An increasing number of students
who come to me for private guitar lessons and who I teach on full time programs
in further and higher education are being identified with dyslexia. Key problems
which dyslexia can cause are visual decoding, auditory decoding, and short term
memory capacity. Specifically with music I have found this can lead to difficulties
with reading music and memorization. The following details a structured program
which I have developed to support learners in overcoming these difficulties.
I
have found dyslexic students have had problems with:
Playing a rhythm consistently
Repeating
rhythms (either from a recording or played in class)
Reading notation
Reading chord diagrams
Some students with dyslexia have no
problems with maintaining a rhythm, as, conversely, many students who do not have
dyslexia have problems reading music. This is a report of my practise with dyslexic
students which I have found to be successful, and an attempt to provoke debate
in the area.
I have attempted to support
the students in overcoming these difficulties by developing a structured program
for learning rhythmic notation through multi-sensory activities. I took the inspiration
for this approach from the Write to Read program (Diggle 1996) which uses a
series of cards to reinforce graphemes and phonemes. The learner works through
the cards every day (if possible) sounding the graphemes written on the cards.
In a session the teacher will recite the phonemes, which the learner must then
dictate. The aspects of this program which appealed to me were the use of cards
for independent practice, a logical progression through a structured program,
and the reinforcement of small units by sounding and dictating. Orton (1989) said
that dyslexic students learned best by breaking information down into small units.
The system I came up with breaks the information up, then build up a bank of possible
permutations. In this case, the small units are one bar rhythms, initially made
up from crotchets and quavers, then incorporating rests, minims, and ties before
tackling semiquavers.
On one side of
the card there is a one bar rhythm and on the other is a vocalization. For example
if the rhythm was four crotchets the vocalization would be 1 2 3 4. If it was
three crotchets followed by two quavers, the vocalization would be 1 2 3 4+.
The learner would vocalize the rhythm, then turn over the card to check whether
they were correct. The student can vocalize their selection of cards (using a
metronome if required), clap the rhythms, then play them on their instrument using
chords, single notes, or muted strings for variation. In a lesson the learner
could then write down a selection of these rhythms which the teacher would clap
or play. This system uses multi-sensory teaching, as the learner reads the rhythms
(visual), listens to the rhythms (auditary), and vocalizes, claps, and plays the
rhythms (kinaesthetic). (Miles, page 6).
I
feel that by making the students familiar with a number of rhythms, they can then
use these in their own playing after becoming accustomed to counting and playing
them. They will also recognise rhythms more quickly, and be able to repeat them
or transcribe them.
Most instruments
are learned simultaneously with notation, which leads to an almost intrinsic learning
experience with notation. Guitarists (excluding classical guitarists) tend to
learn notation extrinsically, after achieving a level of proficiency on the instrument.
This leads to notation being an alien concept, and a barrier to learning. I feel
that my method uses notation as a tool to enhance learning, and enable the learners
to progress with their instruments.
Some
of my students have had difficulty playing chords from chord diagrams as despite
understanding how the diagrams relate to the fretboard, and being able to explain
this, they play mirror images of the chords depicted. In some cases after learning
the chords correctly, they have then reversed the shape when called upon to play
a particular chord. An approach which has helped these students has been to create
cards with a chord diagram on one side, and the chord name on the other. The learner
can then visualize the chords when away from their guitar, on a bus for example,
which can help to keep the images fresh in the mind.
These
ideas are not a substitute for specialist dyslexia support, which I consider to
be extremely important as it would help with literacy skills and increasing the
capacity of short term memory, but are my response to problems which some of my
students have experienced, and are designed to run alongside specialist support.
February
2007
Richard
Nielsen.
References
Bibliography:
Diggle, C. Write/Right to Read (1996) 4th Ed. St Austall, Cornwall: Link
into Learning.
Miles,
E. The Bangor Dyslexia Teaching System 1989 3rd Ed. London: Whurr Publishers Ltd.
Orton, S.T. Reading,
Writing, and Speech Problems in Children and Selected Papers (1989) Austin, Texas:PRO-ED.