How to distinguish dysgraphia from ordinary errors
Common errors are due to ignorance or an unlearned rule and are reduced after explanation. With dysgraphia, the errors are specific and persistent: the child writes “cow” as “kaova,” skips vowels, connects a preposition with a word, mirrors letters, confuses b and d, sh and sh, z and s. These mistakes are repeated from work to work, occur even in cheating and do not disappear with additional dictations. Handwriting is often uneven, the line “shifts”, the child writes slowly and gets tired.
- Omissions and rearrangements of letters and syllables
- Replacement of similar-sounding letters
- Mirror writing of letters and numbers
- Continuous spelling of words and prepositions
- Unfinished endings
- Uneven handwriting, out of line
- Errors persist even when written off
Types of dysgraphia
The division into types is necessary not for the beauty of the diagnosis, but for the choice of exercises: for weak phonemic hearing, they work with sound analysis, for visual-spatial difficulties - with the image of the letter and orientation on the sheet. Most children have a mixed form, when several parts of writing are affected at the same time. Only a speech therapist can determine the leading mechanism by the nature of the errors in the notebooks.
- Acoustic: replacing letters that sound similar
- Articulatory-acoustic: writes as it pronounces
- Due to a violation of language analysis: omissions, continuous writing
- Agrammatical: errors in endings and agreement
- Optical: mirrored and mixed letters
Causes and risk factors
Writing is a complex skill that relies on hearing, speech, vision, memory, motor skills and attention. Dysgraphia appears when one or more parts have not matured at the beginning of training. Heredity and early speech development play a big role: children who speak late or have had unclear pronunciation for a long time are at risk. Additionally, excessive loads when a first-grader is required to write cursive and retraining a left-handed child are also harmful.
- Delayed speech development, sound pronunciation disorders
- Hereditary cases of writing difficulties
- Prematurity, complicated pregnancy and childbirth
- Frequent otitis media and hearing fluctuations at an early age
- ADHD, fatigue
- Immaturity of fine motor skills by the time of school
- Bilingual environment without systematic teaching of writing
Survey
The main material for diagnosis is several months of school notebooks: a speech therapist analyzes the types of errors in dictations, cheating and independent work. Additionally, oral language, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, grammar, and reading are assessed, since dysgraphia and dyslexia often go together. Before the correction begins, hearing and vision are checked. If there are complaints of headaches, fatigue, awkward movements or seizures, the child is referred to a pediatric neurologist.
- Analysis of written works of various types
- Speech therapy examination of speech and language analysis
- Reading check
- Hearing and vision assessment
- Assessment of attention, memory and motor skills
- Neurological examination according to indications
Correction and support
Correction is based on restoring the weak link, and not on endless dictations: first, sound analysis and letter recognition, then words, sentences and connected text. Classes should be regular and short, with obligatory reinforcement at home. It is important for a child to see that he is not considered lazy: lowering grades only for specific mistakes increases the fear of writing. It is useful to allow writing in larger sizes, to give more time and not to require high speed during the correction period.
- Classes with a speech therapist 2-3 times a week according to an individual program
- Exercises on sound analysis and letter recognition
- Working with the image of a letter, shading, writing according to a sample
- Development of fine motor skills and proper posture
- Extra time for writing assignments
- Refusal to rewrite work “clean copy” for the sake of punishment
- Collaboration between speech therapist, teacher and parents