Why do excellent students write tests "poorly"?

Causes

Doctors, trying to help the expectant mother give birth faster, make the mistake of stimulating labor. With this method of birth, the temporal areas of the baby’s head, which are responsible for the speech zones, suffer. The consequences can be very different: for example, violations of oral and written speech.

Reading impairment is called dyslexia, writing impairment is called dysgraphia. Both disorders can be observed in the same child, and no signs of mental retardation are found in him. Dyslexia can be passed on from parents.

Tips for parents: how to teach your child to write without mistakes

All children perceive school material differently. Some people grasp the theory on the fly and write the words correctly without any problems, some get confused about the rule, and some know the theory but still make mistakes. How to help your child at home? Force me to cram the rules? We asked Marina Semyonova, a philologist at the Adukar educational center, how a parent can teach a child to write without mistakes.

Not all schoolchildren, especially younger ones, clearly understand why they need literacy. Therefore, the parent should explain why it is important to write without errors.

For example, a competent person makes a good impression on others, people have more confidence in his professional qualities, etc.

Good motivation will allow the child to be more attentive in class and learn the rules more diligently. And the result will not take long to arrive.

Every parent should believe in their child, support him and help him in every possible way. You shouldn’t allow harmful attitudes like: “it’s too early, we’ll hire a tutor for the exams, he’ll help” or “he’s a boy, not everyone can be literate.”

Marina Semyonova, Russian language teacher at the Adukar educational center

To notice a mistake in time and work it out at home, check your homework. It is useful for the child to verbally formulate answers and explain by what rule he wrote this or that spelling. This way the student will be able to notice mistakes and remember the theory faster.

Dysgraphia is a partial impairment of written speech caused by the immaturity of higher mental functions. The child will repeat the same mistakes, even if he learns all the rules of the Russian language. He simply cannot apply them where necessary. According to a rough estimate, dysgraphia is observed to one degree or another in almost a third of primary schoolchildren.

Writing is a very complex process in which several higher mental functions are involved:

first you need to mentally divide the word into sounds;
you need to remember which letter corresponds to a specific sound;
conjure up an image of a letter, that is, remember how it is written;
the brain gives a command to the hand;
apply the appropriate rule, and part of the spellings is based on the selection of a test word, that is, the memory is put back into operation.

If at some stage a failure occurs, the child begins to write with errors, despite all the efforts of teachers and parents.

You can determine whether a child is lazy and does not study or has dysgraphia by the following signs of this disorder:

errors in stressed words when the spelling is obvious: “korava” instead of “cow”;
omission of one or more letters;
underwriting of syllables, letters, endings of words: “bag” instead of “bag”;
rearrangement of syllables and individual letters: “dog” instead of “sokaba”;
duplication of letters: “jack” instead of “jack”
mirrored letters and numbers;
replacing some sounds with others that are similar in sound: “dorashka” instead of “path”;
omission of letters that are used relatively rarely - “ъ”, “е”, “ь”;
sloppy, dirty writing, the child “does not see” fields, lines, etc.;
he does not understand the principles of word hyphenation, writes words without spaces;
does not put periods or capital letters at the end and beginning of sentences.

This exercise helps children who miss letters. An adult reads short sentences; a child needs to tap the syllables in each word with a pencil to feel the rhythm. He then writes each syllable as a dotted line. Further, the dictation can be complicated: write down each word in the form of dots, the number of dots is equal to the number of letters.

This exercise is similar to the game of cities. Ask your child to choose a word that will begin with the second or third letter from the end of the intended word. If you combine words thematically, you can practice classification skills.

Playing funny cartoons will help you remember difficult words. The child needs to close his eyes and mentally imagine the words that you will dictate, like successive frames of a cartoon; they should be connected by some kind of plot.

Pronounce the words very clearly, highlighting each letter with your voice. Then the child will tell the cartoon he has invented, write down the spoken words on paper and check the resulting text himself. In case of an error, vocabulary words should be drawn so that the spelling is indicated through the drawing.

For example, the letter Y, which descends from the sky by parachute.

Copying exercises help to remember the graphic appearance of a word. It is better to do them during the holidays, when there is a lot of free time. To increase your child's interest in the activity, choose something from children's classics. Be sure to first check that there are no typos in the publication.

We encrypt

The following exercise will help you better remember the rules of the Russian language and consolidate the skill of their application. Create a cipher alphabet with certain symbols instead of letters. Invite your child to write a “secret note”, in the text of which a certain rule must be used.

Mistakes in written work are also often associated with fear of failure. Children are so afraid to write a word incorrectly that, out of excitement, they confuse letters, do not complete words, and rearrange syllables. Therefore, exercises for liberation and overcoming shyness are very useful.

Let your child walk more in the fresh air so that the brain receives maximum oxygen. Go to the sports ground. Training helps you get used to following the rules, improves attention and reaction.

The key to competent writing is arbitrary regulation. According to the observations of speech therapists at our development center, almost all primary schoolchildren diagnosed with dysgraphia do not know how to play role-playing games.

It is difficult for them to learn and follow the rules of even the simplest children's game.

Therefore, allow your child to play with his peers as much as he wants, help him master the rules, learn to voluntarily regulate his actions and behavior.

Enroll your child in a music school. When playing a musical instrument, as a rule, both hands are involved, which means that both the right and left hemispheres work. In addition, classes have a positive effect on fine motor skills. This, in turn, improves blood supply to the speech and motor centers of the brain.

When your child comes home from school, massage his neck and neck to stretch his muscles and improve the flow of oxygen and nutrients to his brain cells.

And, most importantly, classes should be non-tiring, regular, and conducted under the supervision of an experienced speech therapist. Only in this case can we expect an increase in literacy and the overall level of academic achievement.

Very often, children, even those who know the rules well, make mistakes in dictations and essays. Such children grow up to be illiterate adults, and this, unfortunately, cannot be corrected by subsequent education. Try to help your children yourself, without relying on school.

The mistake should not be fixed in the mind.

If a child asks how to spell a word, immediately say it correctly. Phrases like: “here it is written not “a”, but “o” are unacceptable.

Try to regularly conduct dictations at home, at least from the exercises in the school textbook. If the child is having difficulty or is already writing the wrong letter while standing behind him, quietly prompt him: here is “o” or here is “e”.

Do not focus on incorrect spelling, record only the correct one.

Diagnostics

Dysgraphia does not appear suddenly. It is always associated with underdevelopment or partial damage to the brain mechanisms that ensure the complex process of writing. Hence the correct way to “fight” violations. It should begin not at school, when dysgraphia is revealed in the form of specific errors in writing, but in preschool age, long before the child begins to learn to read and write. All efforts should be aimed at weak links. To understand where to look for them, let’s decide on the main thing - types of dysgraphia.

There are several types of dysgraphia, each of which is directly related to certain problems in the development of the child. After consulting with this specialist, parents will understand whether their child has speech characteristics that can accurately predict the types of writing errors that are inevitable for the child. And forewarned means forearmed.

Knowledge about different types of dysgraphia, signs by which a potential “dysgraphic person” can be identified even in preschool age, and, accordingly, about the successful prevention of deviations and future writing disorders.

Types of dysgraphia:

Articulatory-acoustic. The child writes as he hears. If all sounds are not delivered by the school period, problems with writing may arise. For example, a child replaces “r” with “l” in oral speech. And instead of “rum” he writes “loma”, instead of “gunpowder” - “polokh”. Or, if the sound is completely absent in speech, it may be completely missed. For example, write “koshun” instead of “kite”.
Acoustic. The child can pronounce all sounds clearly, but at the same time replaces letters denoting phonetically similar sounds. In writing, pairs of letters are most often mixed: d-t, b-p, zh-sh, v-f, g-k or s-sh, z-zh, ch-shch, ch-t, ts-t, ts-s .
Dysgraphia due to impairment of language analysis and synthesis. Most often occurs in children suffering from written language disorders. With this form of dysgraphia, children skip letters and syllables, rearrange them, do not complete words, write prepositions together or write prefixes separately. Sometimes you can encounter such a violation as contamination: when a word contains syllables from different words. For example, “crabs” are crab sticks.
Ungrammatical. As the name suggests, it is associated with underdevelopment of the grammatical structure of speech. There are no grammar rules for such a child. Agreement between nouns and adjectives, nouns and verbs suffers (“Masha ran”, “blue coat”).
Optical. The elements that form letters are few in number: mostly sticks, circles, hooks... But they are combined in different ways in space, forming different letters. But for a child whose visual-spatial representations, visual analysis and synthesis are not sufficiently developed, it is difficult to grasp the differences between letters. Either he will add an extra stick to t, or he will not add a hook to w. If a child does not grasp the subtle differences between letters, then this will certainly lead to difficulties in mastering the outline of letters and to incorrect representation of them in writing.

Rules for writing dictations that a child should know

The question of how to teach a child to write dictations without errors in a short time may seem difficult, but it is not. Don't be afraid of difficulties. All you need is:

Explain to the little student that the most important thing is not to rush.
You shouldn't write when you need to listen.
Don't write it off.
When writing, you can mentally pronounce the word syllable by syllable.
When the teacher reads for the second time, you need to carefully monitor what is written in the notebook.
Re-read your work several times.
Be patient with your child. It takes a lot of time for adults to achieve results, but for children, due to their age, it is much more difficult.
Don't scold for bad grades.
Praise even for minor successes.
Try to compete with him. Sometimes you can give in, because trying to write better than an adult is the main interest of the baby. During such competitions, you can invite the child to find mistakes in his mother.
Keep a special notebook for cheating. Let your daughter or son write down their favorite poems and excerpts from works.
Monitor the child's attention - let him try not to be distracted by anything.
If you take up dictations, you need to pronounce each word correctly and take reasonable pauses.
Try writing visual dictations.
Make sure your student pronounces what he writes.
Do not overload the child.
Develop hand motor skills.
Walk more in the fresh air, even though this, at first glance, does not relate to the question of how to teach a child to write correctly without errors, but oxygen greatly helps the good functioning of the brain.

Teach the technique. Explain that in order to avoid mistakes, the word must be read CORRECTLY, that is, exactly as it is written, and not as it is usually pronounced/read. We pronounce the word LITERALLY, for example, water (V-O-D-A), several times out loud and then to ourselves. And only after that you can start writing.
We write and dictate to ourselves the already correctly pronounced word.
Also, pay special attention to ensuring that your child pronounces both soft and hard signs and capital letters when they occur.
Don’t forget to read the punctuation marks, then you definitely won’t forget about them.

Treatment

A speech therapist at 3-5 years old can determine whether there are speech therapy problems that can cause dysgraphia. If necessary, he will recommend special classes.

Treatment of dysgraphia should be comprehensive, and the success of the intervention directly depends on how closely and productively patients and treating specialists interact with each other.

Speech therapists and psychologists treat various types of dysgraphia. Naturally, it is advisable to choose those who have been working with such patients for a long time. Along with writing correction, you will need to develop memory and improve concentration.

It should be remembered that dysgraphia is not a death sentence. The desire to get rid of it and perseverance help cure the pathology forever and without a trace.