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[Jetgirly]

I know Libya is in Africa! However, I have a question. I am teaching a student from Libya. He is twelve. He spent the first eight years of his life in New Zealand and the most recent four years in Libya. However, surprisingly, he can't read or write in English. His spelling is pretty much indecipherable and he struggles with words with three or more letters. I would think he was dyslexic, but I'm not sure how much is tied to him being used to reading in Arabic (I hope he's literate in Arabic, need to check with dad). Would an Arabic speaker/reader be likely to have problems flipping/reversing letters? d -> b, f -> L, p -> b, m -> w, n -> u, etc? I'm using Grade 1/2 reading intervention materials with him and doing lots of sight word work, but I'm concerned that it's not enough. Do you have any resources or strategies you use when working with Arabic speakers struggling with the English alphabet?

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

There is a P/B "broblem" with Arabic speakers...but, there are so many others, such as a complete absence of "be" auxiliary verbs...an' dat's jes' scratchin' the surface!

NCTBA

[veiledsentiments]

What concerns me in your story is that he managed to spend 8 years in an English speaking country without learning any English? Did he never leave the house? Never turn on a TV or radio? Was he illegally being kept out of school? Does he have an educational background at all?

The flipping of the letters may be just a lack of training or practice, but if he doesn't pick it up rather quickly... assuming that he is literate in Arabic... and is doing some homework, I would see if you can get him tested for some type of learning disabilities.

VS

[Jetgirly]

Unfortunately I'm just teaching him at summer school, and although we're part of the school board we're "seperate" in that we don't have ANY extra resources (from things as minor as whiteboard markers to things as major as psychologists) and we receive no funding- it's all user-pays. In some ways it is a glorified summer camp. We also take students from other school boards (the Catholic system and/or private schools). This kid wasn't in Canada last year and hasn't enrolled for next year, so even if I wanted to be really pro-active and contact his school psychologist at the end of August... he isn't enrolled in a school or school board yet. I'll try to get some more dirt from his dad tomorrow, but there's not a much higher level of English there. When this kid tried to tell me he'd been in NZ for eight years I thought he meant that eight days ago his flight to Canada connected through NZ! But we counted it out on our fingers and drew pictures of babies and small children, and he was definitely there for the first eight years of his life.

I'm getting paid $58 an hour to teach summer school, which is awesome, but my worries about these kids just occupy my mind all day! It feels more like sixteen hours a day than four...

[veiledsentiments]

I know what you mean. My first ESL teaching, volunteering with my county Adult ESL, was with an Afghani refugee family who had so many extra issues. One was deaf... one obviously had learning disabilities... one had epileptic episodes every couple days... and he was the only one with any English at all. The older ones were literate in their own language, but the youngest were not. The other teacher and I had more resources available in the system, but where to start?

You need to fill in some details of his story and I think that will help give you some direction. Hopefully a few more people will show up with some ideas... but many teachers are on the road. Hopefully all he will need is some targeted time and effort... while he adds some hard work.

VS

[15yearsinQ8]

TEFL teachers typically do not have the breadth of knowledge and experience to appropriately refer students for special needs assessments

sounds like the student needs testing - there's something going on in the family environment also

face it, there's only so much we can do sometimes

[Jetgirly]

I am actually a licensed teacher. I've been teaching core subjects (Language Arts and Social Studies) in 100% ESL classrooms lately. However, next year I've accepted a position as a late literacy specialist. In my school board, the only person allowed to make a learning disability diagnosis is a psychologist, and in an ESL situation they have to see a psychologist who speaks their first language. I can choose to teach a student as though they are dyslexic regardless of whether or not they are identified as such, but I can't be the one to make the diagnosis.

I grabbed the kid's dad in the parking lot after school for a chat. It would seem he was only in NZ for his first five years, and he has actually been in Libya for the past six years. He has been attending school in Libya. I got most of the class set up on a webquest and pulled him aside for some one-on-one sight word stuff, on which he was about on par with your average kid who only really spent his toddler years in an English-speaking country. I asked him to read me some Arabic and to translate simple sentences, and he struggled there, so there is still a chance he's got some deeper reading issues. But at least the No English mystery is solved!

[veiledsentiments]

whew... I was beginning to get these visions of kid locked in closet by conservative parents thing. I spend too much time reading the news I guess. I think all you can do at this point is to give it the test of time to see if he improves.

And... BTW... they do very little 'reading for meaning' in many traditional Arabic schools. Reading is an oral exercise to practice pronunciation... and they mostly use the Quran. My university students often told me that their reading was worse in Arabic than in English... which I found very scary.

VS

[scot47]

"Reading" in an Arabic context often means "Recitation". The idea of reading for pleasure seems to be alien to most of our Arab students. Poor reading skills are Number One Problem for students even at tertiary level in KSA.