Specific Learning Difficulties

Specific Learning Difficulties are characterized by an “unexpected” failure or underachievement in reading, writing and or mathematics. This unexpected failure or underachievement cannot be explained or justified by the child’s age, educational background and intelligence. Specific Learning Difficulties seem to have a neurological base and in that sense are inherent, rather than be acquired during ones lifetime.    

Specific reading difficulty

• Inserts letters
• Losses or jumps lines when reading
• Reads something twice quietly before reading aloud
• Letter reversions
• Letter omissions 
• Very slow reading pace
   
  

Secondary difficulties

Very often as a corollary of ones reading difficulties in decoding, there might be other difficulties in comprehension as well. However this is not always the case and having difficulties in decoding does not imply necessarily difficulties with comprehension and understanding. 

As far as writing is concerned, one or more of the following may be observed:

• Letter reversions
• Letter omissions
• Letter additions
• Violates the necessary space between words when writing
• Confuses upper with lower case letters
• Has difficulties applying rules that are already known and have been taught

In written language may also be observed the following:

• Difficulties in essay writing usually are good at orally telling what they want to write but cannot write it down
• Poor vocabulary
• Tend to use the same words over and over again
• Tend to avoid using words that they are not sure about their correct way of writing
•  Difficulties in planning and organizing their thoughts

Specific difficulty in Mathematics

• Has difficulties understanding the concepts
• Has difficulties doing simple calculations mentally
• Has difficulties learning the tables
• Has difficulties in problem solving and very often tend to insist on one way of solving problems, usually one that is not efficient
• Has difficulties putting information together