Story: Mary Ankrah
TEACHERS and parents need to exercise patience for children with dyslexia (a learning disability) to enable such children to overcome the condition to improve on their academic performance.
Mrs Joy Bannerman Addy, the Director of U2kan, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), gave the advice at the launch of the first dyslexia awareness week dubbed “Empower people with dyslexia” in Accra on Monday.
The awareness week was to educate and sensitise Ghanaians, especially parents, teachers and caretakers on dyslexia and promote the awareness of people with the condition in order to help them to improve their lives.
Dyslexia is a learning disability in children who, despite formal classroom experience, fail to attain the language skills of reading, writing, spelling and word pronunciation.
Children or adults with the condition which is caused by the brain’s inability to translate images received from the eyes or ears into understandable language, find it difficult to express themselves clearly or fully comprehend what others articulate.
Letter and number reversals are the most common warning signs. Such reversals are fairly common up to the ages of seven or eight, and usually diminish as they grow up.
Mrs Addy observed that about 10 per cent of people in every country had dyslexia, lowering their chances of success if they did not get the right people to detect it and help those affected to overcome their disability.
A dyslexic person, she said, appeared bright, intelligent and articulate but unable to read or write and usually complained of headaches when reading.
They are also forgetful, lack concentration and are disorganised in the classroom.
Despite these challenges, Mrs Addy indicated that such persons were creative and friendly.
According to her, dyslexia was hereditary and persisted throughout a life time and children with such disorder might show signs of depression and low self-esteem at home and school as well as become unmotivated and develop a dislike for school.
“The child's success in school may be jeopardised if the problem remains untreated”, she said.
In that light, she said, children or adults with such condition could only be managed through a learning assessment process of using the sensory of touch, sight and hearing.
Mrs Addy observed that the method involved teaching children to learn spellings, for example, not only by hearing and saying the sounds of the letters, but also by using their visual and tactile (touch).
“Dyslexia does not affect the entire life of a child or adult. It is just a part of a child’s life that is affected”, she indicated.
Sharing his experience with the Daily Graphic, 15 year-old Andrew Kisseh, a dyslexic, and a past student of the University of Ghana Basic School at Legon in Accra, said through the support of his father, he was overcoming his condition gradually although he sometimes misses B’s for D’s and had little difficulty in spelling.
“ My friends called me dumb because I could not read and write in class. I always lose concentration and it was difficult to understand any lesson at school but now I have improved through the assessment process”, he opined.
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