Dyslexia and language learning - notes from a training day

The problems of children who have been assessed as dyslexic in learning languages are complex, and I was grateful to the Lighthouse organisation for organising this training day in London. There was interest from teachers in other parts of the country who were not able to attend. So, here are some key points from the course notes and from contributions from course members. See also notes from a second training day.

1. Departments should know in advance when children assessed as dyslexic will be joining them, and need a planned programme of individual support. This is most important at the very beginning, as children often find the earliest lessons the most difficult and "fall at the first hurdle". Anticipating problems and planning for them, rather than dealing with them as they arise, is essential.

2. The learning difficulties associated with dyslexia may come from a processing difficulty in the brain, in which areas associated with matching sounds to letters are not synchronised. If this is the problem, children will find it very difficult to work quickly, and particularly to understand new material presented at normal speed. They will also need more time for written tasks. They can, however, learn effectively if teaching is modified so as not to require such fast processing.

3. Difficulties that look very much like those produced by this processing problem can come from other causes, including poor teaching, broken school attendance, or sensitivity to light. It is important to know exactly what evidence an assessment of dyslexia is based on, and to take this into account when planning teaching. An outright diagnosis of dyslexia is rare - psychologists usually say something along the lines of test results being "consistent with" an diagnosis of dyslexia or specific learning difficulties (dyslexia). This form of words, and the resulting uncertainty, means that each case needs to be considered individually.

The Institute of Optometry's simple sceening kit should be part of every school's assessment procedures - if this is the problem, and it is not identified and tackled, huge amounts of time and money can be wasted.

4. Pace of work is a major problem . This has huge implications for planning, as the whole class cannot go at the pace of the dyslexic pupil. Most course members preferred setting to mixed ability teaching, but it is sometimes possible to vary grouping during the week or term, so that for some lessons children are grouped according to their learning needs. 

Children assessed as dyslexic, for whatever reason, almost always need to tackly new work more slowly, and frequently need further explanation and "unpacking". Wherever possible, assistants or support teachers should try to prepare pupils for lessons in advance, rather than help them catch up. 5. Only one school taking part had an assistant permanently attached to the languages department, and this was found very helpful. Most assistants arrived with the pupil, with no time to share planning. Assistants are most effective when they understand the work - their use needs more careful planning, and language training should be part of their performance management and professional development. Effective use and training for assistants should be part of a department's action planning.

6. Children assessed as dyslexic often tell me that the new language goes too fast for them to understand. There was some disagreement on this point from course members, who said that they found greater difficulties with writing. A course member recommended a CD player with variable speed. I recommended BBC Bitesize, particularly the Foundation levels, for GCSE practice, as it offers a slow speed combined with a transcript.

7. Copying makes it more difficult for children to understand the links between written and spoken language, as they have to jerk their eyes backwards and forwards between the master and their own version. This interferes with the development of linguistic structures in the brain. This powerpoint presentation gives details of the processes involved:

Download languages_and_dyslexia.ppt

The solution is to eliminate copying by redesigning writing tasks so that it is not possible for children to copy. Instead, they learn to build sentences - Clicker is in my view the best tool for this job, but it can also be done with cards or other software - and to hold the sentence in their head and write it. This can be introduced with simple finger tracing - looking away from the board and writing the sentence on their sleeve, for example. This is a big change to the writing in most textbooks, which is based on copying - eg copying sentences from an exercise and adding a word selected from a list, which is also copied. Much writing also consists of copying lesson objectives - this also involves jerking back and forth, and does not help dyslexic pupils learn to write.

8. Marking and proofreading need careful organisation and guidance. The following approaches have helped in different contexts:

• Writing partners - children check their partner's work before it is handed in
• Specific guidance on what to look for when checking. Children with learning difficulties find it hard to check their own work. One way of helping them is a simple checklist, perhaps on the fingers of an outline of a hand. The content can be varied to suit individual needs, and should always include looking for at least one point to praise.
• Time to reflect on marking when work is returned needs to be built in to teaching, otherwise the marking is wasted.
• A personal learning file of "Things I can say and write" in whatever language, can be used alongside the marking, and is a more subtle way of doing the work that used to be done through corrections.

9. The benefits to literacy for children assessed as dyslexic through the teaching techniques described above can be summarised as follows:

• improved control of basic features, including full stops
• improved spelling, through understanding the relation between sounds and letters in the new language.
• In Spanish, reinforcement of understading of phonics
• In French, improved understanding of many of the irregular features in English, which are derived from French
• In all languages, the similarities between new words and English words - cognates - has particular importance for dyslexic pupils, as it enables one piece of learning to serve two purposes.

10. Support clubs and homework clubs, as part of extended schools, are very important, particularly in the early stages, when children have not encountered failure and will be more willing to attend. Every child should have access to a club and be encouraged to attend.

Discussion during the course showed that some teachers are having to work with little or no access to technology. It is possible to modify teaching under these conditions, but it is much more difficult. HMI have said that ICT remains underused in languages teaching, and I have known two departments in which improved technology and whiteboards have made a great impact on the quality of learning. The technology used in this course, however, is for presentation to the class rather than in computer suites.

Insoluble problems? Perhaps two. One teacher had a child removed from one lesson a week out of two for literacy lessons, with no easy way to bridge the gap. Unless there is some way of doing this, perhaps through a club or extended school, I can't see any way of enabling them to learn effectively.  Another had one child assessed as dyslexic out of thirty, with no guidance on how to teach them, and no easy way to modify teaching for the rest of the class. Once again, additional support beyond the lesson, based on explaining difficulties and giving extra practice at a pace to suit the child, seems the only answer - there is probably not one within the existing setup. As Dr Harry Chasty once said to the United Kingdom Reading Association, "If the child can't learn the way you're teaching, can you alter the teaching so that they can learn?" If we can't make these changes, we won't get any progress.

The course included beginning work on an action plan for the department, which should be kept under review. Most course members included the points raised above. We need, however, to build up a body of evidence that is more substantial than the individual work and small scale studies that have been undertaken to date. I will be happy to co-ordinate this through this weblog, and would be pleased to publish any examples of successful work that course members or other teachers might like to share.

Comments

[Kendra Ann Thomas]

Very interesting information here. The quote by Dr. Harry Chasty really speaks volumes. Teachers can't just be flexible. Flexible things will eventually break. Teachers have to be fluid. Fluid adapts to every container. We have to adapt our teaching to every child.

[Learn Piano]

My brother is extremely dyslexic and he has never been able to learn other languages... he did however learn to read music without much of a problem... strange

[John]

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