. If he attempts to learn the words by just looking, he will be lost. We spend a lot of time on the radicals - their formation and meaning - and I encourage him to think of Chinese characters as his beloved lego. I always tell him Chinese is very easy, logical and imaginative, that he can build many things out of a few basic parts. And in doing so, he is able to learn more complex characters easily.


To improve the proportion of his characters, I will tell him that the word should look tall and strong like a warrior, not short and squat like a hobbit under a heavy load. Somehow by giving him these images, he is able to adjust the words intuitively.

I do find the si wu kuai du set useful for him as it includes little listening exercises and reading exercises. At the same time, we watch chinese shows and we read a short chinese story every night. It was a slow start, but he has improved in learning speed, reading accuracy, and ability to understand passages.

[JonC]

ammonite:

... si wu kuai du ...

You mean 四五快读?

[ammonite]

Ya, that. I had to redo my kid’s Chinese from basics after he could finally crack English. We started redoing in P2.

[Luanee]

My 5yo+ girl curves her ‘g’ and ‘s’ the wrong way sometimes. And she writes twenty as 02. Are these symptons of dsylexia ? Or is it normal for her age?


I see that most dyslexic kids are identified at primary school levels. Any way of identifying them earlier??

[shiryan]

You may refer to http://www.das.org.sg/about-dyslexia for more information.


My son who is 10 yr old this year had been diagnosed with Dyslexia when he is 5 years old.

[windie]

Does anyone have experience w DAS International, specifically their Math classes? Any feedback is appreciated.