Dyslexia treatment in Sydney

What is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia results in difficulty reading single words, a process known as “word decoding.” You can read more about the characteristics of Dyslexia here.

Dyslexia Treatment

As with many disorders, there are two types of Dyslexia, and each case may vary in severity. For example, John has difficulty reading, so he sees a Speech Pathologist to be screened for Dyslexia. The clinician first sees if John has problems matching letters to the sounds he hears, to test for Dysphonetic Dyslexia. However, John has no problem with this task. The Speech Pathologist asks him to read whole words when he sees them on a page. John has great difficulty with this task, so the clinician tells him he has Dyseidetic Dyslexia, the least common type of Dyslexia. They explain that this type is related to visual-spatial skills, as opposed to auditory (hearing) skills. This information helps the clinician make the best therapy plan for John. John attends therapy and over time his reading improves.

How is Dyslexia treated?

You may be wondering; how did the Speech Pathologist help John improve his reading skills? At Speakable we use a combination the Spalding Approach, MultiLit, and increasing Phonological Awareness skills.

MultiLit is an evidence-based approach that uses a mixture of word activities, reading, spelling and comprehension tasks to strengthen reading skills. The MultiLit differs from the Spalding Approach because of its emphasis on nonsense words, and speed and accuracy. For more on the MultiLit see our page here.

Spalding Approach The Spalding Approach, or Writing Approach to Reading (WRAP), uses a similar approach with a list of Ayers Words, the 1000 most commonly used words in the English language. For more on this approach see our WRAP page here.

Phonological Awareness The awareness of the skills we learn before developing literacy, such as breaking a word up into sounds.