Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I think my child may be Dyslexic. Where do I start?

A:  A good process to follow is given here:

1. Begin with the FREE Checklist of Dyslexic Problems. If your child has several of these common Dyslexic learning problems, they probably have dyslexic issues. Follow up with any assessments given by schools or other professionals. To make these assessments easier to understand we highly recommend you read the following books.

2. Read How the Right Brain Thinks.

3. Read about the Turner-Hope Method.

4. Read How the Right Brain Learns.

Q: Can you help my child learn to read, write, and do math?

A: Yes. The Turner-Hope methodology has proven extremely successful in helping dyslexic students learn these skills rapidly and quickly.

Q: How can I tell if I am dyslexic?

A: We can help you to decide if you are dyslexic, why you are having learning problems, how you learn and what skills you need to learn.

Dyslexia is not a disability or a brain dysfunction. It is a learning difference that is created when the right half of the brain processes information more than the left, consequently the information you see or hear is processed as whole pictures. We will call these pictures “whole, concrete images”.

Thinking in whole images creates several problems that are symptoms of dyslexia:

1. Letters and numbers are very abstract symbols that mean nothing on their own to the right brain and must be taught in wholes: whole words, whole sentences, whole explanations, whole lessons, whole stories, and so on.
   
2. Learning to spell words, for instance, means you must memorize the word as a whole, concrete image. You learn it by memorizing the picture image of the whole word and saying its whole sound. For example, start with a picture of a “horse”. Then say the word “horse”. The sound of the word and the picture of the horse go into the brain as a whole, concrete image with a name. To learn to spell the word “horse” you must then see a printed copy of the word “horse” and memorize that printed image. This will help you to recognize the word “horse” whenever you see it in the future.
   
3. You shouldn’t try to learn a new word by sounding out its individual letters because you cannot picture a sound. This is called phonics and it teaches you to learn to spell phonetically rather than use traditional spelling. Even though phonics works for some people we have found that you do need the whole sound and whole image of any word in front of you of any word you have to memorize.
   
4. Another problem with the right brain thinking in wholes is that it may not be able to put things in their proper order such as letters and numbers in a word unless the order of the letters is memorized as part of a whole concrete image of the word.
   

So far, we have given you only a small introduction to the things we can help you learn that involve the right brain and are causing you difficulty. If you are interested in continuing with us, we suggest that first you download the following free checklist.

I look forward to your next email. If you do not understand what you have read above or have more questions you would like answered, please email me at jturner@dyslexiavictoria.ca

The following is a brief check list for you to fill out and email back to us. It will assess the major problems you may be having and give us an idea of them so that we can help you further. Keep a copy for yourself. If you are interested in receiving updates, handout sheets or articles from us, please tell us by email. We look forward to your answer. We also look forward to helping you because we know we can help you learn how to overcome your dyslexic problems.

Your teacher

Janice Turner ____________________________________________________________________________

First name ____________________________________________ Age ______________

Grade at the present time _____________________________

Down load a copy of the following assessment list and put an X by those learning tasks that are difficult for you. Make a list of those skills you find difficult and send it to me in an email so that I can help you learn how to improve these skills. Assessing your problem areas:

Problems with Language Arts

1. Printing or writing letters and numbers
2. Pronouncing words
3. Spelling words
4. Reading a printed page from left to right
5. Finding information in a story
6. Understanding what you read so you are able to answer questions
7. Finding a list of given words in a page of print
8. Writing sentences
9. Understanding how to punctuate sentences
10. Taking your tests orally rather than writing them down
11. Printing assignments on a computer
12. Following written or oral directions

Problems with Mathematical Skills

1. Counting to 100 without changing the order of the numbers
2. Working with addition or subtraction
3. Learning the multiplication tables
4. Doing both long and short division
5. Telling time
6. Understanding money and using it to purchase items
7. Taking measurements of squares, rectangles and triangles
8. Understanding fractions
9. Working with decimals or percentages
10. working through mathematical words problems

What is dyslexia?

Dyslexia is actually Latin for "difficulty with words". Today it has come to include all the hand writing, spelling, reading, composition and mathematical problems 30 to 50 percent of people are experiencing. Most importantly dyslexia is a learning difference, not a disability.

The difference is that the dyslexic student understands the world by seeing everything in “whole concrete pictures” which makes it difficult to see the parts that make up those concrete pictures, such as letters within a word. But the left brain can see those letters inside the words and we teach them to sound them out and read them in words one at a time.

Although both the right and left brains learn about the world through reading, writing and arithmetic, they learn in different ways. The teacher’s job is to show the right-brained student how to change those whole pictures into letters, words and numbers so that the right brain can learn to read and write and work out cause and effect.

What causes a person to be predominantly right-brained?

It is a genetic trait that a person gets from their parent or parents. Right-brained persons are born seeing and understanding the world in whole concrete images. These are pictures that are complete in all their details. For example, you say "horse" and the sound of that word brings a full concrete image of a horse to your mind. The major learning difference is that the left brain can also see and understand that a group of letters represents a sound. For example: the letters in the word “horse” can be sounded out to arrive at the word and its meaning: ho- r- se. This is the way we are taught in school to sound out words. But the right brain cannot do this as it cannot understand what the letters represent on their own in the small groups. They need the whole word “horse”. So we have to find ways to teach the student to spell words and learn to read them in a sentence.

They have many excellent traits that are different from those of us who are left –brained. Because it sees and thinks in whole concrete pictures, the right brain is reality based, that is it takes in information by seeing, hearing or handling information that comes in complete pictures. It has difficulty understanding letters and numbers on their own because they are very abstract and have no meaning.

The learning problems arise because the right brain understands words only when the whole word image or word symbol is present. The right brain reads only in whole words it has memorized. The left brain understands knows what letters and numbers represent and so learns to read by seeing and hearing the sounds of words.

What is the major learning difference between the right and left brain?

The left brain starts with all the parts and must be taught how to put them together to reach a conclusion.

The right brain takes in all the parts in complete picture images which we call whole concrete images. Learning requires that the student can see all the parts inside the whole image and knows how to work with them.

This learning difference means that to be able to read and write answers, the right-brained student must memorize a reading vocabulary of “sight words” equal to the reading material of the grade. This is why children are given lists of words to memorize in each grade.

What is the major learning problem for the right-brained student?

The major learning problem for the right-brained student is understanding what letters and numbers represent. Letters and numbers on their own are very abstract and represent nothing to the right brain.

Most of the words in our language are abstract and cannot be turned into complete picture images because the brain cannot see anything when it only hears an abstract sound such as “since”. It must have three learning senses working together to memorize a word.: hearing it said, seeing a concrete image in the mind of what it represents and printing the word on paper or typing it out.

Just hearing the sound of the word is not enough for the right brain to understand it and store it in memory. It needs a concrete image of the word. So to understand the word and memorize it, the right brain must hear the full sound of the word and see a printed copy of the word. This must be followed by copying the word at least five times or until the printed image becomes a concrete image in the right brain.

The left brain can learn to spell or read a word by sounding out its letters. It does not need a concrete image to understand abstract words. The major difference is the right brain must hear the full sound of a word and see the complete image in the mind’s eye to spell it.

What causes this learning difference?

• If the student is using the right side of the brain to process information, he is thinking in whole images. The right brain collects information in "whole concrete images", whereas the left brain learns in letters, words, and numbers. To use that information to think and read, the right-brained learner must be able to change those pictures in the right brain into the letters, words and numbers that the left brain need to understand what the right brain is processing.

• The left brain can understand what the letters and numbers represent, the right brain understands only when it can see a picture image of an object, idea or assignment. The student has to be taught ways to this. Learning to spell must be done in wholes: whole sounds of words, wholes words whole images of the letters inside printed words. When the student can see the whole printed image of a in the right brain, he can then memorize both the sound of the words and the whole word image so that he can recognize it when he sees it in print. For example, when you see a tree or hear the word "tree" , you know what the sound is referring to. The memorized image of the word is then stored in long term memory.

• Teaching the dyslexic or right-brained student is finding ways to turn these picture images into letters and numbers that can be sent to the left brain where the ideas can be used to think and learn.

• The right brain takes in information either through seeing , hearing or handling. One of these three learning senses is usually stronger than the other two. But they all work together to collect information for the brain. This means that words that do not give the student a complete picture do not make sense to the person and the brain discards it.

• The right brain understands the world in whole pictures that it can store in the right brain.

Thinking in whole images or pictures means the right brain creates two main learning problems.

It reduces the ability of the brain to:

1) put things in sequence
2) think in the abstract

A decoding process is needed to learn to think in the abstract and sequence the “parts” when spelling words, reading or writing sentences, locating answers on a page of print, constructing grammatically correct sentences and composing paragraphs and essays. It is basic to all arithmetic and mathematical concepts.

Remember: The students must build a spelling and reading vocabulary that is equal to the reading vocabulary of the grade level they are in.

How does the right brain learn?

The right brain understands the world by seeing it in whole pictures and concepts. The left brain reads about it through letters and numbers that it sequencing the parts and can process for thinking about the world. This means the right brain learns everything in wholes: whole words, whole sentences, whole stories, whole lessons. If any of these are left incomplete during learning, the right brain discards them. It does not understand incomplete images or concepts.

Fortunately, the right brain is able to “fill in the blanks” in many cases as the brain matures. However, it does not always mean the student as a adult will be able to read the words or work with mathematical concepts because these skills use abstract letters and numbers.

Thinking in pictures also means the brain cannot see or work with the parts separate from the whole picture. The skills they need must be taught in whole images such as spelling words without breaking them up into letters or sounding out the letters if they don’t have any meaning.

Thinking with the right brain creates two main learning problems for the student: it reduces the ability of the brain to put things in sequence and think in the abstract.

Examples of this are spelling words, reading or writing sentences, seeing words on a page of print, constructing sentences that are grammatically correct and writing paragraphs and essays.

What senses does the right brain use to take in information?

--- auditory (listening, hearing, talking, reading aloud about an image or object)

--- visual (seeing the complete image, looking at pictures of the image, hearing the name of the object being talked about or read about)

--- kinesthetic (touching, handling, tracing, assembling or drawing the object)

How do we teach the right-brained learners to think?

We teach them ways to see and work with the parts such as the letters in a word. For example, learning to spell a word requires a printed copy of the full word be placed in front of the students so that they can copy it and then memorize it. Memorizing for the student requires writing the word at least five times to decode and print all of its parts such as remembering the shape of the letters, their direction, their size and their order or place in a word. Also the correct letters in a word must be present so that the meaning of the word is clear. Incomplete words have no meaning, so the right brain discards them.

This process provides the whole concept a right-brained learner needs to see and work with the parts such as the letters in a whole word image. First the student must have an image of the object, then hear the sound and finally see the concrete image of the printed word.

“tree” tree Concrete picture of Sound of the word Concrete image of of the object the word

If the word is abstract as is “somewhere”, then only the sound and the concrete image of the word itself can be presented and learned as a word image to be spelled and printed.

Thinking in pictures means the brain cannot see or work with the parts separate from the whole picture

The skills must be taught in whole images such as spelling words without sounding out each letter or breaking them into phonetic sound groups that don’t have any meaning.

Many words can be broken into syllables. However, most syllables have a purpose such as changing the parts of speech as in turning a noun into an adjective requires a suffix which is a concept the student will understand. Nation is a noun, national is the adjective, nationally is the adverb. Most prefixes have a meaning such as “com” which means to put together as is “compound” or “combine” or “complete”. Note that all these examples are abstract words.