I had a horrid time learning how to read. I had a worse time learning how to spell.
It all changed around the end of 3rd grade. What changed! I just memorized what the words looked like visually. You could misspell a word/words, and it didn't matter. I was looking at what a word looked like visually. Even now, I have no problem understands typos/misspelling, and never see the need to correct someone.
I have a feeling there are many people out there who are reading like myself. I don't know, just have a feeling. I do transpose letters in in writing, but I don't think I'm I have dyslexia.
Once I realized my process of reading, I caught up to the other kids. I say my process. It's probably everyone's process. I really don't know. All I know is the way I was taught to read was useless. I was never taught how to memorize, other than route repetition. Route repetition didn't work for myself. Even today I know what 8 X 8 is by visualizing the 64.
It looks like most of you breezed through high school, and college. So you don't need to know what helped me.
What helped me in learning was visualizing. In college, I took notes once. I tried to make each page look visually different. I usually drew doodles, or detailed drawings all over the pages. For instance, when I needed to memoririze all the parts of the Femur bone, I drew the bone on the page and labeled all the areas I needed to know. Even years later, I can bring up that page in my head. And no, I don't have a idetic memory. It's just the way I got through school.
I definetly had a learning problem. The specialists at the time offered no help.
I got off topic, but if you have, or know of a kid who's not keeping up in school, pass on this visualization method. It's simple. You don't need to pay for a course. It's easy concept.
(By the way, I'm still not a natural reader. I'm not the guy who can just pick up a book(fiction), and zip through it. I find myself losing my place on the page. I sometimes need to put my finger on the line I'm reading. My mind starts to wander. Although, if the author is a skilled writer, like Nabrakov; I have no problem getting through the book?
I don't have this problem when reading most non-fiction? It could be I just don't like a lot of fiction?)
>>>[ Do words of different colors help you visualize the differences? Like how some IDEs highlight a languages keywords or italicize comments? ]<<<
===[ Also, have a visual reminder of this comment. ]===
It's actually fairly ancient, and unfortunately not studied enough.
http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/memory-freemasonry.htm...
On the other side, AFAIK, most "normal" readers also read "word images" (once one is beyond the point of spelling out words as one reads) -- which is why most can read words that are partially misspelled (up to a point).
For example, if you see/hear the phrase "I am" there is a pretty high chance that the next word is one of the following: an adjective, the person's name, a/an or here because of syntax. Or if someone says "would you like a cup of", you can guess that the next word is likely some sort of liquid because that is what goes in a cup. Similarly, you can sometimes finish other people's sentences because of probability.
The word scrambling breaks down, as mentioned in the link, with ambiguous words where changing the order makes it look like another word and unfamiliar words.