Good Spelling Days and Bad. . . . . . . .4 Do Davis Methods Address Spelling? 5 TPR Language Instruction. . . . . . . . . .6 Famous Dyslexics Remember. . . . . . .11 Testing Out of Special Ed. . . . . . . . . .15 You Want Me to Write a What?. . . . .16 The Best of Both Worlds. . . . . . . . . .17 UC and the SAT Exam. . . . . . . . . . . .18 Davis Launched in Kenya. . . . . . . . . .20 Gerda Berakos-Jeger: In Memoriam .21 Russian Gift of Dyslexia Released . . .23 Dream Test for Picture Thinkers. . . . .25

In the Mail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Book/Software Reviews. . . . . . . .12-13 Q&A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 New Facilitators. . . . . . . . . . . . . .26-29 Davis Workshops. . . . . . . . . . . . 30-31

to learn to read, or overcome reading
problems associated with dyslexia.
Unlike other software packages that
are purely assistive in nature, ReadOn

when this process is not mastered,
students will struggle to become
independent readers. Regardless of

for ReadOn was to motivate and assist
their daughter after she completed a
Davis Dyslexia Correction®Program
with Heidi Rose in Adelaide. Their

At the age of twelve, I was waking up.
I was coming alive in a world that was
full of chaos and pain. I have no actual
memories of being a Kanner’s baby—
of being autistic. I have a sense of it
but no actual memories. My sense of it
is – as if it were a void. A void that is

The world I was coming alive
in was a terrible place; it was full of
chaos and pain. Chaos was everywhere

The Concept of
Change: something
becoming something
else. The balloon full
of air becomes empty.

and to present methods for improving literacy, education and academic success. We believe that all people’s abilities and talents should be recognized and valued, and that learning problems can be corrected.EDITORIAL BOARD:Alice Davis, Abigail Marshall, Maria Fagioli & Dee White.DESIGN: Gideon Kramer.SUBSCRIPTIONS: one year $25 in US, add $5 in Canada; add $10 elsewhere.BACK ISSUES: send $8.00 to DDAI.SUBMISSIONS & LETTERS:

The opinions and views expressed in articles and letters are not necessarily those of DDAI. Davis Dyslexia Correction®, Davis Symbol Mastery®, Davis Orientation Counseling®, and Davis Learning Strategies®are registered trademarks of Ronald D. Davis. Copyright © 2004 by DDAI, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

I’m a mother of a smart and beautiful
10 years old daughter, Nadia, who
was diagnosed as dyslexic a year ago.
We both have worked hard and have
passed a long way trying to overcome
the difficulties, but... I’m alone with
my efforts to help my daughter. Her
teacher doesn’t want to hear my
explanations, and isn’t cooperative at
all. And in addition there aren’t any
qualificated specialist on dyslexia in
the town we live, and I doubt there
are many of them in our country.

of our country). She has spent a
month or so in Paris, specializing on
working with dyslexic kids. So I went
with my daughter to Sophia to meet

for 5 days, for 2 hours a day. It was
really helpful, but far not enough.
But, as you could guess, I can’t travel
to Sophia very often, because I’m a
working mum, a widow, and have one
more child—an 8-year old son.

in it, but I don’t know how could I
learn more about the techniques and
methods which will help me to help
my kid. I did some searching, but

what I saw was that there is no of your
facilitators around here. May you even
don’t know that almost nobody in my
country have never heard about
dyslexia? Doctors, teachers,
psychiatrists—very few of them have
heard the word “dyslexia” and almost
none of them know what is it like.

I’m a teacher myself, and to be
honest I hadn’t known about dyslexia,
up to the time when by chance I found
my daughter is dyslexic. I work with
10-18 year old students, and see signs

of dyslexia in many of them, but neither their parents, nor their teachers in early classes paid attention to their learning difficulties. I would like to help them all, because I understand that they

The opposite
of a correct
statement is a

false statement. But the
opposite of a profound
truth may well be another
profound truth.

the manager of www.dyslexia.com website and
moderator of the Dyslexiatalk.com forum since 1985.
She is the mother of a son with dyslexia, now age
22. She has a B.S. degree in applied behavioral
sciences and a law degree. She lives in Pacifica,

Difficulty with
spelling is the
most common and
persistent difficulty
that accompanies
dyslexia. Even
after your child
becomes a capable

reader, his writing is likely to be riddled with spelling errors.

One reason is the
extreme variability of English
spelling; almost every “rule” that can
be taught has numerous exceptions,
and many words simply are not
spelled the way they sound.

Good spellers generally have
strong visual memories for what
words look like in print. Try to avoid
study or practice techniques that
expose your child to incorrectly
spelled versions of the word. Many
children with dyslexia have strong
visual memories, but they will

as correct ones, and they will have no
way to remember which is right.
Teachers might try to make spelling
homework fun by offering a practice
quiz where your child must select the
correct word from a list of incorrect
spellings, or find the word in a puzzle

as well as forward. Encourage your
child to try to visualize
the word in his mind;
with a clear mental
picture, the word can be
spelled backwards by
“seeing” the letters in
order and calling off the
letters from right to left.

recognize familiar
spelling patterns and understand
morphological word structure,
including common prefixes, roots,
and suffixes. It will be easier for your
child to learn when words are taught
in groups which share
a common pattern or

than learning “rules”
in isolation, especially
with rules that have
many exceptions.
Make sure that your
child's word list for
each study session
includes only words
reflecting the pattern
being studied. Work with your child’s
teacher to modify school spelling lists
so as to avoid confusion, and limit
the number of words being studied.

When practicing spelling words
at home, observe your child to
see whether she does better
when asked to orally spell the

them. This will give you a clue
as to how to best reach your
child. If your child does better
with oral spelling, encourage
her to say the letters out loud
as she practices writing her
spelling words.

extremely confusing, and they will
not be able to simply memorize the
difference. It is better if the words are
taught separately with words sharing
a similar pattern; for example, “there”
can be taught along with “here” and
“where.” Make sure your child learns
word meanings along with spelling;
it will aid in memory to associate

words. That is, it
may be easier to
remember that the
“ere” sequence is
associated with
words signifying
place (“here, there,

Have your child
look up words with irregular patterns
in the dictionary, to learn about the
word derivations and etymology. She
will soon discover other keys to
spelling—for example, that the word
“their” comes from the Old Norse
theirra. Knowing that some words
with similar sounds come from
different languages will help your
child understand why they are
spelled so differently.