Text 11. Overcome Dyslexia and Learning Disabilities with Modern Technology

Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities in children and in many adults, which hinders a person's reading, writing, spelling and speaking ability. Many people with dyslexia often suffered from difficulties with reading and spelling properly. In recent research shows that dyslexia is not an intellectual disability, it is considered both a learning disability and a reading disability. Dyslexia and IQ are not interrelated too, for reading and cognition develop independently in individuals who have dyslexia.

Not all dyslexics displays the same symptoms, the severity of dyslexia can vary from mild to severe. Some may be mildly dyslexic and may only have a few or even none of the symptoms, some have severe symptoms which affect a person's life. Although there is a learning problem, many sufferers can still become successful in life. As far as treatment concerned, the sooner dyslexia is treated, the more favorable the outcome, it is never too late for people with dyslexia to learn to improve their language skills.

Nowadays dyslexia can be considerably tackled with proper therapy, training and equipment, dyslexic people will benefit from modern technology products. There are many tools and resources to combat dyslexia or learning disabilities, help people cope with their disabilities and difficulties.

Audio devices such as tape recorders are helpful, users can listen to what they have recorded repeatedly. Similarly, users can take advantage of text to speech software programs. Panopreter Plus is a text-to-speech and text-to-mp3 software program, it reads out characters, words, phrases or files in file formats of txt, rtf, doc, pdf and web pages with natural sounding voices, and converts them to spoken audio files in wav and mp3 file formats, the volume and rate are adjustable. By using this text to speech software, users can hear a natural voice speech on the computer, or export audio files to an iPod, smart phone or portable mp3 player, and listen to them later at their convenience, this can improve user's pronunciation and listening skills dramatically.

Voice-enabled electronic dictionaries which give word definitions, synonyms , antonyms, and pronunciation are also helpful. If spelling and grammar are the major problems, there are spelling and grammar devices that have spell-checkers to correct your spelling, and grammar checkers for your grammar correction.

Besides utilizing above technology resources to get help with dyslexia, many other treatments and exercises that can be done to speed up the treatment and help process. With the proper training and treatment, dyslexics can overcome their dyslexia symptoms and lead normal and productive lives.

(Source: Education Articles, Special Education. 2011)

1. Read the text.

2. Pick up the key words.

3. Divide the text into logical parts.

4. Make up an outline of the text.

5. Find the main idea in each part of the text.

6. Express the main idea of each part in one sentence.

7. Find supporting details in each part of the text.

8. Compress the text excluding the supporting details.

9. Express the main idea of the text in one sentence.

10. Write an annotation/a summary of the text using words and word combinations from your active vocabulary and sample summaries.