The Dyslexia Myth

This book is a practical “self help” guide for people of all ages with dyslexia and reading and writing disabilities. It provides easy to follow step-by-step instructions to acquire error-free spelling and improve reading and writing skills in English and other foreign languages.

You may buy this book because you have a personal interest in finding an effective means to combat reading and writing difficulties. Or you are seeking practical tips for safeguarding your child against problems with reading and writing. Maybe your child has trouble with spelling in school. Perhaps you would like to improve your own reading and writing in English or in a foreign language. Or maybe you are a teacher or therapist and you are searching for a method, which provides affected students with rapid assistance for learning to read and write error–free.

This guide introduces practical applications with which children who are weak in reading and writing can acquire good grades. As a rule of thumb, four to ten individual tutoring sessions with either me or a teacher/therapist using the NICOLAY METHOD are required. Prevention is also possible so that children can be effectively safeguarded against future reading and writing problems.

The children learn to become aware of the thought processes they deploy when reading and writing. They experience how children with good reading and writing skills use their thought processes and how they can effectively apply these successfully in their learning strategies. The child learns what is described in the following chapters at home, with the support of his own parents and/or a tutor.

The method is based on proven scientific knowledge from the areas of neurology and psycholinguistics. Children first learn to store visually the individual words from their vocabulary in their native or a foreign language; later they learn texts and grammatical rules. In the future, they can recall the learned vocabulary and write proficiently.

The NICOLAY METHOD is composed of three parts to ensure that the child can easily learn the new strategy and become more successful and happy at school:

• Playful journey of discovery to recognize your individual learning strategies and how to learn to read and write without making mistakes.

• A concept for strengthening the capacity to concentrate and relax, as well as to enhance self- esteem.

• A concept to counter-balance psychological, family or social disadvantages, which have a negative impact on successful learning.

One parent or tutor should be actively involved in the individual sessions. They obtain practical instructions from the book for continuing support at home, without outside help, and for bringing this to a successful conclusion.

I myself also had writing difficulties as a child and this influenced my career path. I describe my personal experiences in the second chapter.

If you are not interested in the personal details, I recommend that after reading the first chapter, you jump to the third chapter. There you will find information on how the reading and writing method I developed works. The fourth chapter

provides a detailed description on how you can apply the concept.

Teachers who would like to implement the method in the classroom should first work with just two to three children in individual support groups. In this way, they can coach the children to write and spell proficiently. Building upon this, error-free reading and writing can be taught to a larger group of students or a whole class using the NICOLAY METHOD.

The Nicolay learning concept is taught in special continuing training seminars. This book includes an overview of how the method is applied in the learning process. With this you can experiment keeping in mind the instructions for the individual sessions. But please do not harbor the expectation that this alone suffices to successfully apply the method with groups or whole classes.

We have created this book with a Dyslexia friendly font and layout to ma