Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to provide multiple perspectives on dyslexia, highlights the fact that cultures, languages, and scripts are all important for understanding learning difficulties. It also provides an introduction to the global landscape of learning difficulties across cultures. The book discusses a basic definition of dyslexia and focuses particularly on cognitive correlates of this word reading difficulty. It explains a basic definition of dysgraphia, a word writing disorder with several facets and explores the challenge of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The book focuses on comorbidity, or overlap, across learning difficulties and reviews what it is like to have dyslexia and to have to learn more than one language in school. It considers from a practical perspective how best to help those with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and ADHD, respectively and explains the issues of self-esteem with learning difficulties.