The reasons for ongoing reading difficulties?

The good reading brain needs...

Precise information coming into the brain  

Dyslexia is a neurological problem -

Find out how reading and learning are affected...

The main kind of information required for reading is through sight and hearing. If the information brought in to the brain is not precise, even if the brain is good at organisaing and planning, it won't have good data to recognize, understand and store.

If the letters being read appear to move around and cross over each other it's hard to learn the shape of letters. Auditory/phonological problems mean they cannot easily distinguish letter sounds.

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“There is evidence that most reading problems have a fundamental sensorimotor cause”
John Stein, Dyslexia, Vol 7, Issue 1 pp 12-36, Jan/Mar 2001

Find out more about Professor Stein

All the parts working together efficiently 

All learning is "brain re-wiring", including programs which deal directly with reading and rely only on reading practice.

For fast change, you want programs which work directly on the brain to deal with the underlying causes of difficulties.

Find out more about Professor Berninger

"the most important brain functions for literacy acquisition  (are) - sensory, motor, aural/oral, language, cognition/ memory, and attention/executive control...
Learning depends on these various systems working in a cooperative manner in a functional system"

Berninger & Richards, Brain Literacy For Educators and Psychologists:  2002 p 109

Those with dyslexia  have less activation in
the part of the brain that connects the pictures
of the letters to the sounds (posterior)
and over-reliance on the sounds themselves. (Sally Shaywitz)

More efficient readers tend to combine the different functions more smoothly.

Balanced Attention

Precise information/sensory processing

Attention and
synchronisation

Is Dyslexia a "gift"?

Even though some adults say that the Dyslexia helped them become "stronger" and "more resilient", most would say that school was hard. The "learning difference" was a "learning difficulty".

Most with Dyslexia say it was and is a problem for them.

Even with "dyslexia friendly" schools, why would we want students to spend up to 13 years trying to work in a "hard" environment, when by making the necessary brain connections quickly, learning, reading and school/life quality can also improve quickly?