General Chat

BBC 1 at 9pm Tonight

Anyone else going to watch this programme following Jay Blades' efforts to improve his reading skills?

As someone who has worked in primary schools, I will be interested to see how adults are helped.

In a trailer for tonight's broadcast, he mentioned words moving about on the page and this may be Irlen Syndrome, which has been discussed on these boards in the past.

Yes I shall watch. I have heard Jay speak of his lack of reading skills before and I have known someone who never learnt to read at school in the 1950s.

Reading is such a huge part of life. Everyday things become much more difficult.

I shall be watching it, especially in light of recent reports of children starting secondary school with the reading age of 6.
Of course, they’re blaming the pandemic – but those starting secondary school now would have been 9 or 10 when the pandemic started.
I know at least 5 people who would never have learned to read using phonics - 3 are dyslexic.

I think Jay is very brave, and I hope the programme enables more people who were failed in childhood to come forward.

I admire him for doing that, two of my friends said that the words were moving around the page, one has since learned to read and write the other one did not but maybe will after seeing the program.

What did you all think of the programme? I thought Jay was really good and admire him for the way he spoke about turning his life around, I would have liked to have the method of teaching an adult to read explained more .On the whole a good programme.

I really enjoyed the programme and thought he was very brave to admit to it at last and let us see just how hard he found it. At least nowadays there are so many aids available - my grandson has quite severe dyslexia and is just doing a Masters degree at Cambridge so it can be overcome with the right help and early intervention.
He used to wear a Tshirt with 'I can't spel', 'I can't reed,' 'I don't know the alfabit' all crossed out and 'I have dissleksa' written underneath but a teacher told him off for mocking people less fortunate than him - she didn't know he had it!
There's also another Tshirt with 'I have *** ***** ' written on it - I'll leave you to work out the anagram!

My ex has dyslexia. He's got a maths MA, and taught adults with various educational needs, ex soldiers with PTSD, ex criminals etc practical skills like being a groundkeeper, agricultural engineering, welding etc.(he was an engineer before taking his degree as an adult)
He was the first person at both the Colleges he taught at, to include Maths and English into his courses, so everyone who couldn't, was taught to read.

Our eldest is also dyslexic, but taught herself to read, before she went to school, by looking at the words in a nursery rhyme book we used to read to her. She learnt by recognising the 'shape' of words. It was fascinating watching her. She's quite the grammar nazi now!
She also thought it 'normal' for her dad to ask me how a word was spelled, me to spell it out for him - then I'd ask him what it meant!

Thinking back, I also used to play 'alphabet' games with the children, usually whilst trying to do something else, like cook the dinner, using magnetic letters on the fridge, so she learnt, through fun, a bit of phonetics.

But then, unlike Jay, we had loads of books in the house.