Written speech is one of the most developed forms of the existence of speech, which is opposed to oral. This speech is secondary, i.e., later in formation time. Thanks to spoken language, man began to differ from representatives of the animal world. Written speech is considered a purely human achievement. Written and oral speech are closely interconnected, since written is based on oral and is considered the highest stage of speech development of people. Written speech is the visual projection of the oral, where, with the help of graphic symbols - letters - sound images of the words of oral speech are designated.
Violations of written language, which include dysgraphia and dyslexia, are most pronounced with the beginning of schooling. And, of course, all this stretches from preschool age, because incorrect spelling of words and other speech disorders that were not corrected during the time, entail errors in the letter.
General concepts of dysgraphia
So, first we will deal with you, what is dysgraphia. To begin with, if the definition has the prefix a-, then this means the complete absence of the phenomenon being studied. In our case, the definition of the prefix is dis-, which corresponds to a partial violation. Therefore, dysgraphia is a persistent selective inability to master writing skills with a sufficient level of mental development, the relative safety of auditory and visual analyzers.
Causes of dysgraphia
The reasons for the development of dysgraphia in a child may be the following factors:
- The delay in the maturation and development of certain body systems necessary for the assimilation of written speech, due to adverse factors that at different times had an impact on the development of the child.
- Pathology of pregnancy and childbirth (toxicosis, infectious diseases of the mother, nephropathy, diabetes, hypothyroidism, maternal alcoholism, Rhesus conflict, prematurity, rapid or prolonged childbirth, obstetric complications in the form of fetal hypoxia, asphyxiation, etc.).
- Pathological heredity (learning difficulties with parents, mental illness).
- Craniocerebral head injuries, somatic weakness, viral and bacterial neuroinfection and frequent infectious diseases in the postnatal period.
- Improper speech environment, bilingualism, limited speech contacts.
- Lateralization is difficult (a process by which various functions are associated with one or the other half of the brain): in these children, the leading hemisphere is not fully established, which, in turn, can lead to impaired speech development.
- Neurodynamic disturbances of HMF, functional insufficiency of higher forms of their regulation (minimal cerebral dysfunction (MMD), mental retardation (ZPR), oligophrenia, cerebral palsy (cerebral palsy), hearing impairment).
- The insufficiency of a number of mental processes: memory, attention, visual-spatial gnosis, the operational components of writing.
Manifestations of dysgraphia
The main symptoms indicating the presence of dysgraphia are persistent specific errors (not related to the use of spelling rules). Their appearance is not associated with impaired mental or sensory development or gaps in the development of the school curriculum. Such mistakes need to be clearly differentiated from those made by children while studying a new topic. The main criteria for distinguishing pathological from non-pathological errors are: persistence, the ability to take root and worsen if there is no corrective work on them.
There are certain types of pathological errors in dysgraphia:
- Phonetic - these are errors that occur when spelling words according to the phonetic principle. They are paramount in articulatory-acoustic dysgraphia. Three groups of such errors are distinguished: replacing and mixing letters in letters corresponding to sounds similar in terms of acoustic-articulation indicators (soft - hard, sonorous - deaf, hollow - hissing and vice versa). Such errors are very persistent and difficult to correct; missing letters, rearrangements, adding extra letters to words, distortion of the sound composition of a word; substitutions, additions and omissions of letters in words associated with the occupied position of sounds in a word and the phenomena of sounding, stunning and softening. These errors are called positional.
- Graphic and spatial optical - various inaccuracies in the spelling of letters. They are expressed in substitutions on letters of letters that are similar in their optical-spatial or kinetic characteristics.
- Lexical and grammatical - associated with the inability to learn the morphological principle of writing or with general underdevelopment of speech (ONR). They include a large and diverse group of morphological, syntactic, punctuation and semantic errors. They arise during the writing of words that are written according to the morphological principle or during the writing of sentences.
Dysgraphia Classifications
The classification can be based on different parameters, this explains their diversity.
M. Hvattsev in 1959 identified the following types of dysgraphia:
- Dysgraphia based on acoustic agnosia and underdevelopment of phonemic hearing.
- Due to impaired speech.
- Disorders due to speech rhythm disturbances.
- Optical dysgraphia.
- Disorders in motor and sensory aphasia.
O. Tokareva, in turn, took as a basis a violation of the analytical and synthetic activity of the auditory, visual and motor analyzers and in 1969 identified 3 types of dysgraphia:
- Acoustic - errors in mixing and replacing letters that indicate sounds that are similar in their acoustic and articulating characteristics, as well as missing letters.
- Optical - due to the instability of visual images of letters.
- Motor - motor difficulties during writing, violation of the connection of motor images of words with their sound and visual images.
In 1989, R. Lalaeva developed a classification, which was based on the lack of formation of certain writing processes. She allocated:
- Articulatory-acoustic variety of pathological phenomenon.
- Dysgraphia based on violations of phoneme recognition (phoneme differentiation).
- Disorder due to impaired speech analysis and synthesis.
- An agramatic variety of the process.
- Optical dysgraphia.
The latter classification is by far the most justified and used among corrective educators.
Let us dwell in more detail on acoustic articulatory dysgraphia. This type of disorder is similar to dysgraphia highlighted by M. Khvatsev based on imperfections in oral speech. With this form, the child writes as he pronounces. In the process of pronouncing words, the child relies on the incorrect pronunciation of sounds, and therefore, transfers this to the letter. The reason for this is a violation of articulation in the child, due to which the defective sound of the word is stored in the memory, which is subsequently displayed on the letter in the same form.
The most common violations with this form of dysgraphia are substitutions and omissions. It is observed most often with dysarthria, rhinolalia, dyslalia.
Prerequisites for the appearance of dysgraphia in preschool age
Since dysgraphia usually stretches from preschool age, the following parameters can be distinguished, which should be noted:
- The formation of self-service skills is difficult (does not want to independently button buttons, tie shoelaces, etc.).
- By the senior preschool age, the leading arm is not defined, understanding of the body scheme is difficult, which entails a violation of orientation both in reality and on a sheet of paper.
- Speech of preschool children is slurred, fuzzy, pronunciation defects are observed, avaricious vocabulary, violation of pronunciation of words with a complex syllabic structure, retelling and memorization of verses is difficult.
- The originality of the game activity: the lack of a detailed plot, the uniformity of games and preferred toys, the preference for single games to collective games, the lack of the use of substitute items.
- Underdevelopment of fine motor skills, poor coordination of actions, refusal to perform small labor, incomplete range of movements.
Manifestations of dysgraphia in the process of schooling
A characteristic manifestation of articulatory-acoustic dysgraphia in elementary school students is that the structure of the disorder includes a set of inferior speech components. This turns dysgraphia into a systemic disorder that requires a longer and deeper correction.
It is difficult for children to remember the letters, and therefore, they are replaced and mixed. For example, it is difficult for children to differentiate the letters P and L, Z, and E when writing. Also, it is difficult for children to translate sound into a letter and vice versa, convert a printed letter to a written one. In addition, due to the shortcomings of sound-alphanumeric analysis and synthesis, children miss vowels in words, do not indicate the boundaries of the sentence (capital letters and dots), write words together.
Dysgraphs are characterized by slow writing speed, fatigue and inability to adhere to the required letter size (micro- and macrography).
With dysgraphia, primary schoolchildren also find it difficult to fix operations of the writing process in a timely manner, there is no relationship between elementary mental processes and higher mental functions that provide writing.
In addition to language deficiency, such students have a lack of dynamic praxis, auditory-motor and optical-motor coordination, which interferes with the automation of graph-motor skill.
It should also be noted that dysgraphia in children is manifested against the background of low working capacity and weak self-regulation in activity.
Examples of articulatory-acoustic dysgraphia
An example of violation of the differentiation of sounds by voicing-deafness: A small domig stood at the very center of the arm. A merchant is forbidden in this river.
An example of violation of the distinction between similar sounds S-Ts, Ch-Shch: Birds flew to us. I have right now.
An example of omissions of vowels: a stand-up, an apple-tree, an apple-tree, a village.
Example of missing consonant letters: apple-tree, stela-arrow.
An example of omissions of syllables and parts of a word: cosnaut-cosmonaut.
An example of replacing vowels: lying, lying, autumn-autumn, evil-evil.
An example of replacing consonants: trova-firewood, chacha-thicket, shaba-toad, zbagoyny - calm.
An example of a permutation of letters and syllables: chickens, chickens, and suddenly.
An example of the lack of letters and syllables: color-blooms, they sit down, they sit down, teapots.
An example of adding extra words and syllables to words: an ant-ant, a para-locomotive-steam locomotive.
An example of a word distortion is: heavy grief, greenhouse green.
An example of a single spelling of words and their arbitrary division: wide - on a large, bug-beetle sitting, fly-fly away.
An example of the inability to determine the boundaries of sentences in the text, the continuous writing of sentences: Winter came, a white Snowball fell. Fun for the children in winter. On the street. - Winter came. White snow fell. Fun for children in the winter on the street.
An example of violation of softening of consonants: daughter-daughter, walked-walked, beat-were, wasp-wasp.
Speech therapy work with dysgraphia
As mentioned above, written disorders are most pronounced at the beginning of schooling. However, they can be observed in older preschool years in literacy classes. If at the preschool age speech therapy work was not carried out, it is necessary to carry out correction of dysgraphia in schoolchildren. It must be remembered that writing correction exercises will not be effective if the defects in spoken language are not eliminated.
Initially, all the shortcomings of pronunciation are eliminated, all groups of sounds are set and automated, phonemic hearing develops. It should be noted that the letter P is most difficult for children to write, since in oral speech the corresponding sound P appears most recently when the sound pronunciation can already be impaired (rotacism, pararotacism). Next, work is carried out on the formation and development of analytical activities, visual and spatial coordination. It is also necessary to teach the student to differentiate sounds, words and phrases, which in the future will affect the correctness of his writing. The acquired skills are reinforced by various written tasks such as writing off text, speaking words when writing, searching for missing letters in words, parsing a word, writing dictations, etc.
Dysgraphia Prevention
To prevent the occurrence of any type of dysgraphia in children, it is necessary to carry out comprehensive corrective work, in which both a speech therapist, a neurologist, and the child's parents should participate. A child who needs help can get it either in a preschool speech therapy group, or at a speech center at school.
Work to prevent dysgraphia should be started before the child begins to learn the basics of literacy. It is necessary for the child to develop all HMF, which in the future will be necessary for mastering the processes of writing and reading. It is extremely important to identify and correct spoken speech disorders in time, to overcome phonetic (FN), phonetic-phonemic (FN) and general speech underdevelopment (ONR).
Recommendations for the correction of dysgraphia
Specialists give the following recommendations to parents:
- When a child is given a large amount of reading or writing, it is necessary to divide the tasks into small pieces and perform them in turn with short breaks.
- If your child makes many mistakes during work, do not force him to rewrite the entire text again, this will only aggravate the situation.
- It is necessary to praise the child even for the smallest achievement. They saw that he did not make a mistake where he always made it - be sure to praise! This will add to the child's enthusiasm in future activities.
- Do not use time exercises as training and correction. In this case, they are inappropriate.
- With articulatory-acoustic dysgraphia, it is impossible to give the child a task where it is necessary to correct errors in the text.
- With correction, you do not need to read large texts with a child or write large dictations. Mistakes made by the child in this case can be fixed in his subconscious as a negative experience.
- Emphasis should be placed on the development of oral rather than written language.
It is important to remember that not a single violation of speech itself goes away. Many parents believe that a poorly-speaking child will "spell out" over time, thereby losing valuable time for correction. Do not be afraid to admit that your child needs speech therapy help. It is better to adjust speech at the initial stage of its formation and development than at a more mature age.