Dysorthography: Complete Guide for Speech Therapists
Dysorthography is a specific learning disorder related to spelling. Often associated with dyslexia, it can also exist in isolation. It is characterized by persistent difficulties in correctly spelling words despite appropriate teaching. This guide presents the types of dysorthography, assessment, and rehabilitation strategies.
✍️ Resources for Dysorthography
Spelling exercises, visual rules, mnemonic strategies
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What is Dysorthography?
Dysorthography is a specific disorder of spelling acquisition, of neurobiological origin. It manifests as persistent difficulties in writing words correctly, in the absence of intellectual disability, sensory disorder, or lack of instruction.
It is often associated with dyslexia (reading disorder), but can exist in isolation. When both disorders are present, it is referred to as dyslexia-dysorthography.
Types of Dysorthography
| Type | Affected Mechanism | Typical Errors |
|---|---|---|
| Phonological | Phoneme-grapheme conversion | Phonetically implausible errors: "bateau" → "pato" |
| Surface | Orthographic lexicon | Errors on irregular words: "femme" → "fame" |
| Mixed | Both pathways | All types of errors |
Types of Spelling Errors
Phonological Errors
- Omissions: "arbre" → "abre"
- Additions: "partir" → "paretir"
- Substitutions: "chapeau" → "sapeau"
- Inversions: "pour" → "poru"
Usage/Lexical Errors
- Irregular Words: "monsieur" → "mesieu"
- Homophones: "a/à", "son/sont"
- Silent Letters: "temps" → "temp"
Grammatical Errors
- Agreements: "les chats noir"
- Conjugations: "ils mange"
- Grammatical Homophones: "et/est", "ce/se"
Assessment
- Word Dictation: regular, irregular, pseudo-words
- Sentence/Text Dictation
- Spontaneous Written Production
- Qualitative Analysis of errors
- Reading Assessment (often associated)
- Phonological Awareness
Speech Therapy Intervention
💡 Rehabilitation Principles
- Target the type of dysorthography (phonological, surface, grammatical)
- Clarify rules and strategies
- Multi-sensory: see, hear, write, spell
- Repetition and automation
- Metacognition: learning to proofread
Work Areas
- Phonological Awareness: segmentation, manipulation of sounds
- Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences: systematic learning
- Orthographic Lexicon: memorization of frequent and irregular words
- Spelling Rules: explicit, with mnemonic aids
- Grammar: agreements, conjugations
- Proofreading Strategies
School Accommodations
- Extra Time
- Computer with spell checker
- No Penalty for spelling (except dictation)
- Adapted Dictation: fill-in-the-blanks, multiple choice, shortened
- Oral Assessment when possible
- Supports: memos, displayed rules
Our Downloadable Tools
🎶 Phonological Awareness
Foundation of phonetic spelling.
Download📝 Visual Spelling Rules
Illustrated memos of the main rules.
Download🔤 Frequent Words Cards
Words to memorize globally.
Download✅ Proofreading Checklist
Check-list for self-correction.
DownloadFrequently Asked Questions
No, not always. Most dyslexics also have dysorthography (reading and writing share mechanisms). But dysorthography can exist without dyslexia: the person reads correctly but has difficulties writing. This is particularly the case when the lexical pathway (orthographic memory) is affected.
The spell checker is a valuable aid but is not sufficient. It does not correct everything (grammatical homophones, misspelled but existing words) and does not replace understanding of the rules. Rehabilitation aims to improve spelling skills, and the spell checker is a complementary compensatory tool.
✍️ Supporting Dysorthography
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