Manifestations of LD

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.