Childhood is a time of intensive development, learning everything new and unknown. This is the period when basic skills and abilities are acquired.
However, not all children learn at the same pace. Some have different difficulties. They require effort and time to deal with them.
These difficulties can arise due to both hereditary diseases and environmental conditions.
Dysorthography in children can be a serious obstacle to learning.
Dysorthography is a problem that students in primary school (grades 2-4) face nowadays. Because of it, children experience poor academic performance, and illiteracy in writing is increasing every year.
Therefore, it is necessary to know the causes of dysorthography, its types, symptoms, to be able to diagnose correctly, and to know methods of prevention and correction.
What is dysorthography?
Dysorthography is a violation of the memorization of orthographic knowledge, which is caused by insufficient development of speech and mental functions. This disease is manifested by frequent spelling errors in written form, even if the child pronounces the rule orally.
Dysorthography can be recognized by a teacher or speech therapist by analyzing the work in a student’s notebook, giving oral answers to questions, and understanding how well his forms of speech are developed (written and oral).
Dysorthography occurs most often in students in grades 2 (80%) and grades 3-4 (90%). Their performance in the Russian language is declining, which has a bad impact on personal development and is a consequence of unsuccessful adaptation at school.
This arises due to the fact that the previous material is poorly mastered and grammatical rules and spelling principles (morphological and traditional) are added to the curriculum.
Dysorthography is a learning disability that occurs in the absence of visual, hearing, or intellectual impairments.
This manifests itself in difficulties recognizing, understanding and reproducing written symbols. This diagnosis is also determined by slow writing and frequent errors.
Dysorthography affects all areas of spelling: grammar, conjugations, construction of sentences and words.
Dysorthography completely complicates written work. Very often it occurs together with dyslexia, i.e. difficulties in learning to read, although it also happens that it occurs on its own.
The child, despite knowing the rules of spelling, makes mistakes in writing. In addition, the mistakes made do not arise due to a lack of desire to learn, although it happens that they go hand in hand, since dysorthography in children can be accompanied by other disorders.
What is this
Dysorthography is a persistent underdevelopment of the skill of correct writing. The child theoretically knows how to write, but cannot apply the rule. He makes the same mistakes, but does not understand how to correct them, does not notice them in the written text. In this case, teachers talk about a lack of spelling vigilance.
A feature of dysorthography is the increase in literacy problems during schooling. In grades 1-2, a student makes 30-40 errors in one text, and by grade 5, more than 80. This is due to the resistance of speech disorders to correction, a decrease in the child’s self-esteem due to awareness of his own shortcomings, and an increase in the level of complexity of speech material.
Causes of dysorthography
Factors influencing the development of dysorthography can be divided into those that are identified in medicine, psychology and pedagogy.
Basically, impaired spelling skills are a complex of several reasons. The most common of them:
- Erased dysarthria, dyslalia.
- General speech impairment of varying degrees.
- Damage to the central nervous system.
- Pedagogical neglect.
- Psychosomatic weakness.
- Lack of attention.
- Delayed mental development.
- General lethargy.
- Mental overload.
- Low immunity, which causes frequent illnesses in preschool and primary school age.
- Transfer from one educational institution to another.
- Change of teacher.
It is also possible for children whose parents sent them to school at an early age (6-6.5 years) to develop dysorphorgraphia. They are not ready to learn, there is immaturity of the psyche and physiology.
At risk are children who have a history of:
- dysphagia and dyslexia (diagnosed in primary school);
- prenatal and postnatal pathology;
- minimal brain dysfunction, encephalopathy, which are accompanied by neurological symptoms.
- phonetic speech disorder and FFN (phonetic-phonemic underdevelopment).
Other factors that can cause dysorthography in a child include:
- maternal illnesses during pregnancy, unsanitary conditions,
- lifestyle of a woman during pregnancy,
- injuries of a woman during pregnancy,
- difficult childbirth, leading to ischemia or hypoxia of the child,
- genetic predisposition (most likely responsible for changes in the genes of the sixth chromosome).
Types of dysorthography
Scientists-speech therapists classify according to several criteria.
- Morphological. The student makes mistakes in spelling (he knows the rules, but does not find application for them), cannot check an unstressed vowel, cannot remember the rules about the correct spelling of unpronounceable sounds, words with double consonants.
- Syntactic. The child puts punctuation marks incorrectly, cannot determine which part of the sentence a word is, and makes systematic errors in syntax. Also, the student cannot speak out independently, compose sentences and text.
- Mixed. In written work, the teacher often records errors in syntax and spelling.
Dysarthria is also classified according to the total number of errors in one work, as follows:
- If a student has made up to 15 mistakes in his work and, in general, completes tasks at an average and high level, then this is an easy degree.
- if a student completes tasks at an average level and makes less than 30 mistakes, then this is an average level;
- if a student has a low level of knowledge, and in writing the teacher finds 50-80 spelling and punctuation errors in one work, then this is a severe degree.
According to these classifications, correctional work with schoolchildren is developed and implemented to effectively eliminate dysorthography.
Types of dysgraphia
Dysgraphia can be the result of various reasons. Signs and symptoms of the disorder may vary. The method of rehabilitation and duration of treatment also depend on the type of deviation.
Optical
It is difficult for a child to write letters correctly; he may skip them when writing words, or add unnecessary elements in the form of strokes and sticks. Due to incompletely formed visual-spatial connections, the child often misses letters, writes them incorrectly, and confuses them with others.
Acoustic
Characterized by a lack of ability to correctly recognize sounds. The patient confuses similar-sounding letters and may make mistakes in the degree of softness of the pronounced sounds.
Articulatory-acoustic
The child writes and pronounces letters incorrectly and replaces them with similar sounds. Requests from parents and teachers to pay attention to the correct pronunciation and spelling do not bring results. With this form of disorder, work aimed at auditory differentiation of the child is required. Only by carrying out such corrective work is it possible to completely get rid of the problem.
Ungrammatical
This type of violation is characterized by the fact that the child, when pronouncing and writing, confuses case endings, misses or replaces prepositions with others. This deviation is a consequence of speech disorders.
Disorder caused by defective processes of analysis and synthesis
The main symptoms of this disorder are omitting or replacing letters with others, adding extra syllables, and spelling several words in a row. Such a deviation is preceded by social, psychological, and educational factors, which become the main cause of disturbances in the analysis and synthesis of speech.
Signs of the disease
Dysgraphia is a diagnosis that should be made by a specialist. The deviation can easily be confused with a common misunderstanding of grammar that occurs in most children. With dysgraphia, the mistakes that a child makes while writing are in no way related to the level of knowledge of the Russian language. The teacher at school, as well as the student’s parents, should be wary if the child repeatedly makes the same mistakes: misses letters, confuses the combined and separate spelling of words. In addition, such a child’s handwriting is illegible, and the size of the letters constantly changes from small to large, not only in one sentence, but also in one word. The writing speed is very slow. Often, children with dysgraphia are given poor grades due to mistakes and poor handwriting, which greatly affects the child’s academic performance and self-esteem. That is why it is very important to promptly identify a violation of written speech in a child, find out the cause of the deviation in order to undergo a course of correction.
Symptoms of dysorthography
Symptoms include the student:
- makes mistakes in grammar, spelling analysis, various punctuation errors;
- mixes letters;
- does not distinguish words by semantics;
- incorrectly writes words with unstressed vowels and voiceless consonants, which can be checked;
- has a poor vocabulary, so he cannot find a word with the same root to check the correct spelling of a letter;
- has difficulties with morphemic analysis of words, cannot identify in a word the main morpheme of the word (root), and additional (word-forming) ones - prefix, suffix, ending;
- does not use capital letters (beginning of sentences, in proper names);
- makes mistakes in words with double or unpronounceable consonants;
- confuses the use of hard and soft signs;
- does not correctly divide words into syllables and transfer them and place emphasis;
- cannot remember the names of parts of speech and their morphological features;
- forms its own rules (if “zhi”, “shi” must be written with “I”, then the correct spelling of the word is “zhilezo”);
- cannot move from one type of activity to another;
- unable to master theoretical material and unable to find errors on their own, self-testing does not help.
Students diagnosed with dysorthography often act contrary to the rules and write words the way they hear them.
Diagnostics
Diagnosis of students who have serious impairments in written speech is divided into 2 stages:
- identifying symptoms;
- choosing an individual method of correcting the disease.
At the first stage, all types of student work are analyzed (dictation, essay, presentation, cheating). The teacher calculates the average error rate in one work, which establishes the degree of dysorthography.
The second stage of diagnosis also involves examining the oral work of the problem student, conducting selected tests and written exercises. The speech therapist finds out whether there are deviations in knowledge of spelling, tests his knowledge, skills, phonemic hearing, and non-speech processes.
While the student completes these tests, the teacher carefully observes him and records how motivated the child is to study, whether he understands the error, and whether he finds an algorithm for eliminating it.
If the cause of dysorthography lies in a psychological deviation (higher mental functions are not sufficiently formed), then individual consultations are carried out by a practical psychologist. He works not only with the child, but also with the parents, giving them recommendations on what can be done systematically at home.
After conducting a series of tests, the school psychologist, teacher and speech therapist jointly draw up a map for the student, which outlines his individual route, identifies goals, gives advice to parents, and outlines planned activities.
Diagnosis of dysgraphia
Only a specialist who has previously diagnosed the disorder using special studies can prescribe an appropriate course for dysgraphia correction. In addition, consultation with specialists such as a neurologist and speech therapist is necessary to make a diagnosis.
The examination of the patient includes several stages, the first of which is to assess the condition of the central nervous system, vision, and hearing of the patient. Then specialists analyze the child’s articulation and motor skills. Important stages include assessing sound pronunciation, vocabulary, and literacy level. A writing assessment is then required, with experts taking into account whether the patient is right-handed or left-handed.
For the purpose of research, the child will be asked to write down words under dictation, rewrite capital and printed letters, and perform special exercises. After analyzing the information obtained during the study, the speech therapist makes a diagnosis and gives the necessary recommendations on how to correct written speech disorders, if any.
Methods for correcting the disorder
Conventionally, correction is divided into mastery of morphological and traditional principles of spelling. The first, also called morphemic, implies the same spelling of parts of a word in both strong and weak positions (stressed or unstressed position), the correct spelling is explained by selecting a test word.
The traditional principle in spelling is based on memorizing dictionary (untestable) words. It is also based on pronunciation, attention and memory.
Correction of dysorthography goes through a number of stages:
- Sound pronunciation and the syllabic structure of the word develop. The speech therapist teacher uses repeated syllables in a certain rhythm; it is necessary to compose words from the syllables that are proposed. During the exercise, correct pronunciation is also formed, so you need to use those sounds with which the student has difficulties.
- The student's vocabulary expands. This happens thanks to the independent composition of the text, a description of what is shown in the picture, what is said in the cartoon,
- The parts of speech are different. The child is given a series of words, in which there are words of one part of speech, and there is an extra one, you need to find and explain why it is extra. Exercises are also given to compose sentences according to a certain pattern (gradually becoming more complicated).
- Morphological characteristics are formed. The student learns to distinguish between case forms, gender, the number of different parts of speech, the tense of the verb and its agreement with the subject.
- Creation of word models, word formation. The student finds the root in the words and makes one of them: dust sucks - a vacuum cleaner, steam moves - a steamer, etc.
- Isolating and distinguishing related words - those with the same root.
- Spelling skills develop. The speech therapist names a number of words, the student must determine by ear which of them has a possible problem with writing the letter and why. Or the child writes down a few words and puts an ellipsis instead of the problematic sound. Afterwards the number of words increases to sentences.
- Attention and memory develop. The student pronounces words as they are written, training visual and auditory memory. New tongue twisters can also develop short-term memory.
- Bringing automation to correct writing. This is a long process. In severe cases, the disease can last for several years. Work is carried out both by a speech therapist teacher and at home by a parent in various forms: dictation, essay, cheating.
- Development of self-control and self-testing skills. The child learns to find errors in his work, correct them, and give arguments.
When carrying out correctional work, it is necessary to observe and diagnose the student’s level of self-esteem. If a child is lagging behind in academic performance, has no authority in the team, and has no friends in the class, then it is necessary to get rid of problems in oral and written speech. After this, the student quickly adapts and his self-esteem increases.
Diagnosis and elimination of dysorthography in children with written speech disorders. Article on speech therapy
Diagnosis and elimination of dysorthography in children with written speech disorders.
Spelling-correct writing is the most important condition not only for school adaptation, but in general for familiarization with the language culture. The significance of successful mastery of spelling knowledge, skills and abilities is determined, first of all, by the fact that it underlies the mastery of curricula in various subjects.
Successful acquisition of spelling knowledge, skills and abilities is carried out on the basis of a sufficiently high level of development of oral speech, linguistic generalizations, the formation of cognitive prerequisites, especially mental operations of analysis, synthesis, abstraction, generalization
(N.N. Algazina [2], D.N. Bogoyavlensky [3], A.N. Gvozdev [5], S.F., N.S. Rozhdestvensky [8], etc.).
The most important prerequisites for mastering written language are a sufficient level of development of the phonetic-phonemic aspect of speech, vocabulary (volume of vocabulary, accuracy of understanding and use of words, structure of word meaning) and grammatical aspect of speech (ability to inflect and form words, ability to correctly use various sentence models). In this regard, many scientists (R.E. Levina [6], R.I. Lalaeva [6], T.B. Filicheva, G.V. Chirkina [9], A.V. Yastrebova [10], etc. .) associate problems of poor performance in the Russian language with underdevelopment of speech.
Over the past decades, the number of children experiencing learning difficulties has increased significantly. One of the manifestations of school failure is a persistent impairment in mastering written language (dyslexia, dysgraphia, dysorthography).
Specific impairments in mastering writing can manifest themselves in two forms: dysgraphia and dysorthography. Differential diagnosis between these writing disorders is determined, first of all, by which spelling principles are violated.
The basic principles of spelling include: phonetic (phonemic), morphological and traditional (V.F. Ivanova and others).
The essence of the phonetic (phonemic) principle is that the sound structure of a word in oral speech is indicated by the corresponding sequence of letters (house, poppy, frame). But the effect of this principle is limited only to cases of strong position of all phonemes of a word.
The morphological principle assumes the same spelling of morphemes (root, prefix, suffix, inflection) in both strong and weak positions. In a weak position (unstressed position of vowels, final position of consonants, etc.), the morpheme is written as it is written in a strong position in accordance with the phonetic principle of writing (tables - table, home - house).
The traditional principle is implemented in cases where the spelling cannot be explained either from the point of view of the phonetic or from the point of view of the morphological principle (dog, cow).
So, dysgraphia is a violation of the predominantly phonemic principle of spelling (lobata - shovel, bipod - dog, na tree - on the trees).
Dysorthography is a persistent and specific disorder in the assimilation and use of morphological and traditional principles of spelling, which manifests itself in various and numerous spelling errors (drava, goth, sabok)
Due to the increase in the number of children with written speech disorders and the complication of the structure of speech disorder, the problem of studying and eliminating dysorthography is currently receiving much attention (O.I. Azova [1], T.G. Vizel, E.D. Dmitrova [4] , R.I. Lalaeva [6], etc.). However, the issues of symptoms and mechanisms of dysorthography remain poorly understood.
In most scientific works, dysgraphia and dysorthography are considered as a language disorder, as a disorder associated with the underdevelopment of symbolic activity, encoding and decoding processes, and language ability in children.
In many cases, children with dysorthography have features of the emotional and volitional sphere: distractibility, rapid exhaustion and absent-mindedness, excitability.
For children with speech impairments, working for 20-30 minutes is tiring; they needed rest and help from the teacher to organize their attention.
Children are characterized by difficulties and a slow pace of action, fragmented visual attention, and weakness of mnestic activity, especially verbal and auditory memory. Children's emotional reactions are mostly adequate, although in some cases timidity, uncertainty, shyness, and negativism are observed. Weakness of will manifested itself in increased suggestibility, refusal to complete tasks when difficulties arose: when the material became more complicated, when completing tasks that were encountered for the first time. Children have varied forms of communication, but they have difficulties in situational communication in the process of joint activities. Most children strive to communicate with peers; other children do not have a desire to communicate with other children.
When completing assignments, children are often guided by the teacher’s reaction; they are conscious and caring about evaluating the results of their work: they make excuses for incorrect answers, seek confirmation of the correctness of their answers, and are receptive to approval and support.
General underdevelopment of speech in children manifests itself mainly in violations of the lexico-grammatical aspect of speech (violation of actualization and ignorance of many words, confusion of semantically similar generic concepts, verbal paraphasias), persistent agrammatism, errors in word formation (failure to assimilate word-formation models, violation of the formation of morphemic analysis, difficulties selection and differentiation of word-forming morphemes of a certain meaning), in the originality of coherent speech (violation of the logical sequence, “getting stuck” on minor details, omission of main events, repetition of individual episodes, use of simple uninformative sentences, difficulties in planning statements and selecting appropriate linguistic means).
In grades 1-2, children experience various types of dysgraphia:
- mixed dysgraphia with leading acoustic and elements of dysgraphia due to a violation of language analysis and synthesis;
- mixed dysgraphia with leading acoustic and elements of dysgraphia due to a violation of language analysis and synthesis and optical dysgraphia;
- mixed dysgraphia with leading acoustic and elements of dysgraphia due to a violation of language analysis and synthesis by agrammatic dysgraphia.
The increase in the number of errors among 4th grade students with ODD is due to a number of factors. First of all, insufficiently formed lexical-semantic and morphological generalizations when mastering more complex spelling rules cause a complication of the symptoms and mechanisms of dysorthography. The number of spelling rules that children have not mastered increases in the 4th grade, since mastering spelling in the 4th grade is based on the spelling skills learned in the 3rd grade. The number of errors also increases due to the complication of types of written speech (presentation, essay). The complication of the algorithm for implementing spelling rules, as well as speech material and types of written speech activity, leads to an increase in the difficulties of children with dysorthography. The increase in the number of errors is to some extent due to the fact that speech therapy classes in public schools involve mainly the correction of violations of the phonemic principle of writing (dysgraphia) and are not sufficiently aimed at the formation of lexical and grammatical prerequisites for mastering spelling.
Students make the largest number of mistakes when writing rules that follow the morphological principle of writing.
The morphological principle of spelling is based not only on theoretical knowledge, but also on phonemic, morphological, syntactic generalizations, speech skills in the field of phonetics, grammar, word formation, semantics, a high level of development of logical thinking, memory, attention, and spelling vigilance.
The main difficulties arise in the following cases:
- when selecting test words (and this skill is necessary for all basic rules corresponding to the morphological principle of writing);
- when mastering morphemic analysis of words;
- when differentiating prefixes and prepositions;
• when highlighting and differentiating according to the meaning of word-forming and formative affixes.
In the process of mastering spelling rules, children make specific mistakes that indicate failure to master the lexical, semantic, and morphological norms of the language.
The following disorders are typical for schoolchildren with dysorthography:
- When spelling tested unstressed vowels at the root, instead of related words, children select words that are similar in sound image, but distant in semantics (“read” - test word “cries”, “fade” - test word “see”).
- Children with dysorthography often mix prefixes and prepositions, since they do not perceive the preposition as an independent word that has a specific meaning (“to write” - the separate spelling of the prefix was explained by the fact that it is a preposition, since other words can be inserted between the preposition and the word “on the big write on the table").
- They add extra consonants to words with a confluence of consonants in the root; children select words distorted in sound structure as test words (“verbal” is the test word “verbal”, “tasty” is the test word “tasty”, “gromozsky” is the test word “ Gromozsky").
- There are frequent spelling errors of the most common prefixes (“run away”, “crawl”, “crawl”, “feed”).
In children's written works there are also numerous errors in spelling, which follow the traditional principle of writing.
A large number of errors in spellings that follow the traditional principle can be explained by the fact that children with dysorthography, along with speech underdevelopment, also have insufficient mnestic processes; they do not quickly memorize and reproduce the visual image of a word. Children with ODD quite often determine that a word is “dictionary”, but could not reproduce its spelling.
It has been established that during normal ontogenesis, students in grades 3-4 experience a qualitative leap in the acquisition of spelling skills, which is associated with the development of lexical and grammatical processes, awareness of morphological patterns in the acquisition of their native language, and with a sufficiently high level of formation of non-speech mental functions.
Children with ODD make the largest number of mistakes when writing rules that follow the morphological principle of writing. The main difficulties of children with ODD manifested themselves in the following cases: when selecting test words; when mastering morphemic analysis of words; when differentiating prepositional prefixes; when isolating and differentiating according to the meaning of word-forming and formative morphemes.
Many primary schoolchildren with SEN do not know how to formulate spelling rules or use linguistic terms. Words with the same root caused particular difficulty for children with special needs. When performing tasks on mastering methods for checking spelling, children with dysorthography make a wide range of errors due to their inability to update acquired knowledge and apply the rule in writing.
Children with OHP have difficulties finding spelling using all three identifying features: inability to correlate the spelling and pronunciation of words; difficulty finding certain letters and combinations of letters necessary for spell checking; inability to correctly analyze the morphemic structure of a word. Especially great difficulties are observed in children with ODD when identifying related words and finding a common morpheme in words. When forming various parts with a given root, children with dysorthography experience great difficulties in forming participles, gerunds, adverbs, and almost do not use prefixes. Some children with OSD also make mistakes when forming the main parts of speech.
Children with dysorthography have difficulties identifying morphemes in words, especially prefixes and suffixes. The inability to find a morpheme in words leads to the inability to purposefully search for a spelling, since the student does not know in which part of the word to look for it. In this regard, the student finds it difficult to solve grammatical and spelling problems.
The study of the mechanisms of dysorthography shows that in primary schoolchildren with ODD, the following factors underlie the difficulties in mastering orthographic knowledge, skills and abilities: a low level of development of the lexical-semantic, morphological, word-formative syntactic components of language ability, as well as insufficient development of many non-speech mental functions. The failure to complete many tasks is also based on cognitive difficulties, inability to update knowledge, and a low level of logical and linguistic generalizations.
Bibliographical references.
- Azova O.I. Dysorphography in junior schoolchildren of secondary schools // V Tsarskoye Selo Readings: Materials of the International Scientific and Practical Conference. -SPb.: Leningrad State University named after. A.S. Pushkina, 2001.
- Algazina N.N. Formation of spelling skills. - M., 1987.
- Bogoyavlensky D.N. Essays on the psychology of spelling acquisition. - M.-L.D948.
- Vizel T.G., Dmitrova E.D. Dysorthography in middle and high school students // Study of writing and reading disorders. Results and prospects. Materials of the 1st International Conference of the Russian Association of Dyslexia. - M., 2004.
- Gvozdev A.N. Basics of Russian spelling. - M., 1951.
- Lalaeva R.I. Dysgraphia and dysorthography as a disorder of the development of language ability // Study of writing and reading disorders. Results and prospects. Materials of the 1st International Conference of the Russian Association of Dyslexia. - M., 2004.
- Levina R.E. writing disorder with speech underdevelopment. - M., 1961.
- Rozhdestvensky N.S. Teaching spelling in elementary school. - M., 1960.
- Filicheva T.B. Chirkina G.V. Preparing children with general speech underdevelopment for school in a special kindergarten. -M., 1991.
Yu. Yastrebova A.V. Correction of speech disorders in secondary school students.-M., 1984.
Treatment
The presence of dysorthography in a child should not be regarded as an excuse for making mistakes when writing.
This learning disorder can be corrected by practicing proper writing and reading skills. A child can learn the rules of spelling words.
Necessary for this is control by an adult, who must motivate the child to work and correct possible mistakes in order to avoid their consolidation. Frequent reading of books is very important. Thus, the child visually learns new words and remembers their spelling.
Working from home with a child requires patience and understanding of his situation. Often or sometimes his mistakes cause laughter, which makes him feel frustrated and rejected.
Exercise should stimulate both the intellect and the emotions. Good exercises for a child with dysorthography are puzzles, crosswords and funny drawings that allow you to distinguish the correct spelling of words from the incorrect one.
Didactic games are used that were created based on many years of work specifically to prevent dysorthography. Also, poems and songs whose content is centered around grammatical rules are beneficial. Melodies are easily reinforced in memory, thanks to which the child will remember their fragment in the event of a spelling dilemma, which will help make it easier for him to make a decision.
Each type of dysorthography benefits greatly from reading books. Experts agree that constant reading reduces the severity of all writing disorders.
The effectiveness of treatment for dysorthography depends, first of all, on systematic correction work, an individual approach and the formation in the child of the ability to concentrate and remember new rules.
Tips for parents
The main thing that parents can do for their child is to create a favorable psychological climate for him during correctional work. The schoolchild is already under the pressure of the situation, and his mood is often not the most rosy, and then adults traumatize the child by constantly pointing out his speech errors.
The consequence of this may be that the child will become withdrawn, and instead of the communication he so needs, speech will slow down its development, will not improve and be enriched, which will lead to problems of social adaptation in the team. Therefore, it is important to show patience and forbearance to resolve the situation successfully.
Prevention
Work to prevent the development of the disease is divided into several stages:
- form morphological characteristics in the child, teach him to do morphological analysis of words;
- practicing spelling rules, gradually complicating tasks (insert a missing letter, highlight a spelling, writing a vocabulary dictation, choosing the correct spelling from several);
- to develop spelling skills, use not only the standard form of presenting the rule, but also alternative ones (poetic form, reading a word aloud as it is written);
- replenishing vocabulary by reading books, describing what is shown in the picture and understanding the semantic meaning of the word;
- developing word formation skills;
- formation of correct oral speech. If it is not properly formed, the written form will be defective and illiterate.
- development of fine motor skills (massage, self-massage, playing with small objects, shading of various types, working with scissors, plasticine);
- formation of correct articulation, clarity of diction;
- development of attention (finding places in a word where there is a spelling);
- development of memory, thinking;
- development of the ability to concentrate, distribute and switch attention.
Dysorphography is a disease that is diagnosed in elementary school students. But its development can be avoided if the preschooler has developed a sufficient vocabulary and pronounces words correctly without knowing the rules (at school he learns them, learns the name of what he practically already knows).
Parents need to provide a comfortable atmosphere for the development of the psyche, engage in the upbringing and physical health of the child, and not shift responsibility to the employees of the preschool educational institution. If dysorhorgraphia does occur, then it is necessary to diagnose it correctly and in a timely manner and find ways to correct it.
Work to eliminate the disease is carried out comprehensively: by a teacher, speech therapist, psychologist and parents. The effectiveness of work to overcome dysorthography and the successful development of the school curriculum depend on timely, systematic and well-planned correction.
Correction methods
Speech therapist Olga Ivanovna Azova highlights the following areas of speech therapy work to eliminate dysorthography:
- Improving the phonetic-phonemic aspect of speech. At this stage, the child needs to improve sound pronunciation and the sound-syllable structure of the word, develop syllabic analysis and synthesis, work on stress, develop phonemic perception (auditory differentiation of voiced and voiceless, hard and soft consonants).
- Formation of the lexical component. In this direction, the goal of the classes is to enrich the school student’s vocabulary, find out in detail the meaning of the words learned, and work on antonyms, synonyms, paronyms and ambiguous words.
- Differentiation of meanings of different parts of speech. The child learns to distinguish parts of speech (also by pictures, word endings), then to transform words from one part of speech to another.
- Clarification of the grammatical meaning of words. The direction includes the study of the number of nouns, adjectives, their gender and case, and animation.
- Formation of morphological generalizations and inflections.
- Differentiation of related words.
- Formation of word-formation models.
- Development of morphemic analysis.
- Formation of the syntactic structure of simple and complex sentences.
- Development of attention, memory, thinking.
- Formation of spelling vigilance.
- Mastering the relationship between phonemic, morphological, syntactic, word-formation competence and spelling knowledge, skills and abilities.
This author uses the principle of “quantization” of the spelling rule. The essence of the principle is that the child learns several operations (quanta), which must become part of the skill before he begins to study a particular rule.
Example of the “separating soft sign(s)” rule:
- I quantum – we teach the child to quickly conduct morphemic analysis;
- II quantum - differentiate vowels and consonants;
- III quantum – we learn to distinguish oppositional sounds by hardness and softness.
During a speech therapist session with a child, this may look like this: the child is given pens of three colors - blue, red and green. The first is necessary for writing a whole word, and the other two are for highlighting the parts we need. We ask the child to highlight the soft sign in green, and the vowel separating it in red.
Examples of exercises
When working with a child, speech therapists can use the following exercises:
- Make up and say the words. An equally important element in the correction of dysorthography is the development of sound pronunciation and understanding of the syllabic structure of a word. We give the child cards with the inscriptions: KO, VA, FOR, RO. The student’s task is to make as many words as possible from them (goat, cow, etc.). The exercise helps children form correct articulation.
- Selection of adjectives for nouns (the car is red, fast, bright).
- Search for all cognate words in the picture (white, whitewash, blond, squirrel, whiteness).
- Guess what is shown in the picture and explain what the guessed expression means (“nod off”).
- Selection of nouns for the verb (assemble a puzzle, leaves, construction set, toys) and vice versa (the orange is ripe, the pear is ripe, the fruit is ripe).
- Combining words into phrases.
- Combining objects into pairs, selecting generalizing words for them (camel, scorpion - desert animals).
- Name the place of work (teacher - school, doctor - hospital) or tool (scissors - hairdresser).
- Writing as many words as possible with the same vowels (banana, ram, boar).
- Name an object, knowing its parts (kitchen, bathroom, bedroom - house, legs, arms, torso, neck, head - person).
- Arrange the pictures under gender symbols (cat, giraffe - masculine, turtle, dog - feminine, sea, sky - neuter).
- Forming adjectives from nouns (plum jam is plum, not plum or creamy).
- Find the extra word - an exercise to differentiate parts of speech. The child is offered a set of words from one part of speech and an extra word. The child’s task is to find the latter and explain his choice (milk, cottage cheese, sour cream, bread or spoon, plate, pan, bag).
- One is many. The student is shown pictures of one pencil and five. The child needs to be shown where there are many objects, and where he is alone and why.
- Make a proposal according to the diagram. We give the child a piece of paper or a card on which it will be written which components need to be used to construct a phrase. For example: Noun, verb, adjective and noun – Mom bought big apples. And so you can add more and more members of the sentence so that the child continues to work effectively.
- I'll check myself. We give the student a dictation with the condition that he skips spellings that are incomprehensible to him (you can start an exercise with a few words, moving on to small phrases and sentences).
- Spelling reading. The child is asked to read words in the same way as he will write them, clearly pronouncing all unstressed, voiceless sounds, etc. The exercise will also help develop visual and auditory memory.
- Find a dangerous place. The speech therapist pronounces the words, and the child claps his hands if he hears a sound that cannot be trusted when writing. The “Traffic Light” game is considered similar, when the student needs to be shown a red traffic light when a dangerous place in a sentence is heard.
The process of consolidating skills and abilities is very long. It takes several years for severe dysorthography. Automation of competent writing occurs in any type of work with a speech therapist and parents.
Pay special attention to the written work of primary school students, especially cheating.
Working with word-formation models is considered effective:
- Visual perception of word structure based on a drawing model. The peculiarity of the tasks is the graphic presentation of the word-formation model; the root void is filled with a picture that provides information about the meaning of a given morpheme in the word. At the same time, students visually perceive the morphemic structure of the word as a whole.
- Accumulation of groups of single-structure words. Gradually, children accumulate a certain number of word-formation models and lists of roots corresponding to them.
- Search for a given word using a guessing model. Children are presented with a riddle; a word-formation model can serve as a clue. You can invite the child to find the “hidden” word using the specified model and the selected single-root word, which tells the child which root needs to be “inserted” into the graphic model to get the hidden word.
- Comparative analysis of words that are externally similar in composition. During the lesson, the ability to parse the composition of words of the same model, as well as words that have an external similarity in structure, is developed.
- Graphic representation of nests of cognate words using word-formation models. It may take the form of various tasks: we invite the child to carefully examine the record and find the words hidden in it, writing them down in letters, paying attention to the correct spelling of the roots. We can also invite the child to write down the encrypted words and explain what unites them and what their differences are.
In order for a child to increase his vocabulary, speech therapists recommend writing his own texts, reading other people’s works, examining and describing pictures, images, selecting synonyms, antonyms, and paronyms for known words.
Tips for parents
A favorable psychological climate will give the child everything necessary to master written language. It is necessary to exclude quarrels with the child, between adults, as this negatively affects his development, aggravating the fact that the child is under pressure from the presence of violations in the assimilation of spelling rules and other material.