MIMAANSA

What is Learning Difficulty?

Child with LD may have some of the problems mentioned below:

• There are unexpected difficulties in reading as compared to the other children of the same age or same level of education.
• There are language problems at the level of phonologic (sound of the word) processing.
• Problems with sound of words as:
  - Trouble rhyming the words: car and bar, ball and call etc
  - Confusion of words that sound alike
• Expressive language difficulties:
  - Mispronunciation: cimena for cinema
  - Hesitates in pronunciation
  - Word finding difficulties: groping for the correct word
• Difficulty in naming:
  - Learning letters of the alphabet
  - Learning names of the numbers.
• Difficulty learning to associate sound with letters
• Reading and spelling difficulties in close relatives
• Reading difficulties:
  - Single word decoding .
  ex: the child knows what to do if told “go to the garden” but does not know the meaning of “garden”.
  - Difficulty in reading unfamiliar words.
  ex: a child who can read ‘mat’, ‘bat’, ‘cat’, ‘rat’ should be able to read ‘sat’ but can’t.
  - Inaccurate and labored oral reading.
  - Slow reading. Cannot read in the mind. Has to spell out the whole word before coming to the pronunciation.
• Language problems:
  - Can’t name objects in pictures.
  - Better at pointing to objects.
  - Poor phonologic awareness.