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What the Welsh tell us about reading
What the W elsh tell us about r eading

Biliteracy needs to be taught, especially to dyslexics, Melanie Butler discovers

t’s hardly news that dyslexics may face problems learning English.
The case of Alex (see opposite) dates back 20 years. But only
recently have neuroscientists confirmed its findings: students who
Iread well in one language may be dyslexic in another.
Reported levels of dyslexia are much lower in transparent languages,
such as Japanese and Spanish, where one sound is represented by one
letter or symbol. Much higher levels of dyslexia are reported for opaque
languages like Danish and English. Spain reports dyslexia levels of two
per cent, in Britain it’s nearer ten.
In other words, around ten per cent of the learners in your EFL
classroom are likely to struggle with reading in English. Yet some
80 per cent of those that do, may have no such problems in L1.
What should we do? Identify them, according to the guidance issued
by the British Council for UK language schools awaiting inspection.
Under the topic of student assessment, it says: “Identification of any
special educational needs to be factored in”. ©GRAHAM HORN
Easier said than done. Diagnosing dyslexia in a native speaker of English
normally takes a highly trained specialist up to three hours, according to
the British Dyslexia Association. Diagnosing dyslexia in L2 takes longer. A bilingual welcome to Wales
We must also avoid misidentification. Neuroscientists may dismiss It may not be a complete disaster. UK dyslexic champion, Anne
learning styles as a myth, but British Council guidance requires Margaret Smith of ELT Well has found multisensory learning, a practice
teachers to deal with “Styles of learning (visual/auditory/kinaesthetic) and often used with learners labelled as kinaesthetic, is helpful with dyslexics.
special educational needs”. Or why not leave them alone and let them just pick up. After all we
Dyslexia is commonly marked by weak phonemic awareness. So, most know that reading is a transferable skill - or is it?
dyslexics won’t fit the profile for auditory learners. Under the British Welsh government researchers looked at the evidence on L2 reading
Council categorisation, reading is visual learning, so dyslexics cannot skills from around the world as part of a Rapid Evidence Assessment
be visual learners either. Could we end up identifying our dyslexics as on Language Learning and what they found might surprise you. In
‘kinaesthetic learners’ and miss their special needs altogether? their in their summary for policy makers it states:
“Instruction for the development of reading skills needs to include
explicit attention to both lower-level and higher-level processes; it
cannot be assumed that either will be transferred from a student’s L1
without instruction.”
This won’t surprise the Welsh. Wales has two languages; both use
the Roman alphabet. Welsh is very transparent, it has 29 phonemes,
22 consonants and seven vowels, and uses 29 letters. English is very opaque.
Depending on the variant, it has around 44 phonemes including some
12 vowel sounds and up to 8 diphthongs, but it uses only 26 letters.
Every schoolchild in Wales, whether in Welsh-medium education or
English, learns to read in both languages. Our Welsh researchers found
evidence that this approach worked with other pairs of languages. So,
everyone may benefit from re-learning how to read.
Their research suggest beginning with phonology. “Phonological
training can help beginner learners to process word forms, but not
necessarily word meanings,” they promise.
This certainly makes sense for dyslexia - low phonological awareness
is a key indicator of the condition. Learning to distinguish the
phonemes of English, perhaps by the systematic use of the IPA, may
help. And so may synthetic phonics.
Most EFL Learners may have already learned to use lower-level processes
to decode their written L1, but synthetic phonics can help them recognise
the common patterns of sound letter correlations in English.
The Welsh are clear about another crucial element: “Strategy instruction
is an effective method of developing reading comprehension skills.”
All children learning to read in English use strategies to help them:
reading to the end of the word, guessing from context, using information
from pictures or tables, predicting what comes next. Neuroscience shows
us that children who learn to read in transparent languages simply spell
out the word in their brain letter by letter.
Reading strategies have routinely been used in EFL classrooms for
over 20 years and we should go on teaching them. Like phonics and
phonemic awareness, they may be necessary, but they are probably not
sufficient. We may need to teach both top-down reading strategies and
bottom-up decoding methods - especially with our hidden dyslexics.
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