Question: An English language learner recently joined my dyslexia classroom. She seems to be having more difficulty progressing on our standard curriculum. Do you have any suggestions or advice? When trying to understand why a new English Language Learner (ELL or...
Learning Irregular Words [Premium]
Question: Why does dyslexia intervention focus so much on phonics and phonological awareness when so much of English doesn’t follow rules? Every comprehensive structured literacy program includes lessons and intensive practice with sight words and orthographic mapping as well as morphology (the study of words from the perspective of small meaning parts like prefixes, roots, […]
Q & A: Bilingual and Dyslexic [Premium]
Question: Our 9 year old son is bilingual and also dyslexic. We have decided to allow him to attend a bilingual school with his older sister for cultural and family reasons. Will this harm his educational development? The school seems supportive, but does not have teachers trained to remediate dyslexia. There are many reasons why […]
Language Teaching and Dyslexia: What About Exceptions to the Rules?
The English language is especially difficult to learn if you are dyslexic - because about half of its words are not predictable by simple rules. So what to do? WORD FAMILIES Learning similar words in similar groups can be motivating for students because they learn...
Foreign Language Learning [Premium]
Q: HOW CAN I IMPROVE MY FLUENCY WITH A SECOND LANGUAGE? Recently, a member of this community asked about how to improve his fluency with a foreign language. He mentioned that he’d been trying to learn for the past 30 years, but only recently started making more progress with the app Yabla because […]
Dyslexia and Bilingualism [Premium]
There are many bilingual or multilingual families who are also navigating a path through dyslexia. Bilingual students with dyslexia usually have similar problems in both languages, but some languages are “easier” to learn if the phonology and spelling are more predictable. So functionally, it is possible for a student to appear dyslexic in one language, […]
How Not To Give Up On Learning A Second Language [Premium]
Learning second languages are difficult for many dyslexic students; foreign language waivers or substitutions are common, but in spite of this, many can learn other languages and even multiple languages if the goal is conversation. Writing and spelling second and third language can be more difficult, but also possible for many people. Students may be […]
Shakespeare and Dyslexia – Making Words Physical [Premium]
Today is National Shakespeare Day, and dyslexia and Shakespeare have been on our minds. We recently mentioned that Lloyd Everitt (yes, he’s dyslexic) is the youngest actor to play Othello at Shakespeare’s own Globe Theater. But we’ve also been thinking about Shakespeare recently because, on our trip down to California, we had the pleasure of […]