1. Dyslexia or Second Language Learning?
Martha Youman, PhDc
University of Arizona
Presented at TESOL Philadelphia 2012
2. This presentation is available at:
http://www.slideshare.net/myouman/dyslexia-o
Please take my card and email me with
any questions.
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3. Agenda
• Part One: What is dyslexia?
• Part Two: Dyslexia across different
languages
• Part Three: Dyslexia or Second
Language Learning
• Part Four: Strategies for ELLs with
dyslexia
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4. Every child would read if it
were in his power to do so. (Betts, 1936)
Part One: What is Dyslexia?
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5. What is Dyslexia?
• Dyslexia is a neurobiological disorder that affects the
development of both decoding (written word pronunciation) and
encoding (spelling).
• Students with dyslexia have difficulty reading fluently and
spelling words correctly, even after years of instruction.
• 5% to 20% of the U.S. population have dyslexia and up to 40%
of the entire U.S. population experiencing some type of reading
difficulty (Shaywitz, 2003; S. E. Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2001).
• People with dyslexia who read and write in English read slower
(reading never becomes automatic), they spell words as they
sound, they usually hate reading, and they may reverse letters
and symbols.
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6. What is Dyslexia?
The Neurological Signature of Dyslexia
Study of 144 matched children B. A. Shaywitz et al. 2002
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7. What is Dyslexia?
Some Common Misconceptions
• Myth: Students who flip numbers and letters have dyslexia.
• Fact: Some students with dyslexia show this feature, but this is
not the key feature that defines dyslexia. Laborious reading and
poor spelling is.
• Myth: Dyslexia can be cured with enough reading practice.
• Fact: Dyslexia cannot be cured because it is a disorder of the
brain. However, strategies can help students with dyslexia
compensate for their difficulties. Overcoming Dyslexia (S.
Shaywitz, 2003)
• Myth: Students with dyslexia have a lower IQ.
• Fact: Students with dyslexia are just like everyone. They just
have difficulty reading. Some even learn to compensate for their
disability and become very good at other things that don’t involve
reading. 7
8. What is Dyslexia?
Some Common Misconceptions (Continued)
• Myth: All students with dyslexia are gifted.
• Fact: You will find students with dyslexia that are gifted just like
you find non-dyslexic students that are gifted.
• Myth: Dyslexia only occurs in English because it is a very
irregular language. In “easy” languages like Spanish, there is no
dyslexia.
• Fact: Remember, dyslexia is a neurobiological disorder (i.e.
brain-based disorder), not a language based disorder. The
language a person reads, however, will determine how dyslexia
occurs.
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9. What is Dyslexia?
An Example of Dyslexia
Translation: Like me, I have a
disability. I’ve had it since third
grade. I’m often quitting because of
my disability. For example, I know
how hard it is. I can’t spell right. I’ve
been trying for all my life. I know
I’m afraid to write a note to my girl
friend. She doesn’t know that I
have it but I don’t know how to tell
her because I don’t know how she
is going to act. I don’t know why I
am telling you but I know that I’m
not stupid.
David’s note to his ninth-grade teacher. From Essentials
of Dyslexia (2011)
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10. Part Two: Dyslexia Across Languages
পড়ার অসুিিধা عسر القراءة
δυσλεξία 诵读困难
דיסלקציה
ดิส
dislexia lukihäiriö
ordblindhed
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11. Dyslexia Across Languages
The Role of Orthography
• Orthography, or how a language is represented in writing,
impacts reading and writing development and can present
varying difficulties to speakers of a specific language who have
dyslexia.
• The most common orthographies today can be classified into
alphabetic, syllabic, and logographic writing systems.
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12. Dyslexia Across Languages
Non-Alphabetic Orthographies (e.g. Chinese)
• Slow and inaccurate reading.
• Poor character formation in
writing.
• Confusion of the parts that make
a word.
• Use of wrong tone when reading.
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13. Dyslexia Across Languages
Alphabetic Orthographies
“Shallow” and “Deep” orthographies
• Shallow orthographies have one to one correspondence
between letters and sounds. The language is written as it
sounds.
• Deep orthographies have multiple mappings between letters
and sounds. Spelling patterns are irregular and don’t follow the
sounds of the language.
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14. Dyslexia Across Languages
Shallow Alphabetic Orthographies (e.g. Spanish)
• Characterized by slow, but not necessarily inaccurate, reading
(Davies & Cuentos, 2010).
• Once Spanish-speaking readers with dyslexia master the letters
and corresponding sounds of the alphabet, the one-to-one
correspondence between sounds and letters facilitates their
reading and spelling.
• They never become fluent
• They don’t get the meaning from the text because they are so
concerned with reading.
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15. Dyslexia Across Languages
Deep Alphabetic Orthographies (e.g. English)
• In addition to slow and inaccurate reading, these students will
have persistent poor spelling.
• Poor phonological awareness (manipulating the sounds that
make up each word).
• Students can’t remember the irregularities of the language, even
after years of reading instruction.
• Dyslexia in deep orthographies is pretty obvious.
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17. Dyslexia or Second Language Learning
“English Sucks!” Why do our students find English
to be so difficult?
Answer: Because there are so many irregularities (a.k.a.
“sucky” parts). Here are some:
• Single letters that represent multiple sounds (e.g. cone and pot
where the letter ‘o’ represents both the sound /ou/ and /o/; cup
and pencil and where the letter ‘c’ represents both the sound /k/
and /s/
• Spellings that change morphological meaning, but are
pronounced differently (e.g. –ed suffix to indicate past tense
pronounced differently in painted /ed/, played /d/, and liked /t/)
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18. Dyslexia or Second Language Learning
There are more sucky parts!
• Phonemes or sounds that can be spelled in several different
ways (e.g. the sound /f/ can be spelled with f as in frog, ph as in
phone, ff as in stuff, gh as in cough, and lf as in calf.
• Several letters represent one single sound or phoneme (e.g.
fight, might, night where the grapheme ght represents the
sound /t/).
• Different spelling possibilities to represent words that sound the
same but have different meanings (i.e. homophones; e.g. to,
two, too and heal, heel, he’ll)
• Identical words that change meaning depending on the context
in which they appear (e.g. “She cannot bear to see her father in
pain.” and “The bear attacked the campers.”)
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19. Dyslexia or Second Language Learning
Learning to read and write in English
• Children and ESL students always have trouble with the “sucky”
part of English.
• After a few years (for children) or months (for ESL students),
they get the irregularities of the language.
• Dyslexic students will not.
• Some ESL students with dyslexia don’t know they have a
problem because they learned to read and write in language with
a shallow orthography.
• Some students with dyslexia are not diagnosed in their countries
because the culture doesn’t believe in learning disabilities. They
are just perceived as “lazy” or “dumb.”
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20. Dyslexia or Second Language Learning
Why is it important to differentiate the two groups if
they both need help?
Because their brains are different and the interventions they need are
different.
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21. Dyslexia or Second Language Learning
The Profile of a Typical ELL
Caution: Many early reading and spelling behaviors of ESL
students resemble those of readers with dyslexia. It may take
several years for these similarities to fade, even after intensive
English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction.
• Low Vocabulary
• Younger students: usually lag behind because they are learning
to read a language they don’t speak. As vocabulary grows,
reading ability grows.
• Older students who have solid L1(Atwill et al., 2010):
– Vocabulary and litereacy development in L1 may positively
influence cross-language transfer of reading skills.
– Negative transfer of first-language knowledge may affect
reading development in English.
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22. Dyslexia or Second Language Learning
Some Examples of Negative Transfer in the Typical
ELL
• Pronunciation errors due to non-existent sounds in L1 (e.g. in
Spanish: reads drogstore for drugstore
• Phonetic Spelling (e.g. writes mejr for measure; teech for teach)
• Spelling errors due to non-existing sounds in L1 (e.g. Arabic:
bicture for picture; Chinese: pray for play)
• Reversals
• Missing vowels
• Missing articles, endings, plurals, tenses
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23. Dyslexia or Second Language Learning
The Profile of an ELL with Dyslexia
• A student with high vocabulary who is still misspelling common
words (e.g. womin for women; wal for wall; nos for nose; I have too
pets)
• A student at an intermediate level who can’t get the gist of a very
basic book
• A student who hates reading
• Slow reading (e.g. when asked to read aloud, the student seems to
be reading word by word without getting the meaning)
• A student in at a beginner level who fails to recognize common
words, even after extensive review (e.g. emphasis on wrong
syllable). The students treats the word as a word he/she has never
seen it
• A student with high vocabulary who continues to use phonetic
spelling of common words at levels 50 and up (e.g. well come to the
reel world) 23
25. Teaching Strategies for ELLs and
Students with Dyslexia
Students with Dyslexia ELLs without Dyslexia
Basic phonics Both
Reading and writing
Word processing technology
Practice
Books on tape Multisensory activities
More exposure to reading
Opportunities for Positive
The ability to show transference
knowledge orally Challenging activities
Vocabulary building
One-on-one instruction Scaffolding
Motivation
Time
Early reading and spelling
skills
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26. Teaching Strategies for ELLs and
Students with Dyslexia
A Multisensory Activity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti-O58yWwZg
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27. References
etts, E. A. (1936). The prevention and correction of reading difficulties.
Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson and Company.
haywitz, S. E. (2003). Overcoming dyslexia: A new and complete science-
based program for reading problems at any level. New York, NY: Knopf.
haywitz, S. E., & Shaywitz, B. A. (2001, August). The neurobiology of reading
and dyslexia. Focus on Basics: Connecting research and practice, 5(A), 11–15.
Retrieved from: http://www.ncsall.net/fileadmin/resources/fob/2001/fob_5a.pdf
haywitz, B., Shaywitz, S., Pugh, K., Mencl, W., Fulbright, R., Skudlarski, P., …
Gore, J. C. (2002). Disruption of posterior brain systems for reading in children
with developmental dyslexia. Biological Psychiatry, 52(2), 101–110.
doi:10.1007/s10038-006-0088-z
avies, R., & Cuentos, F. (2010). Reading acquisition and dyslexia in Spanish.
In N. Brunswick, S. McDougall, & P. de Mornay Davies (Eds.), Reading and
dyslexia in different orthographies (pp. 155–180). Hove, East Sussex:
Psychology Press.
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