Log #7

·     Yours Turly, Shirley (Chapter 1 ~3)
- A book about Dyslexia (which is why the title spells "Truly" as "Turly")

    Before I start to share the details about the book, I would like to give a brief introduction of dyslexia.

    Dyslexia, is also known as reading disorder, is characterized by trouble with reading despite normal intelligence. Different people are affected to varying degrees. To be more specific, problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, writing words, "sounding out" words in the head, pronouncing words when reading aloud and understanding what one reads. The difficulties are involuntary and people with this disorder have a normal desire to learn.

This book’s main character is Shirley Basini who is in fourth grade. Her scholastic performance is poor because she is suffering from dyslexia, reading order. Her disability makes reading difficult for her. She ends up struggling with feelings of inferiority and fears of disappointing her parents, especially since her older brother, Joe, is intellectually gifted. He always gets straights “As”. In the very beginning of the book, the author indicates that if Shirley does not do well in school this year, she will probably be held back.

For me, I think Shirley is not the rare case when we were in the elementary school, but due to the conservative learning ambience, a lot of parents and teachers just ignore their “SOS” crying. Moreover, a lot of teachers don’t know how to deal with this kind of students, for example, in the story, one of the teacher, Mr. Bradley said “If you like, you could even get some extra help in the Resource Room.” “The Resource Room! But that’s for RETARDS!” said Shirley. (Loc. 130 of 1509) From this plot, It’s not easy to interact with dyslexic students properly, as a result, in my study, I’m eager to study how to help these people study!