Young and Dyslexic Flashcards
Chronological order and anecdotes
- Establish his credibility by showing he has had first-hand experiences of the education system not accomadating him
- Shows how he learnt overtime that his dyslexia can be used to his advantage
‘Young and dyslexic?’
- Rhetorical question
- Shows his intended audice is young people with dyslexia which means everything he says in this text is practical advice
‘As a child I suffered’
- Emotive language
- Evokes sympathy for him as an misunderstood child
‘We are the architects, we are the designers’
- Paralell sentence structure with repetition of it at the end
- Highlights how despite having dyslexia you can be highly successful and creative
‘No compassion, no understanding and no humanity’
- Tricolon
- Emphasises how difficult his life was as a child due to his dyslexia
‘The idea of being kind and thoughtful and listening to problems just wasn’t done’
- Polysyndeton
- Highlights how it was a systemic issue in the education system and there were endless things they could have done to improve their accomodation of neurodivergent individuals
‘The past is a different kind of country’
- Metaphor
- Shows how dyslexic people nowadays have more hope but for him in his time it was a nightmare which sets a positive tone for his audience
- The word ‘kind’ demonstrates how unkind the past was
‘At school my ideas always contradicted the teachers’
- Contrast of personal pronoun with a common noun
- Shows how he was up against his teachers and they were trying to bring him down
‘If I was God I would have designed sleep so we could stay awake’
- Bold statement challenging accepted wisdom
- Shows how he is able to think critically and independantly due to his dyslexia
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‘Shut up, stupid boy’
- Reported speech and sibilance
- Highlights how the education system did not accomodate free thinkers and the harsh reaction that would come if you tried to have an open mind
‘She would say, “how dare you challenge me?”’
- Reported, direct speech
- The authoratative ‘how dare you’ shows how teachers do not accept anybody with an open mind like those with dyslexia and the harsh reaction they come down with when you have one
‘I had poems in my head’ and ‘I could read very basically’
- Juxtaposition
- Highlights how despite his rudimentary reading skills he was already destined to be a great literary figure, showing to dyslexic kids that it is an advantage despite what you might think now
‘“I don’t want to be like that”’
- Monosyballic lanugage
- Makes his thoughts very relatable, especially to dyslexic readers and shows his observance to the world around him
‘prison population’ and ‘architect population’
- Juxtaposition
- Shows how despite how dyslexic people do not fit in with society, they are at the same time extremely creative and intelligent
‘They missed theirs, didn’t notice them or didn’t take them’
- Tricolon
- Emphasises how all people with dyslexia have the possibility of being successful, it is just that society does not accomodate most
‘“How do I write that?”’
- Rhetorical question
- Dyslexia doesn’t go away, but you can enjoy it’s benefits while still suffering from it’s downsides
“Brunel University”
- Proper noun
- Ironic as it he is now in the teachers shoes, which is definitely not a position his teachers would have expected to see him in, showing dyslexia can be an advantage
‘professor of poetry’
- Uncapitalised and alliteration
- Shows how he does not see himself above his students even now that he has achieved much, further highlighting that he still sometimes struggles but that does not impede on his life
- The plosive alliteration highlights his success despite dyslexia
“When I go to literary festivals I always get an actor to read it out for me”
- Complex sentence
- Shows how he has not made his problems go away but has found ways to use them to his advantage and consequently achieve success
‘If you’re dyslexic and you feel there’s something holding you back’
- Personal pronouns - direct adress
- Shows how Zephaniah is didatically trying to apply all that he is saying to readers with dyslexia nowadays
‘It is a strange step to go from that to a squiggle which represents a sound’
- Sibilance and synecdoche
- Shows how our language system is difficult so it is not a person with dyslexias fault and they are not stupid or unnatural, resassuring any dyslexic readers
‘So don’t be heavy on yourself’
- Imperative sentence with a didactic tone
- Resassuring and encouraging tone that they do not have to let their dyslexia hold them back
‘Us dyslexic people, we’ve got it going on’
- Collective pronoun, repetition of title and colloquial phrase
- Shows to everybody who may be reading that there is not only hope, but very good prospects for the future due to the potential advantage dyslexia provides
‘“Bloody non-dyslexics, who do they think they are?”’
- Ironic rhetorical question
- Shows how the tables can turn and non-dyslexics can be seen as somebody with an inherent problem, which allows the passage to end on a light and encouraging note
