[SENco-forum] Possible dyslexia

A recent report showed that English students with SpLD were poor at

> A recent report showed that English students with SpLD were poor at
learning languages because it didn't start by mapping sounds to letters and
building on that.<

When it comes to students with dyslexia, or indeed with any kind of SEN, a
distinction needs to be made between languages per se and methods of
teaching and learning them. There's a lot of literature about ways teaching
languages to those with specific learning difficulties. My bibliography at

http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/mfl/biblio.doc

lists well over 400 references in that area alone. A lot of hard research
has been done by psychologists Ganschow and Sparks in the USA on dyslexic
language learners and explicit teaching of sound-symbol correspondence in
the target language certainly seems to help. The following book is an
excellent practical introduction to dyslexia-friendly methods of language
teaching:

Crombie, M. and Schneider, E. (2003) Dyslexia and Modern Foreign Languages:
Gaining Success in an Inclusive Context, London: David Fulton.

The choice of language taught can also be a factor. Conventional wisdom says
that English and French are dyslexia-unfriendly languages because of their
opaque spelling systems, while the relative transparency of the orthography
of German and Spanish makes them easier for those with SpLD to learn.
Apparently, the most dyslexia-friendly European language is Finnish.

David Wilson
Harton Technology College, South Shields
http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/