Dyslexia and learning a foreign language: What's been your experience?

[Sara R]

I've been reading Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz. She says that foreign language learning is incredibly difficult for dyslexics, and if possible and needed, dyslexics should be able to opt out of foreign language college admission requirements.

My oldest daughter has not been diagnosed with dyslexia, but she's shown signs since she was at least 6 years old, and I think I'll pursue the diagnosis this year. Right now we homeschool in the morning: spelling, memory, math, dictation, oral reading of a passage, and then narration of that passage, intensely in less than two hours. She's spelling on a 3rd grade level, doing math and reading on about a 4th grade level. She's made tremendous progress since we started working intensely on her level in January, but I can see that reading, spelling, and orderly thinking in general will always be more difficult for her than her siblings. Her passion is animals, and her goal is to become a wildlife biologist. So she works willingly on her basic skills with me so she can meet that goal. She'll be entering 6th grade.

I've always envisioned learning at least some foreign language as part of a good education. It's hard to scale back, but I do see that a foreign language would be difficult for her. I also see that it's most important to do the essentials, and the essentials with a dyslexic do take more time.

But is doing foreign language with a dyslexic unavoidably head-explodingly hard? Is there a way to pursue it that makes it doable? Are there dyslexics that can handle Latin? Or maybe starting slowly at junior high age, and incorporating lots of review, with a relatively simple language like Spanish? I'm wondering what your experience has been in this area.

[Stacy in NJ]

Great question. My 12 yo ds is dyslexic; he's a rising 7th grader reading on or nearly on grade level. We attempted Latin for two years. While he completely understood how to apply the grammar rules, he had a very difficult time retaining the vocabulary. He needed a tremendous amout of drill from week to week to keep the vocabulary he had previously learned. We dropped Latin at the end of 5th grade. Because my husband and sons practice Aikido, they've had the opportunity to travel to Japan. Previously my dh has gone, and next year my ds will go with him. For the past 18 months or so, they've both been using Rosetta Stone Japanese. This has gone relatively well and has been fun and gentle.

My intention is to continue this. A living language just feels more revelant and interesting. The prospect of traveling to and meeting folks who speak the language has sparked an interest in my son. The fact that he's sharing this with dh is more meaningful as well.

My goal for my ds is a college education and, right now, I don't anticipate trying to get a waiver for the language requirement. Our community college offers courses in Japanese, so when he's old enough, I'd like him to attempt that.

While I haven't BTDT, I do see it as a potential problem.

Just my thoughts, YMMV, Stacy

[Lux Et Veritas Academy]

I believe an Asian Language where you use characters is so much more visual and ASL might be another choice. We are doing Japanese - I speak and believe that Japanese, is backwards to an English speaker. Right to left and very visual- should be a perfect fit. I have one child who struggles with dyslexia and I believe I did as a child in many ways. I struggled through 2 languages that were easy to others spanish, german and then found Japanese. I ended up moving there as well. I speak well, and the visual helped me learn what I couldn't in other languages.

If you want to talk more in detail - email me

[iwka]

Berlitz (http://www.berlitz.us/) method could be very well received by a dyslexic child. They have courses online.

[Laurie4b]

I've been reading Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz. She says that foreign language learning is incredibly difficult for dyslexics, and if possible and needed, dyslexics should be able to opt out of foreign language college admission requirements.

My oldest daughter has not been diagnosed with dyslexia, but she's shown signs since she was at least 6 years old, and I think I'll pursue the diagnosis this year. Right now we homeschool in the morning: spelling, memory, math, dictation, oral reading of a passage, and then narration of that passage, intensely in less than two hours. She's spelling on a 3rd grade level, doing math and reading on about a 4th grade level. She's made tremendous progress since we started working intensely on her level in January, but I can see that reading, spelling, and orderly thinking in general will always be more difficult for her than her siblings. Her passion is animals, and her goal is to become a wildlife biologist. So she works willingly on her basic skills with me so she can meet that goal. She'll be entering 6th grade.

I've always envisioned learning at least some foreign language as part of a good education. It's hard to scale back, but I do see that a foreign language would be difficult for her. I also see that it's most important to do the essentials, and the essentials with a dyslexic do take more time.

But is doing foreign language with a dyslexic unavoidably head-explodingly hard? Is there a way to pursue it that makes it doable? Are there dyslexics that can handle Latin? Or maybe starting slowly at junior high age, and incorporating lots of review, with a relatively simple language like Spanish? I'm wondering what your experience has been in this area.

I have not found that to be true. Neither of my kids with dyslexia had problems picking up another language. One is gifted at it, though we haven't gotten to the logic stage of conjugating verbs yet. We learned Spanish. It's very easy in terms of sound-symbol correlation and there is a lot of overlap with English.

[home2333]

I am attempting to teach Latin to my 15dd who is dyslexic. We are going very slowly, and on her transcript I will put 0.5 credit for each year of high school. It helps that she wants to learn it and she enjoys it. I find there are many ways to reinforce English spelling, grammar, and vocabulary through the study of Latin. We are using BJU for this, which drives me nuts with its inductive approach, but it seems to work for my daughter. Memorization of paradigms and vocabulary is also painfully slow. Patience is key. It helps that I already know Latin from studying it in high school. My daughter wants to learn many languages; I chose to start with Latin because learning to speak and to understand spoken Latin are not hugely important. After a couple years of Latin we might try Spanish, which has many similarities with Latin, or I might just let her choose. But I have a feeling we will never get too far in another language, unless she does it on her own, because there are just too many of the basics that will need our attention.

Grace

[cathmom]

I did a presentation on this very topic for a graduate teaching class I took 2 years ago. There's no doubt that learning a foreign language can be very difficult for someone with dyslexia. I thought that I would require Latin of all my children (I made my oldest take 2 years in high school), but I can't see making my older dd do it.

However, she really wants to learn Spanish and since she is a very strong auditory learner, I think she will at least be able to speak and understand it. What I don't know is if she will ever be able to read and write it (she has dysgraphia too, so that's another issue). She was just telling me that when she sees the word in Spanish, it actually makes it harder to learn. She can hear a word and know what it is, but if she sees the same word written out, she doesn't know what it is. This is very consistent with the testing she had done last year. One subtest was repeating back nonsense words, which she did very well, even 4 and 5 syllable ones. (The tester actually said she had never had a child score so well on that test.) But on the subtest of reading nonsense words, she could not read words on a first or second grade level.

I have charts that I made for my Spanish class that we have been using. One has the numbers 1-31 with the Spanish written out. She says that having the number written out is not helpful for her at all. I am starting to wonder if I need to search out a Spanish phonics program in order to teach her to read Spanish. I always thought that if you could read one language, you could read any language with the same alphabet once you knew the pronunciation. I am starting to see that this is not the case.

If my dd were not a strong auditory learner with incredible pronunciation and a desire and motivation to learn a language, I would skip foreign language with her and pursue a waiver for college. OTOH, some universities with FL requirements are starting to offer special classes for people with disabilities. UNC-Greensboro is one and I interviewed the professor who teaches it. You can take what they do and use it to adapt curriculum. Components include: smaller amount of material they are responsible for, spiral curriculum, lower expectations for spelling, active class, constant repetition, shorter readings, consistent formats, no surprises on tests, concepts broken down, direct grammar instruction (no "They'll pick it up as they go along"), required tutoring outside of class, computer based activities, songs and games, and less use of text. A traditional language classroom may be the worst possible match for a student with dyslexia!

Spanish is great choice. French is very difficult for someone with dyslexia. German is a lot of grammar. As others mentioned, ASL or the Asian languages with characters may be really good options. But some colleges do not consider ASL a foreign language, so be careful.

HTH!

[Tokyomarie]

I believe an Asian Language where you use characters is so much more visual and ASL might be another choice. We are doing Japanese - I speak and believe that Japanese, is backwards to an English speaker. Right to left and very visual- should be a perfect fit. I have one child who struggles with dyslexia and I believe I did as a child in many ways. I struggled through 2 languages that were easy to others spanish, german and then found Japanese. I ended up moving there as well. I speak well, and the visual helped me learn what I couldn't in other languages.

If you want to talk more in detail - email me

I would agree that a character-based language like Chinese or Japanese might be a good modern language option. Each dyslexic student has a somewhat different combination of difficulties with language, so I feel that making blanket recommendations regarding foreign language for dyslexic students is sometimes not so helpful.

Personally, our experience with Japanese and children who have language issues has been very positive. One of my children had receptive/expressive language challenges in her childhood years; she grew up bilingually in Japan. She had less trouble learning to read in Japanese than she did in English.

My son is clearly dyslexic. He struggles mightily with all aspects of writing in English- handwriting, spelling, and writing process. Yet, he is learning Japanese now as a foreign language (we have been in the States now since he was 5yo) and has had a much easier time with reading and writing in Japanese than he has had in English.

Just a quick clarification on Japanese language. The language is traditionally written in columns, top to bottom. The columns are indeed read from the right side of the page to the left. However, in recent decades, Japanese has also often been written horizontally from left to right.

Something I believe is helpful for dyslexic students learning foreign language is to concentrate on spoken language first, and to learn it in a very concrete visual way- using actions for verbs, photos and objects for nouns, etc. Learning a second language in much the way we learn our first language (listening, then speaking, then reading, then writing and moving from concrete to abstract in vocabulary development) is very effective for anyone, but I personally believe it is essential for students with language challenges.