2 - 1 - Introduction.txt

We are going to work on a new sound today.
Open your ears as wide as possible.
'often', 'fight'; so
you start at the beginning and
you catch each F ... you can feel that
your tongue is actually
touching your teeth.
Touch the first letter.
Is this one, yes.
Rhi-no-cer-os, okay.
Pen
Pen.
>> 'p'.
>> Hello and welcome to our course.
I'm here with Doctor Vincent Goetry and
you're here with myself Jenny Thomson.
We're delighted to welcome
you to this course.
So just to give you some framework, as we
mentioned in the introduction video ...
... we really want to demystify reading
difficulties and specifically dyslexia
for teachers, for
individuals with dyslexia, for
those who are supporting them.
We want to give you some really practical
strategies in terms of identification, and
also intervention.
But we will also give you
some of the theory and
the background information
around those core themes.
So ... they're our overall aims.
So, to give you a sense of how
it will look week by week.
So ... today in Week One, we're really
going to be giving you a context of
what typical reading looks like,
to give you a good baseline understanding.
Then in Week Two, we're going to be
talking about the definitions of
dyslexia and identification
both with younger children,
but then also at later stages.
In Week Three, we're going to take
a broader perspective, because so
many other things can be happening with
dyslexia apart from just the reading,
and so we're going to be looking at
some of those other behaviors and
aspects of, of dyslexia that can occur.
Then in Weeks Four to Six, really the big
focus is 'what do you do about it?'
Practical strategies both for
the earlier stages of reading, but
then also as students get older,
when were thinking about comprehension,
study skills, strategies.
So, that's the overall picture. In
terms of some practicalities for you,
... if English isn't your
first language we do want you
to use the closed captions, so
you would look for
a little cc symbol that's going to
be on the screen in the corner.
Do take advantage of that you
can; also ... speed us up and
slow us down so, again,
look out for the indicators there
and we find that Chrome is quite a nice
browser to do these manipulations in
if you're doing this course for
the Certificate do be aware that
there are some assessments that
you will be doing and taking.
So, for you look in the grading tab
on the course website where you'll find
all the details for what's expected.
And to do the Certificate,
we do it is going to be important for
you to have children especially
those who are struggling to read,
where you can try out some of
the strategies that we're talking about.
>> So, Jenny,
what brought you to the field of dyslexia?
>> Well, ... my initial training was
as a speech and language therapist
and when I was working with
children with early speech and
language problems some of them would
go on to have reading problems.
And it really ... intrigued me and it
it puzzled me that we didn't really
know which children would go on to have
reading problems and which which wouldn't.
And so ... that really led me into research.
I thought, I'm going to try and
find out the answer to this question.
And so, I did a PhD at
University College, London, where I
was looking at causal
factors in dyslexia and
especially auditory processing
as one possible factor,
and that's something that
remained a strand in my research.
I then ... moved over to America and
I was doing some work at Harvard,
where I actually then became
equally interested in how new
technologies are impacting what reading is
and how that impacts you, especially if
you have a reading difficulty, so
that's where my current research is.
So then, what brought you
into the field of dyslexia?
>> My initial training was on psychology,
but I studied very quickly.
I specialized in the psychology of
the learning and learning difficulties.
Then I've always been completely
fascinated by reading development
in young children, so I did a PhD at
the University of Brussels in Belgium 
on reading development in bilingual
children schooled in a second language:
French-Dutch, Dutch-French,
and then I went on with 
the study of immersion programming Canada,
so
I did ... two post-docs in Canada
on French immersion program for
for English native children at
Queens University in Kingston, Ontario.
And I developed a growing frustration,
because I was studying
the children who were succeeding as
in bilingual settings ... 
... when a child is failing,
when a is struggling you put him back or
her back in their native language,
... ... ... ... school,
so I could not follow those children, and
I decided to study the children
who were struggling.
So I took two years post-graduate
course with Dyslexia Action
to be able to support dyslexic
children individually,
which I did for a few years and
now I'm associated with - 
I'm a scientific collaborator at
the University of Brussels in Belgium,
and I'm a general lecturer at
the University of Mons in Belgium,
training future speech therapists and
also training teachers mak(ing)
them aware of what dyslexia is and how
to cope with dyslexia in the classroom.
>> So, Vincent how common
would you say dyslexia is?
>> Well dyslexia is actually more common
than what many people think because
it effects about - of course there
are controversies around the cut off 
researcher (are) using ... ... to say from
from this performance on you
are dyslexic or you are not, but
usually the proportion of 10% is
put forward in many studies. 10% of
the population is about 700 million
people ... around the
the world who have dyslexia traits
and among this ten per cent 5%
of the population will have
really enormous difficulties
in acquiring literacy,
unless they are appropriately taught and
appropriately helped.
Now ... if we situate that ... in 
the classroom it means that if
you ... if you are a teacher and
you ... you have about 30,
let's say 30, children in your classroom
it means that you will come across - you
are likely to come across two or three
... ... children who will
have dyslexia traits every year.
>> Right.
>> So, ... it's quite,
... an important issue.
>> This really affects all teachers.
>> This affects all teachers, certainly.
<< And what are some of the bigger
reasons why dyslexia matters?
>> Dyslexia matters in the sense that
the cost associated with addressing
unaddressed consequences of dyslexia
in adulthood and we know that - 
... ... we are going to see in the
course with a guess lecturer Linda Siegel,
how much it costs to address the
consequences of dyslexia for an adult
(who) is semi-literate or illiterate.
These costs are much higher compared
to the cost of early intervention, and
early detection of dyslexic children so
this is
a matter of putting, well, investing
the money where it should be invested.
>> Right.
So, that includes things like
emotional cost and social exclusion.
>> Emotional costs,
psychological consequences,
social exclusion, delinquency there is - 
we know that there is a relationship
between illiteracy and
the fact of ending up in prison,
of course not a direct link, but
when you are illiterate you are more
likely to fall in to a,
a vicious circle of
social exclusion and delinquency and
aggressiveness ... ... cetera.
So, Jenny, what are the most
exciting parts of the course to you?
>> Well, I, I mean I think lots.
One thing I'm particularly keen
to get across in this course 
is the developmental to aspect
of reading difficulties.
I think ... ... it can often be
easier to identify reading difficulties
when children are first starting to read.
The main task there is, is decoding, and
so, if a child is
struggling with that 
it's really quite clear although obviously
it's not always clear what to do.
But then, as children get into
the later years I think it
can be a lot more difficult to
actually work out what's going on.
And so, that's one of the things I'm
excited about in this course, that we will
actually tackle those later years and the
slightly messier identification process.
And that will be
particularly in Week Three.
So, Vincent, what are you particularly
excited about with this course?
>> Well because I have 
studied bilingualism and
the relationship between bilingualism and
learning to read I'm really interested in,
in seeing and ...
talking and discovering the
... ... the relationship
between bilingualism and dyslexia,
which is a something which is
a question that parents often ask.
And also I'm very much interested in,
... the models of reading
development in the non-dyslexic child
and the model of reading
development in the dyslexic child:
The differences and ... the precise places -  the precise
stages where there are differences between
the two sub groups or groups of children.
>> Right.