Oral communication:

• Tom often interrupted before the speaker was able to finish his or her comments.
• He often picked up on one point and seemed anxious to express himself by blurting out his response, even though it wasn’t the key point in the discussion.
• He often asked the practitioner to repeat what was said.
• His verbal vocabulary appeared stronger than his written vocabulary; however when he was asked to read some of his words that were misspelled, he did not notice that he mispronounced them as well (i.e. valentime, libary).

Auditory versus visual:

• Tom’s score was much higher when he was asked to circle the word that was different versus having to hear the different word.

Math skills:

• Overall, Tom’s math skills appeared to be fairly strong.
• He tended to rush through and thus made careless mistakes.
• He did not see his mistakes and often it was a result of recording the numbers incorrectly (i.e. he would write 256 as 265).
• His poor writing also created errors since he was unable to read his work and had difficulty keeping the column of numbers straight – this was problematic when he had to do 3-digit calculations (+, -).
• Then making change he found it difficult without the use of scrap paper to figure out the answer.
• Although he did struggle with fractions, once he was reminded of the rules he improved.
• Tom appeared to understand calculations but once they were combined in a word problem, he could not figure out what calculation to use and which one to do first.
• Tom had difficulty verbalizing large numbers (i.e. 156,342 – he got his thousands and hundreds mixed up).

Overall attitude and motivation:

Tom tends to minimize the importance of spelling and writing, given that he really hasn’t had to use them a lot in his job; his verbal skills have compensated for these areas. He feels that teachers are picky and don’t know what you really need to survive. He is motivated to get his Grade 12 diploma but tends to want immediate action. He appears to know when he has a problem but hasn’t ever thought of why and how he can fix it.

Fowler, J. A. (2003). Learning disabilities training: A new approach. London, Ontario: Literacy Link South Central. Used with permission.

Handout 10.12