"... och så har jag ju alltid morsan som kan hjälpa mig" : Om unga vuxnas strategier för att hantera sina läs- och skrivsvårigheter i dagligt liv

Sammanfattning: Author: Elisabeth Wahlberg   Title: “…I’ll just get mum to help me” About Young Adults’ Strategies for Coping with Reading and Writing Difficulties in Daily Life     This study investigated how seven young adults, who during senior high school underwent a syllable based intervention due to reading and writing difficulties, developed their literacy skills, and what strategies they used to try to overcome reading and writing problems, whether at work, during studies or in their leisure time. The period from when the participants had left school ranged between three and eight years. Qualitative as well as quantitative data was compiled for the study. Qualitative data consisted of  semistructured interviews and quantitative data of tests performed before the intervention and on two occasions after, in order to compare results over time. The study was a longitudinal case study with a phenomenological lifeworld approach and looked to increase awareness of the realities of living with reading and writing difficulties. It analysed how the participants dealt with their problems and what strategies they employed, in order to overcome them. Study results showed that even as participants improved their literacy skills compared to pre-intervention, reading and writing remained an issue. All participants were forced to adjust to the fact that they were affected in their daily lives, whether in choice of career or further education, or more everyday tasks involving reading and writing and also the inclination to read for pleasure. They avoided to expose their shortcomings if at all possible. Still, the participants all strived to tackle their reading and writing problems by applying elements from the syllable based intervention in conjunction with inventing individual strategies.