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Bilingualism and Dyslexia – A Practitioner’s View

A.G.M.P. Cooreman,
Headmistress of a Belgian Dutch-speaking school for children with specific learning difficulties

Working with dyslexic pupils in mainstream and special education, I have had ample opportunity to observe the problems dyslexic children encounter acquiring literacy in their own language and the problems they have learning foreign languages. I have also observed a number of bilingual children and children who spoke one language at school and another at home.

I agree with Professor Beheydt’s thesis that children with above-average intelligence can learn a second language with relative ease. Nevertheless, I have met children of very low mental abilities who have learned to speak one or more other languages with apparent ease, and children with very high mental abilities who have never learned a second language, not even the dialect spoken by their parents at home.

Bilingualism for school purposes and bilingualism for social purposes
The depth of knowledge of a language required for school work is far greater than that required for social contact. People can make themselves understood with limited vocabulary and no grammar. This, accompanied by a similar level of competence in reading and writing, may well be sufficient for communication purposes at home and in the office.

It is important that parents speak to their children in their own language, as they can best express their feelings in their mother tongue and this ensures quality input. But the vocabulary a child needs at school is very different from his social vocabulary. In my experience, most children who speak Dutch at home, but who had started school in another language and then switched back to Dutch, needed about 18 months before they were completely at ease with 90% of specific Dutch school vocabulary. It is easy to understand that dyslexic pupils with short-term memory problems have to make considerable effort to succeed at school. They experience similar difficulties each time they start a new subject, such as geography or chemistry.

Language development and dyslexia
Dyslexic children have more difficulty coming up with the right word, especially under pressure. Problems with word retrieval make them less confident. Their problems in recalling words will occur in any language, written and spoken, and make their language abilities look poor. Often they do not finish sentences, or start sentences again halfway through, to disguise the fact that they cannot find a particular word. This gives the impression that they have weak grammatical skills.

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that also has to do with the prerequisites of learning. In my view, this does not mean that a dyslexic child would find it difficult to learn two words for the same concept, but he would have difficulty finding the right word at the right time. He might use a French word in an English sentence, whereas a non-dyslexic child would simply refer to the object as ‘that thing.’

The fact that dyslexic children find it hard to manage complex tasks – doing several things at once – does not mean that they are incapable of complex thinking. They have to invent strategies all the time to help them remember things that are automatic to others. They cannot always put their thoughts on paper when asked at school. I have even met many high achieving adult dyslexics who still experience language difficulties when they start to talk about an unfamiliar subject. Many had successfully learned other languages after they had left school, though some of them admitted to not being able to write in another language.

Dyslexia and foreign languages for academic purposes
In my experience, it is the continual sense of failure that makes the whole experience of dyslexia so negative. Obviously, when learning a foreign language in a regular classroom, dyslexic learners experience more problems than their non-dyslexic counterparts, but if you give them sufficient structure, time and practice to acquire the basics on all levels (reading, writing, speaking, comprehension) they can make progress. Mixed with non-dyslexics who learn easily in an intuitive, global way, the dyslexic learner will only experience failure through not receiving enough positive feedback: under this pressure he will start mixing and confusing his words in an effort to keep up.

The method used at our school involves learning texts by heart before starting work on learning how to pronounce and spell individual word. We place great emphasis on the differences and similarities between the new language and their mother tongue. Grammatical rules are explained repeatedly in both languages. In learning a second language, dyslexic learners can come to a better understanding of the linguistic rules in their mother tongue. In fact, the process used is similar to that used to learn basic literacy skills in the first language. Dyslexic children over seven who do not learn simultaneously to speak, read and write a second language have greater problems achieving written and grammatical skills later on. Dyslexic children who learn spelling in a free context without proper instruction have severe and lasting difficulties in reading and writing compared with those who have received early, structured training.

Case study
Toon, a fifteen-year-old boy of average intelligence, failed every subject in mainstream school. He was dyslexic and could not write an intelligible text in his mother tongue, Dutch, and made numerous mistakes in his spoken language. In order to pass his final examinations he had to learn French, English and Spanish, with the emphasis on reading and oral communication. He experienced the same problems in these languages as he did in Dutch. But he passed these exams, and several others, about fifteen months after having followed the training described above. When he reached seventeen, he spent six months in Guatemala and perfected his Spanish and English. At present he is looking forward to studying languages in England. Although he is fluent in spoken English and Spanish, he still has poor literacy skills. Nonetheless, his ambition is to teach foreign languages or become a journalist. Who knows?