For lots of students who are struggling with dyslexia, learning in school can turn complicated real fast. The systems in place within modern society make each potential obstacle more challenging than the last. Exams, interviews, papers, and a whole lot of reading is everywhere. These areas of life can be affected by the way in which an individual processes information.
Lots of parents have found touch-typing to be a useful tool which can help people with dyslexia conquer challenges that are associated with their condition.
Understanding Dyslexia
One of the most important things to point out when discussing dyslexia is that it isn’t a sign of low intelligence, poor eyesight, or laziness. It’s a rather common condition and it alters the way the brain processes language — both spoken and written.
Dyslexia is a special learning need, and kids need to know how to learn with it.
Students diagnosed with dyslexia are quite competent at understanding complex ideas. And though this special learning need is something they won’t outgrow, it doesn’t mean it will hinder them in life. There are plenty of adults with dyslexia who are enjoying successful careers in various professional fields.
If you’re unsure about whether or not your child has dyslexia, consider some of the signs below. It’s good to evaluate them as early as possible so you can seek extra help and guidance along the way:
- Difficulty in combining sounds to make words.
- A hard time recognizing the letters of the alphabet.
- It’s challenging to pick up new words.
- Struggling with sequences like days of the week, or counting.
- A hard time at rhyming.
- Possessing smaller vocabulary than other children in their age group.
- Difficulty with pronunciation or switching the first letters of words.
- Struggling to match the letters with their sounds.
- Difficulty in learning grammar
- Having trouble with learning new skills
Learning While Having Dyslexia
For kids who are struggling with learning difficulties, the benefits of touch-typing go beyond simply enhancing performance at school, and later on, in your job.
Typing practice is a requirement for the blind and visually impaired, because it means they can navigate a keyboard without using eyes. So that means they can write quickly, efficiently, and accurately without forming letters by hand or see the words on the page.
So if touch-typing helps a lot for those with physical impairments, then it can definitely aid learning for dyslexic students.
For a dyslexic student, learning how to touch-type (or type correctly, in general) emphasizes spelling and phonics. A repeated encounter with high frequency words also helps with training learners to recognize words by sight. It saves them from the decoding process that causes some trouble in reading.
In addition to spelling and phonics, it also improves vocabulary, memory, and reading. Parents can infuse fun into this activity by introducing typing games. Typing gives dyslexic students an alternative way to learn. The muscle memory that’s involved in touch-typing transforms spelling into a series of patterns on the keyboard. It makes mistakes in spelling words or transposing much less common.
As a general rule, students who’ve learned touch typing at an early age can perform better in a typing speed test, general typing test, and other types of exams which involve the skills mentioned above, regardless of whether or not they have dyslexia.
Typing to Enhance Learning
Experts do confirm that dyslexic kids as young as 6-7 years old can learn how to type, as soon as their hands can fit comfortably above the keyboard. Learning how to type supports a young learner’s literacy skill development, and proves a useful skill for new writers as well.
Learning how to type enhances the speed with which kids type, and it means they have more time to spare thinking of ideas that could improve the flow of their work.
And when they are acquainted to learning touch typing at school at a young age, there’s the added benefit of setting students up for a more complex and longer writing assignment in the future.
