ABSTRACT
Over the last few decades, the teaching of children with dyslexia has become increasingly sophisticated. This is partly as a result of advances in theoretical formulations of dyslexia (Miles, 1978; Ellis and Miles, 1981; Miles and Ellis, 1981) and partly to the advances in teaching practice. It is still widely accepted that the most effective method of teaching these children is the multisensory approach (e.g. Hornsby and Shear, 1980; Miles, 1981; Miles and Miles, 1975; Hickey, 1977) and that this must be ‘structured, sequential, cumulative and thorough’ (Rawson, 1970). The multisensory methods have had their critics (Johnson and Mycklebust, 1967; Kirk and Kirk, 1971) who suggest that it is rather like throwing everything at a child in the hope that something will get through. However, if one considers the nature of written language skills there can be no doubt that they are multisensory. Combine this consideration with the fact that, in most children who are failing at these skills, one finds a pattern of strengths and weaknesses in the different sensory modalities, it would seem common sense to use a multisensory method in order to work through strengths and remediate weaknesses.
