Farzeah B.

Jaafar MAEd Reading II

About Reading Disabilities, Learning Disabilities, and Reading Difficulties

by Kathryn Drummond

Reading gives us both pleasure and profit. It helps to enrich our knowledge and
amuses us as well. It is one of the best habits which remove the loneliness and
boredom of life and it serves as a good companion in leisure. Reading makes us forget
the cares and worries of life. It gives ennobling pleasure. Thus, I really advocate the
love for reading. Having said that, it gave me an interest to read the article of Kathryn
Drummond.
Drummond’s article converses about three interchangeable terms: reading
disabilities, learning disabilities and reading difficulties. She clearly stated that
students with reading difficulty may just have a lag behind their peers a bit and may
need more help in reading instruction. While reading disability and learning disability
are related terms. When a child is formally diagnosed by an expert that he/she has a
reading problem then we may associate the terms reading disability or learning
disability. Eventually, children with reading disability will be labelled as children with
learning disability. This is because children with learning disability have difficulties
learning particular skills or academic areas. Thus, having a disability in reading
pertains on a difficulty of a particular skill or academic area: learning disability.
Knowing these terms may alarm us and lead us to a question: How can we
identify children with reading disability, learning disability and reading difficulty? And
the key to this is for parents and teachers to be aware of how the child is doing and to
act immediately if they suspect a problem. In doing so, they need to:
 Correctly determine the nature and source of a student's difficulty.
 Provide targeted instruction to remediate difficulties and increase skills level.
 Accommodate a student's weaknesses and build upon his or her strengths.

In every problem there is still hope, Drummond emphasized that children with
reading difficulties and disabilities can overcome if they receive appropriate treatment
at early ages. That’s why it is very important to identify them at their young age. For
them to receive the appropriate medication and attention. Furthermore, if the child is
already in school good reading instruction is necessary for students to learn to read.
Teachers need strong and deep understanding of reading theory and practice.
We can never deny the fact that reading leads to self-improvement. The pleasure
of reading cannot be expressed in words. One needs to read to experience the joy of
reading. Together hand in hand we can overcome reading difficulties and disabilities.

References
Drummond, Kathryn. (2014). About Reading Disabilities, Learning Disabilities, and
Reading Difficulties. Retrieved from
https://www.readingrockets.org/article/about-reading-disabilities-learning-
disabilities-and-reading-difficulties