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This is the second in a series of columns on computers and other technologies that can make a difference in the lives of people with dyslexia. I am a successful dyslexic adult and part of the reason for my success is the fact that I use computers and other tools to organize my life and express my ideas. I am extremely opinionated. My strong feelings come from personal experience and the experience of thousands of people who I have helped get started with computers. The fact that I recommend certain computers, software, and other tools does not mean that they are endorsed by The Orton Dyslexia Society (Currently The International Dyslexia Association.)
Question: How do computers change the writing process and what effect might this have on a dyslexic writer?
Answer: Using a computer and various pieces of software for writing makes the writing process easier, and so allows more writing to take place. Word processing software doesn't necessarily teach people how to write; it simply allows more writing to take place (by making the process easier) and so, allows people to learn from their own writing experience. Here it is again: the way to learn how to write is to do a lot of writing, and using a computer and software for writing can make the process of doing a lot of writing easier.
How do you get someone who hates writing to use a tool - even one as potentially interesting as a computer - to do something that is hard, unpleasant, or may have no personal meaning beyond getting through school? Just having access to a computer doesn't automatically solve a writing problem; the computer has to be used regularly as a writing tool to produce a variety of writing.
One solution is to find a motivating force to get a person started with writing and keep them writing long enough to get hooked on the process. An external motivating force (an assignment or a reward) may work in the short term, but it’s not portable and may not work with every writing task a person has to do in life. What happens when the external motivation isn’t there? Better to learn how to produce an internal motivating force, for instance, sharing a piece of knowledge, an idea, an opinion, anger, or joy.
It’s also important to help dyslexic writers keep certain ideas clear in their minds: the difference between their disability and their intelligence, and the difference between the tools they are using for writing and the content that they want to produce with those tools. The end goal is to use the tool to share the depth and complexity of one’s thinking in a form that others can understand, not to prove mastery of the tool.
With this in mind choose simple, easy-to-use writing software that will fall into the background quickly, letting the writer get to the writing without wading through layers of user interface that may confuse and undermine self-confidence.
When you write with a pen and paper, the composition process (forming, organizing, and encoding ideas) and the printing process (getting ink on paper) are wed. Unless one has an incredible memory and can hold complex trains of thought in sequence long enough to get them written by hand, the pen and paper method isn’t very useful for anything more than short pieces of writing. When you fold dysgraphia into the mix, the pen and paper method isn’t very useful for anything more than writing checks. A typewriter solves the dysgraphia problem, but it does not solve the memory problem or the problem of needing to edit the writing later.
Computers change the writing process by holding all of the writing in memory (instead of on paper), freeing the memory of the person doing the writing, and because all of the writing is being stored electronically, it can be changed at any time with all sorts of electronic editing tools. Even the simplest computer printer will produce easier-to-read print than a dysgraphia person can produce by hand, making the print easier to proof-read, edit, and eventually share.
Electronic editing allows:
· Expanded vocabulary: The person doing the writing is freer to take chances with words that they use but don’t know how to spell because they can fix the spellings later
· De-emphasis of spelling: Dealing with spelling can be left until the content is set; then a spelling checker can be used
· Easy cut and paste organization: Easy reorganization frees a person from having to hold the entire organization of the piece of writing in their heads before starting to write
•Easier proofreading: Allows a person to finally get a sense of their own writing style and makes revision possible and bearable
· No more rewrites: Takes a huge weight off the dysgraphic person’s back.
I learned how to write by writing hundreds of letters. I was motivated by loneliness and anger. I had just moved to a new city and didn’t know many people and had left a lot of good friends behind, and I was in the process of coming out as a dyslexic adult. I had a lot to share and didn’t have close friends to talk things over with, so I turned to my manual typewriter. I started conversations through letters with many of my friends who then lived too far away to talk with regularly. It wasn’t an appropriate form for all of them, but a few of them kept up the conversation through correspondence. I was not a very experienced letter writer, but I tried to write the way I spoke. I thought about conversation, at times even speaking whole trains of ideas aloud before I typed them. I photocopied all of my letters and kept them though I didn’t know why at the time. What I started to see as I read through old letters was the complexity of my thinking. Seeing this hooked me, and I wrote more.
The lesson I learned here was simple: had you assigned me a paper on any one of the ideas I was writing about, I’d have been blocked, but in conversation, through correspondence, I was able to give form to the ideas.
·The motivation of conversation with another person
·Shared language and ideas
·Informality (spelling and mechanics de-emphasized)
·Purpose
·Relatively fast feedback.
Conversational writing can take many forms: writing and sending letters through the mail; sharing a keyboard on a single computer and conversing through writing, writing and sending electronic mail or taking part in an online chat with a modem. The important part is the conversation - experiencing a less formal form of writing as a vehicle for sharing ideas.
To this day I spend a considerable amount of time on mail. Some of my best ideas germinate and develop in this kind of conversation. It’s also nice to stay in touch with people; they appreciate it and they usually write back.
Another simple but powerful technique to help a person get started with writing is list making. Rather than struggle with making complete sentences, punctuating them correctly, worrying about grammar and other technical language patterns, why not start by making a simple list of everything you know (or can remember at the moment) about the subject at hand?
For example, below I’ll list some of the things I know about rock climbing (I used to do quite a bit of rock climbing):
·Rock Climbing
·places
·equipment
·weather
·clothing
·Yosemite
·rope
·carabiner ·piton
·nut
·instruction
·falling
·yelling
·wind
·big walls
·El Capitan
·shoes
·signals
·ratings
·kind of rock
·technique
·schools
The object here is to list everything that comes to mind, in no particular order, without regard to spelling or even if its appropriate for this list. You can always prune and edit later. Many people have a hard time separating the editing process from the idea-generation process and as a result of this, they get in a bind each time a new item is added to the list. Computers allow easy editing later, so why worry? That kind of worry is a vestige of an old process, using pen and paper, where change was hard. Just making the list and exhausting the things you know about a particular subject is actually a self-contained exercise and stands alone nicely as a great way to build confidence. Many times before I write an article (like this one) I’ll make a list of all of the important points I can think of on the subject at hand, just to get them in writing before I struggle to make them make sense.
It can also be very impressive and confidence-building for a student who has never done much writing to see a long list of words and short phrases that represent his knowledge on a particular subject.
Logistically, this list generation can be something a student does on his own, with a teacher, with a partner, or something a teacher does with the whole class using a computer with a projection device so everyone can see and participate. The latter is a wonderful class activity and the teacher can act as talk-show host, asking questions to generate more items in the list. These questions are the kinds of questions a student needs to learn how to ask him or herself when writing independently.
After a list is generated, but before any of the items in the list are eliminated, items should be categorized. This is where a specialized program like an electronic outliner comes in handy. Any word processor can facilitate list making, but moving the items of a list around by dragging (rather than cutting and pasting) requires an outlining program. With an outliner, one can literally grab an item and drag it next to another item until there are groups of like items close together.
If you’re using a color computer and a program like ClarisWorks, you can color-code the items in a list so that items of a particular category are all a single color. This makes it easier to visually group items by color matching.
Outliners also make it possible to take groups of like items in a list and make them sub-headings of another item. This kind of hierarchy building is the final step in categorizing a list. Once items have been grouped in a hierarchy the outline can be collapsed so that only the major category headings are showing; all the detail is hidden (temporarily). Being able to collapse and expand an outline is another technique that makes this kind of writing tool far superior to anything possible with pen and paper. Writers can work with one general idea at a time without the distractions of unrelated ideas showing on the screen or the need to scroll through many lines of text looking for things. What they are seeing is just the major categories with the detail hidden.
The way to learn how to write is to do a lot of writing, and using a computer and software for writing can make the process of doing a lot of writing easier. Correspondence and list-making are two techniques that have worked for me and are a natural for anyone who has access to a computer.
Wanderman, R. (1997) LD Resources,[Internet]. [1997, May 29].
http://www.ldresources.com
