How bad is it?

The first signs that a person may be dyslexic may appear when they start school or a new job. Basically, they are not doing as well as they feel they should be.

• A person may be very good at answering questions when they are speaking, but cannot write the answers down.
• A child may do well on a spelling test, but continues to make mistakes when writing.
• A student does well on course-work, but does much less well in examinations.

A separate part of the assessment closely looks at the person’s reading, writing and number skills. The main idea is to see how well the person is doing in these basic areas. We check:

• Single word reading
• Reading comprehension
• Spelling
• Writing and written expression
• Basic number skills

People who have been sent by their employer may also do some extra tests so we can see how well they are doing in job-specific areas.

We are keen to find out if there is a big difference between the person’s overall ability and their level of reading, writing, spelling and number. If the difference is large, then it can stand as additional hard evidence of a specific learning difficulty.

This part of the assessment provides very clear information for schools and employers about exactly what the person finds hard to do.

Many schools only use a “single word” reading test to measure how well pupils read. Many dyslexic people are poor at this task. However, some dyslexic people may be good at reading out single words. The thing they find difficult is to understand what they have read. That is why HDL psychologists use a wide range of tests to measure many areas of reading and writing skill.

We want to be able to explain to parents, schools and employers exactly how to move forward.