Talking to Yourself - It's Not Just for Crazy People!
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Feb 17, 2008 Posted by Ned Johnson
I was meeting with a student last week who is sharp and eager but bedeviled by dyslexia. She had gotten a full grade lower than she should have. She had been nicked by the cumulative effects of small errors, forgetting to distribute the negatives in multiplying polynomials, dropping exponents, and the like. She knew what she was doing but made "silly mistakes" when her attention seemed to be on harder facets of the questions. As she is much more an auditory and kinesthetic learner, I asked her whether she "talks to herself" in doing her work and taking exams. "Well," she replied "if things are going badly I'm like 'Sh**! Sh**! Sh**!'"
Not exactly what I had in mind. We discussed the possibility of her "narrating" her work: "Let's see two x squared times four x. Two times four is 8 and x squared times x is x cubed. Two x squared times negative four. Two times four is eight but the negative makes it negative eight and so negative 8 x squared."
"Imagine you're announcing a game. You're doing the play by play," I suggested. She then told me that as a result of her educational testing she was permitted to have her own rooms to take tests. She had never done so - hadn't seen the point.
Her experience is not unusual. Anyone who's ever proofread a paper probably knows the advantage of printing out and reading out loud a paper in order to "hear" things that the eyes miss. On standardized tests of grammar, there are all sorts of grammatical idioms that people have absorbed rather than learned. When we hear someone say these wrong, our ears perk as up. "She is capable to do the work" rather than "she is capable of doing the work." Why? The first is "unidiomatic," roughly the grammatical explanation of "just because." These catches are made by hearing them more than anything else.
On really convoluted word problems, reading things "out loud" (effectively mumbling under your breath) not only allows you to hear things but also slows you down, short-circuiting the unintentional tendency to read the instruction faster and faster as your adrenaline jacks up with the panic of "What the heck did THAT just say!?!"
Beyond narrating a play-by-play or reading the directions to yourself for greater comprehension, a constant stream of affirmations is also ideal. "Let's see. This looks goofy, but it has to be similar to what we have been doing in class, so let's see what this looks like." has got to be more helpful than "My teacher is nuts! What on earth is this! I'm going to fail!"
Talk to yourself. Be clear, calm and confident. Give yourself the positive support you'd give a friend or teammate. Make the voice inside your own head be your coach and friend. You may feel wacky, but no one else needs to know!