The definition of dyslexia is provided at http://www.dys-add.com/dyslexia.html#anchorDefinitionSimple:
“Dyslexia is a neurologically-based, often familial, disorder which interferes with the acquisition and processing of language. Varying in degrees of severity, it is manifested by difficulties in receptive and expressive language, including phonological processing, in reading, writing, spelling, handwriting, and sometimes in arithmetic.”
Dyslexia starts to become a problem when students start to need to learn to read and write. To read and write, an individual must be able to hear the individual sounds within a word. It doesn’t mean knowing the letters of a word, but hearing the sounds that make up the word.
For example:
- “sing” is made up of the four letters s-i-n-g, but there are only two sounds in the word, /s/ /ing/
- “what” is four letters, w-h-a-t, but three sounds /wh/ /a/ /t/
- “cat” is three letters and three sounds /k/ /a/ /t/
If a person is unable to pull apart words into their individual sounds, they will have an almost impossible time learning to read and write. Some manage, with a lot of work, to find tricks to help them with their reading, but their spelling will almost always tell the truth.
The term phonological awareness used in the definition above essentially means the ability to hear individual sounds within words.