DEMOS Project - Module: Dyslexia

Identifying dyslexic students

Many students will know that they are dyslexic before they come to university. They will have already been assessed during school or college and you may be aware of their dyslexia because they have disclosed the information to the university/ department/ yourself.

However, many students enter higher education unaware that they are dyslexic. They may have used coping strategies to get them this far or they may have come to university through non-traditional pathways. Mature students, for instance, may have dropped out of education because of undiagnosed dyslexia and returned without any knowledge of the difficulty. The level of ability required of students in higher education may highlight the student's specific difficulties and they then begin to struggle.

Tutors may recognise some of the following indicators of dyslexia when working with students :

General

literacy standards fall below expectation.
poor organisational skills (misses meetings, loses papers).
left/right confusion.
poor time management skills (hands in work late on frequent occasions, confuses dates, always late for lectures).
low self esteem.

Writing

poor handwriting.
lack of coherence when presenting ideas in writing.
poor use of capital letters and punctuation.
limited vocabulary demonstrated.

Spelling

tendency to spell phonetically (e.g. fonetikly, necisary).
mixes phonemes up even in spell checked typed documents (e.g. which/witch, were/where/wear/ware).
letters and figures often the wrong way round (e.g. raw for war, 48 for 84).

Reading

words read incorrectly.
lack of fluency when reading aloud.
difficulty using referenced texts.

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