Early Signs of Dyslexia

Early signs may include:

Speech Sound Awareness:

• Has difficulty learning nursery rhymes or song lyrics that rhyme
• Doesn’t easily recognise that words begin with the same sound
• Has difficulty counting the syllables in spoken words
• Has problem clapping hands or tapping feet in rhythm with songs and/or rhymes
• Has trouble learning letter names and remembering the sounds they make
• Often confuses letters that look similar (like b, d, p, and q) or sound similar (like f and v, b and p, or d and t)

Word Recognition and Writing:

• Struggles to read familiar words (like cat), especially if there aren’t pictures
• Substitutes words when reading aloud, like saying house when the story says home
• Has trouble separating the individual sounds in words and blending sounds to make a word
• Has trouble remembering how words are spelled and applying spelling rules in writing

Word Retrieval:

• Has difficulty retrieving a specific word (e.g. calls a sheep a “goat” or says, “you know, a woolly animal”)
• Shows poor memory for classmates’ names
• Speech is hesitant, filled with pauses or vocalisations (e.g. “um”, “you know”)
• Frequently uses words lacking specificity (e.g. “stuff”, “thing”, “what you call it”)
• Has problems remembering/ retrieving verbal sequences (e.g. days of the week, alphabet)

Verbal Memory: 

• Has trouble remembering sequences, like singing the letters of the alphabet
• Has difficulty remembering instructions or directions with multiple steps
• Shows problems learning names of people or places
• Has difficulty remembering the words to songs or poems
• Has difficulty telling stories that are hard to follow or having trouble talking about an event in a logical order

Speech Production/Perception:

• Has problems saying common words with difficult sound patterns (e.g. animal, cinnamon, specific)
• Mispronounces words, like saying ‘beddy tear’ instead of ‘teddy Confuses a similar sounding word with another word (e.g. ‘the Entire strikes back’
• Combines sound patterns of similar words (e.g. saying “excavator” for escalator)
• Shows frequent slips of the tongue (e.g.  saying “brue blush” for “blue brush”)
• Has difficulty with tongue twisters (e.g. she sells seashells)

General problems experienced by people suffering with dyslexia may include:

• Organising written and spoken language
• Memorising number facts
• Reading quickly enough to comprehend
• Keeping up with and comprehending longer reading assignments
• Learning a foreign language
• Correctly doing maths operations
• Working memory