Anna, Adult learner with mild dyslexia

I have mild dyslexia which often trips me up. Unfortunately, there was no help for me when I was younger at school, so I’ve always just struggled along.

I run a guest house and when I write on the computer, with spell check tools, it’s easier to cover up errors, but my skills haven’t really improved over the years. 

I’ll make quite basic mistakes. I get things the wrong way around a lot. These are things that I know, but it’s as though my brain goes into dyslexia mode and I can’t get the words out correctly.

In the first few weeks of Touch-type Read and Spell, I didn’t think I was getting much better. Then, when I was typing a letter out, I felt wow, I seem to be typing differently. 

Typing felt more automatic and I wasn’t overthinking the words and how to spell them, I was just doing it. I was typing faster and my fingers knew where they were going. At school I struggled with b and d reversals. I didn’t enjoy reading - I was always a slow reader – and my learning was never where it should have been for my age-group. However, I developed my own coping strategies. I used skills like memorizing and repeatedly reviewing information and was able to get by.

I don’t remember anyone ever being diagnosed with dyslexia when I was at primary and secondary school. It was actually in my mid-30s that I understood I had dyslexia, but I didn’t bother to get a diagnosis as I had a good job and it didn’t seem like it would help me much to have it made official.

At various times in my life I’d tried to teach myself to type. It was mostly a matter of combining manuals and looking up tips in my 20s. I got pretty quick at one point but I wasn’t properly touch-typing.

For now, I’ve been doing the TTRS modules and trying to repeat them. My main challenge is to touch-type without looking at the keyboard.

I try to work on my typing most days. Sometimes I’m reluctant to because my attention span is pretty rubbish, but I know I should and I can see improvements. That’s enough for me to stick with it.

I’m glad I kept going through the initial few weeks because it’s helping me every day work faster and more efficiently at the computer.