Strategies to help Teenagers

If a teenager is exhibiting signs of dyslexia it is important to organise some assistance for them as soon as possible, because they can very quickly fall behind and get discouraged.

The sooner some assistance can be organised the better. It is good practice to get an assessment done with a qualified person, to gain a good idea of the nature of the students dyslexia.

Assistance for the student should be defined by the nature of their dyslexia. It is important to get specific help as opposed to general subject based tutoring e.g. general literacy, memory and organisational skills.

Some of the techniques that can be used to help dyslexic teenagers are:

• Use of a reader and/or a scribe
• Extra time
• Transcription without correction
• Use of transcription with correction of spelling and punctuation
• Referral of a script to the Principal Assessor
• Use of Information Communication Technology, such as a laptop loaded with voice recognition software.

It is important to be alert to the ways in which a teenager's dyslexia affects them and to adopt positive strategies for dealing with them. In this way, the difficulties can be kept at a manageable level and people will be able to succeed in any course of study or career.

It is also very important not to single a student out as needing special help or assistance. Obviously teenagers are very sensitive to their social standing and efforts should be made to keep the assistance low key. Teenagers may become resistant to assistance if it is offered in the wrong way.