Who have such a similar difficulty in reading ?

[renshanrenhai]

I just happen to read a passage about dyslexia and suspect if i have such a problem ...

When i was child at school my reading speed is always below the average level. While my classmates had finished the whole passage, I was just reading the half. Though my accumulation of characters grow as I read more, I still have some trouble with reading. Such cases often happen, I always take two characters reversely in reading, for instance see 故事 as 事故. It's definitely not because I can't identify them but seems to be a tendency to read from the right to the left. So I need more time to correct the disorder.

Other cases are with names in Chinese characters, for instance, I might take the name "张盛舒"as "张舒盛" It's even worse when i encounter a long translated name in Chinese characters in reading. Such kind of situations seldom happen in English even if it might happen it must be far less frequent than I do in Chinese.

I feel upset as it seems a bit like the symptoms of dyslexia...

Edit 1 : The situation I mentioned above is based on a prerequisite , you don't read word by word at heart, instead you scan the text .

Edit 2 : Today I search more info about dyslexia, with an emphasis on the inner relation between lefties and dyslexia as I assume there might be something relevant to my difficulty in reading. I found a book, Ich sehe die welt auch, (written by Hermann Josef Zoche) talking something about the left handedness and dyslexia. I see eye to eye with his explanation on the difficulty a left-handed person probably have in reading, as if he can feel what i feel and can see what I see in reading. I don't know if all the left handed person have such a problem in reading, but I am very sure I always consciously read from the left to right while my eyes unconsciously skip something over and scan back from the right to left. This may somewhat explain why I often take two characters reversely when i do reading fast.

No matter what reason causes my difficulty in reading, anyway I am going to be brave enough to face it and try all my best to improve it. Being fear of a weakness is even worse than not recognizing it.

PS : As everyone has a preference to one hand, it's also the case with your eye preference. You can do an experiment to test which eye is the overwhelming one when you see stuffs.

1. Take out a pen; stand in front of a window or something with a column/ bar . (stay some miles away from the window)

2. With both your eyes opening and try to make the pen seems to match perfectly with the vertical bar.

3. Now hold the pen and avoid any movement.

4. Close your left eye and see. See what ?

5. This time it's for the other eye, close one and with the other open. See what ?

[renzhe]

I don't know if this has anything to do with dyslexia. I often switch characters around in two-character words, and I don't have problems reading in other languages.

EDIT: Actually, we might be talking about different things. With me, it's mostly remembering the right order, I don't have trouble while reading the words. Just recalling them in conversation. It goes away with practice.

[renshanrenhai]

I often switch characters around in two-character words, and I don't have problems reading in other languages.

This seems very like my case. If I read slowly and purposely word by word from the right to the left, and sometimes read it out at heart, there is no problem. Once I try to scan the text, the situations often run into that way.

Could this be because there is no space between words in Chinese text.... ?

[renshanrenhai]

If this kind of difficulty in reading Chinese is caused by no space between every two-characters word, I come up with a crazy idea that modern Mandarin should be written with space.

[hbuchtel]

If I read slowly and purposely word by word from the right to the left

Ah-ha, I think I've identified the problem - you should be reading from the left to the right!

[renshanrenhai]

Ah-ha, I think I've identified the problem - you should be reading from the left to the right![/font]

Excuse , I put it wrongly . I intended to say if i read slowly and purposely from the left to the right ......

I had asked someone else before, some said they don't have such problems while some said they have but not sure how frequent. All of them are native speakers. The visual feeling of reading Chinese is quite different from that of other alphabetic languages.

[jbradfor]

If you truly think this might be the case, may I suggest having yourself tested?

I'm not sure where in Shanghai. Here, pretty much every grade school would do testing, but for their students, obviously, and something tells me you're not in grade school.

The reason I suggest it is that if you do in fact have dyslexia, there are programs you can take that teach skills to compensate.

How common is the discussion of dyslexia in China? I would guess none at all, that it's not recognized / tested for.

[renshanrenhai]

@ jbradfor

I'm not sure if it's the case, but I suspect if i once got something around it and thus hurt the development of my reading skills.

I would guess none at all, that it's not recognized / tested for. [/font]

Precisely. Dyslexia is almost neglected by most in China. Even if one did have such problem at an early age, it was very likely to be never discovered and one would never know how that hurt him.

Edit : Another thing causes my worry when i read something like ——to switch left hand to right might result in some difficulties in learning. I'm not sure how much credit this point has, but i really want to know if this is somewhat related to my difficulty in reading.

[wushijiao]

I feel upset as it seems a bit like the symptoms of dyslexia...

if it is true that you have dyslexia, try not to feel bad about it.

You might need to read a bit slower than others, but I wouldn't let this discourage you from learning Chinese.