عُسر القراءة: ‏مقدمة قصيرة جدًّا‏

Very Short Introductions #603

by Margaret J. Snowling, نهى صلاح (مترجم), الزهراء سامي (مراجعة)

يعرض هذا الكتاب من سلسلة «مقدمة قصيرة جدًّا» نظرة عامة مبسَّطة حول مجال أبحاث عُسر القراءة، استنادًا إلى شهادة الأشخاص الذين يعانون منه. يوضِّح الكتاب في البداية الكيفيةَ التي يتعلَّم بها الأطفال القراءة والكتابة، والمتطلَّبات الإدراكية اللازمة لذلك، والعمليات الدماغية التي تشارك في عملية التعلُّم، إضافةً إلى تقييم نُهُج التدريس التي تأتي بأفضل النتائج. وبالنظر إلى العوامل الوراثية والبيئية والأسباب المحتمَلة التي تؤدي إلى الإصابة بعُسر القراءة، يوضِّح الكتاب كيف وثَّقت الدراساتُ التي تقارن بين لغات مختلفة مدى انتشار عُسر القراءة في هذه اللغات. ومن خلال مناقشة تقنيات مسح الدماغ المختلفة التي استُخدمت لمعرفةِ إنْ كانت أدمغة الأشخاص الذين يعانون من عُسر القراءة تختلف في التركيب أو الوظيفة عن أدمغة الأشخاص العاديين، ينتقل الكتاب إلى تقييم الاستراتيجيات والتدخُّلات المختلفة التي يمكِن أن تساعد الأشخاص الذين يعانون من عُسر القراءة في الوقت الحالي.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Audiobook, Mental Health, Science, Medical, Education

158 pages, ebook

Published January 17, 2024

Reviews

[Ruba Alzoubi · Rating 3 out of 5]

- تُعرف صعوبات القراءة، غير الناتجة عن قلة التعليم باسم «عُسر القراءة». يمكن تعريف عسر القراءة على أنه مشكلة في التعلم تؤثر - بشكل أساسي – في تطور دقة القراءة والطلاقة ومهارات التهجي، وغالباً ما يكون عسر القراءة مصحوباً بصعوبات أخرى، كالمشكلات المتعلقة بالانتباه والتنظيم والمهارات الحركية، لكن هذه المشكلات في حد ذاتها - ليست مؤشرات تدل على عسر القراءة.
- يؤثر عسر القراءة بشكل أساسي في المهارات التي تتضمنها قراءة الكلمات وتهجئتها بسلاسة.
- يقدم الكتاب نظرة شاملة حول عُسر القراءة (Dyslexia)، وهو اضطراب تعلم محدد.
- تشرح سنولينج طبيعة العُسر كصعوبة في فك الترميز، ضعف الوعي الصوتي، الذاكرة اللفظية القصيرة المدى، البطء في التسمية (في مهام التسمية التلقائية السريعة) ، وصعوبة تكرار الكلمات التي لا معنى لها التي لم يسمعوا بها من قبل، العثور على الكلمات الملائمة، كما يجدون صعوبة في تعلم أسماء الأشياء والرموز الجديدة، الجوانب البيولوجية والوراثية للاضطراب، مشيرة إلى تأثير البيئة على تطوير مهارات القراءة، وتختم بتقديم استراتيجيات التدريس والتدخل الفعالة لمساعدة الأطفال والبالغين الذين يعانون من هذه الحالة.
- الأطفال الذين يعانون من عسر القراءة لديهم مشكلتين الأولى تتعلق بمهارة تحليل الكلمات وفهمها والثانية تتعلق بنطق الكلمات المعقدة التي تتضمن العديد من المقاطع.
- عسر القراءة ليس عيباً ولا دليل على الفشل، ومن يعاني منه عليه أن يطلب الدعم المناسب لحالته وتجربة استراتيجيات مختلفة للاستذكار والتحصيل.
- كتاب علمي مبسط، جيد للمربيين والأهل وحتى للقارئ حيث أضاف لي معلومات جديدة.
- وأخيراً "يمكن أن يؤثر عسر القراءة في أشخاص لهم قدرات عقلية مختلفة؛ لذا من الأفضل التفكير فيه باعتباره مرضاً له طيف أو نطاق، ولا يندرج تحت فئة محددة، وليس له حدود واضحة."

[Carson Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a bit of a 3-star book in terms of my personal satisfaction, I think this is a good 4-star in terms of what it purports to be. The thing this does really well is to actually treat dyslexia as a disorder to be explored, not as a call-to-action piece of ideology. I was half expecting more of a biased read since so many of the education and psychology informational articles I’ve read are driven primarily by unrecognized incentives rather than by a “dry” naturalistic approach. Many of the bad reviews were due to the book taking precisely this approach, which I found deeply disturbing since this is exactly the approach we should expect from researchers. In all, a good primer on the topic that isn’t meant to “convince” you of anything. Just lays out the current state of the research.

[Brian Cham · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was more of an academic overview than a summary for the layperson. It is extremely dense, unnecessarily technical, overly detailed and maddeningly equivocal. This book is not a "very short introduction" but there are some key points buried in all the jargon.

Here's an actual "very short introduction" from what I gleaned from the book:

Dyslexia is a learning disability that makes it very hard to read and spell words. It happens to people of all intelligence levels. Everyone varies in reading ability so it's hard to tell exactly how to diaanose dyslexia. Children with dyslexia fall behind in school and need special educational intervention. Adults with dyslexia have trouble with common tasks that require reading. This can be very emotionally distressing. Dyslexia is 70% caused by genes and 30% caused by environment. Dyslexia often runs in the family because of genes and because they don't have books in the house. People with dyslexia often have general language issues as well, like pronunciation problems. We treat dyslexia with an old method called the "Orton–Gillingham–Stillman approach" which is scientifically effective. There are newer methods that are effective as well. The most important thing is that schools know about dyslexia so that dyslexic children can see specialists.

[Kendall Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent introduction. Didn’t seem to get to the heart of the questions that were raised at the outset.

[Anna-Norea Thiele · Rating 3 out of 5]

v casual read-this truly is an introduction to people who aren’t necessarily in the sciences. I wish in-text references had been used. having to go through a list of references, albeit organized by chapter, to find a particular study feels v frustrating

[Hank Hoeft · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Very Short Introduction gives a good overview of what we currently think we know about dyslexia. It was very illuminating for me, as I had misconceptions, or large gaps, in my knowledge about this disability. This book--or one like it--should be read by everyone who teaches or works in a school.

[Dave Stone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh, overly broad, overly technical
This is not a book to read for casual enjoyment where you might also learn something.
This is an extremely academic book written almost entirely in jargon and seems to define Dyslexia as anyone anywhere who has trouble learning to read. It is not written with the curious layman in mind. It is good that the author didn't dumb it down till it was no longer accurate or true. This book was not written for me and that's fine, not every book in the world needs to be for me.
Just know going in that this reads like a tedious textbook.
An interesting side note is that the author is British and They have different definitions for the same words Americans also use, so that might have added to the confusion.
additionally not one mention was made of the tendency to confuse or transpose left and right. I guess that has a different name in England.

[John Martindale · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you have dyslexia and you are considering listening to this audiobook hoping to an approachable introduction, this is definitely not ideal. All and all, it reads more like a technical-scientific journal like article, and is not very comprehensible as an audiobook. Possibly if I read the physical book, I'd gotten a little more out of it, but since I am dyslexic, that likely won't happen, haha.

[Daniel Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chapter 1: Does dyslexia exist?
Chapter 2: How to learn to read (or not)
Chapter 3: What are the cognitive causes of dyslexia?
Chapter 4: Dyslexia genes and the environment -- a class act?
Chapter 5: The dyslexic brain
Chapter 6: What works for dyslexia?
Chapter 7: The three Cs: caveats, comorbidities, and compensation

[Dmitry Khvatov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not an easy read.

[Rory Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dyslexia manifests in a variety of ways. But at its core, it is a difficult in decoding words for reading and encoding them for spelling. However, dyslexia can involve ‘co-morbidities,’ so that its occurrence can correlate with additional difficulties of attention, organisation and motor-skills. This means that those additional difficulties are sometimes used to identify dyslexia, even though strictly speaking they may not be constitutive of its essence.

The decoding of reading and encoding of spelling involves complex physiological processes of perception and cognition. The complexity of the processes means that difficulties can arise in differing degrees at varying points in the processes. So, part of the complexity of ‘dyslexia’ is that the word can cover an overlapping range of varying issues over a spectrum of difficulties.

One of the most interesting chapters in the book is perhaps chapter 6, where the book focuses upon ‘what works’ in trying to treat dyslexia. Essentially, the answer seemed to be high quality phonics teaching, especially when it moves slowly and carefully to ensure clarity about the basics of letter recognition and phoneme and grapheme correspondences.

An essential step in treating dyslexia is diagnosing where an individual’s difficulties are occurring. This doesn’t mean doing nothing until there is a formal (medical) diagnosis of dyslexia. It means acting quickly, as soon as a pupil is identified as falling behind, to try and analyse precisely what a pupil is struggling with, in terms of reading, comprehension, writing and spelling (and even arithmetic). It means drilling down to identify precisely where a student needs help, and then providing that help: quickly.

One of the clearest signs of dyslexia is ultimately a pupil’s ‘response to intervention’ (RTI). When teachers have exhausted the usual classroom pedagogical activities for phonics teaching, and when a student has had additional small group or 1:1 support and is still not making expected progress; it is at that point that it may become appropriate to ponder whether there is an issue of dyslexia, which may require further expertise to address.

Overall this is an interesting little book. Its style is academic and technical in the earlier chapters, so readers more interested in the pragmatic issues of how to deal with dyslexia may find the first half of the book less engaging. The first 7% of the book was particularly dull, consisting of just advertising other books. However, the book is worth persevering with.

These comments are based on the first edition, 2019 version of the text.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The problem with this Very Short Introduction is that it is neither very short, nor an introduction. It is more like a digest of a very long textbook. Having said that, it was useful information, but maybe mainly for an academic audience.

Dyslexia as the author explains it in this book has to do with being somewhere on the lower end of a continuum of reading ability. So more practice earlier with decoding should help decrease dyslexia. Dyslexia runs in families, so children of dyslexic parents should presumably get early attention.

One of the interesting factoids for me was that Finnish is the most transparent of the European languages in terms of spelling/learning to read. People often bring up how they don't start school till age 6 in Finland and get the best international scores, so we shouldn't worry in the US if kids don't know the alphabet when they're 6. But this is comparing apples and oranges just on the basis of the language, forgetting about all the social differences, because English is the most opaque European language.

Literacy changes the brain. Literacy is "parasitic" on existing brain functions that evolved for other purposes because reading is artificial not natural.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a challenging Very Short Introduction that I don't think works as well as it should. If I were to write a Very Short Introduction on Dyslexia I'd probably 1) make the book as easy as I could to understand, given that a lot of people reading it are going to be dealing with dyslexia themselves; 2) keep it based around the basics. This book doesn't do either very well, I think - it's going to be a challenging read for anyone that's not a good reader (and probably has an academic background) and gets into a lot of jargon and technical ideas. At times it feels almost padded; is it necessary to define, say, an RCT in a book that's supposed to be focused on brevity? I came out of this book feeling like I know only a little more about dyslexia than before I read it, and everything I feel I know that's new is 1) we don't know very much about dyslexia; 2) we don't know very much about how to treat or ameliorate dyslexia. I was pretty disappointed.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short but excellent disucssion of the basics of dyslexia. Snowling's text is approachable, but not dumbed-down. She suggests a variety of theories to explain dyslexia, exploring each of the stregngths and weaknesses of the theories.

[LIVA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Det her er ironisk nok den sværeste bog jeg har læst.

[Dorotea Kos · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 R&L

[Athanassios Protopapas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book written by a real expert, fitting an amazing amount of comprehensible information within a limited number of pages. Highly recommended.

[L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat difficult to get through as a dyslexic layman, but we’ll worth it. I have a much better understanding of it now. Really helped me sort my misconceptions out and gave me a better understanding of myself.

[THANA]

DNF


وقفت فيما بعد المنتصف بشوي،
أخذت كفايتي، وبصفة عامة أعجبني.

[Nev Prahova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Academic text, meaning dry language and university issued.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really helpful introduction to dyslexia.

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helped me understand that the notion of dyslexia is much more varied and contested than I had appreciated, and some of the basic arguments around causes and support. Too technical at times for me as a parent getting my head around this for my son though, need to look elsewhere for something I can use as a tool to help us both understand. I felt at times the author was simultaneously arguing dyslexia both does and doesn’t exist. And she didn’t really touch on those who have dyslexia where it isn’t evident in family members at all.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given this to read for class and found it very accessible