Job Discussion Forums

[Jetgirly]

* LD in the title refers to learning disabilities.

I once taught an in-company class where, I believe, one adult student was dsylexic.

At first I just thought he was a really slow learner, but over time I realized that he wasn't able to write in English or Italian. His classmates would dictate the answers letter-by-letter to him, in Italian, and he wouldn't be able to write the words down. Because reading and writing were so difficult for him, he wasn't able to study at home or even do the written practice questions. As the months passed he became extremely miserable and self-deprecating in class. Rarely would ten minutes pass without him moaning, "I so stupidly..."

I had the administration at my school talk to him about whether or not he wanted to stay in the class, and he told them he didn't want to quit. He ended up completing the course but his skills didn't progress much beyond, "I am Salvatore."

Have you encountered adult students with learning disabilities? How do you handle it when you know that their problems are as much with L1 as L2?

[yaramaz]

I'm trying to figure that one out myself right now. In my beginner class I have an executive who is struggling with even the most basic things. He can't even copy a phrase from the book into his notebook- while everyone else had made their 10 sentences using the mix and match fragments, he was still working on his first sentence: mY mohtr like ply g tn nis. This took him 5 minutes and I swear he was sweating buckets from the effort. He has yet to complete any activity, or to show any sign of understanding anything we have done so far. He communicates with me entirely in Turkish, despite my best efforts to change this. The other students in his level can make them selves understood in English.

The problem with him, however, is not that he thinks he's stupid. He doesnt seem to be even aware of the problem. When I approached him about how he was feeling about the level of the class, he said it was fine, everything was dandy. It's not fine!

[ilaria]

Jetgirly wrote:

[Jetgirly]

More than a year later, this has come up again.

I am teaching in a prepa (a private high school) in Mexico. I teach two classes- Reading and Writing, and Listening and Speaking. The students have a Mexican teacher for Grammar classes.

As luck would have it, one of the students in my Reading and Writing class has severe dyslexia. Most of the accommodations that I would make in a Language Arts classroom (I am a licensed L.A. teacher in Canada) are not appropriate in a class that focuses specifically on reading and writing. For example, if I were teaching a novel study unit in Canada I might allow a dyslexic student to do a presentation instead of writing an essay. I could also encourage the student to view the film version of the novel as a pre-reading activity, so he would know what was going on as he read. I can't really do those things in a class where I am specifically teaching and assessing reading and writing skills. Unfortunately, this student speaks at a very low level as well (at least three or four years of English study behind the class average), so his weakness in the language combined with his dyslexia is making success impossible. Currently, the only accommodations I can think of is giving him more time on assignments and access to a computer with English spellcheck when others write by hand. Unsurprisingly, he has failed the first two of three terms this semester and even if he got 100% in the last term he won't pass the class. I went to administration early on and they had absolutely zero interest in the situation. They absolutely did not care at all. They said they would "look into it". I followed up several times and they just keep saying they will "look into it".

Ideas? I know the kid isn't going to pass, but can you think of anything else I could be doing to make his last term better?

[Teacher in Rome]

I also have a couple of students who the teachers say are dyslexic in a state school I work in. Fortunately, the objective is really to get them to speak English, but occasionally they need to write things down. I've found that in these situations, they don't actually write anything (their partner does) and they very rarely get involved in joint writing activities. One in particular, just sits back, arms crossed, and waits for his partner to do the work.

One thing that I think would help would be to test the students to assess how severely dyslexic they were. Unfortunately, I don't think there's the money available to do that here.

From a practical teaching point of view, I've found that word search activities help as a sort of vocabulary brainstorming exercise before a speaking activity. Other things that seem to work better are using colour picture prompts and group work activities.

[SueH]

I once had a learner in the UK in an ESOL context who was illiterate in L1 and didn't know the alphabet in English at all. It was a struggle integrating him into the class and I suspected dyslexia, but I could find no research on it in foreign language learners. He found simple pattern matching difficult let alone word recognition and I always wondered how he found his way around.

On the subject of word searches I once used them as a diagnostic with a Thai lady who I suspected of not being able to read or write although she wouldn't admit to it. Given a word search she just circled random letters.

There's a program which produces word searches and you can shuffle the words to give different versions: very good if you suspect copying!

[amyv12]

Well I don�t yet have the teaching perspective as I am just starting out, but from a learner that is dyslexic I can maybe give a little insight.

My younger years in school I have always found ways to hide it. I really didn�t know I was different as well until I switched schools and the fact that I was in grade 3 and couldn�t read really at all was discovered. At the time the teachers were giving me different spelling test, different projects, and I was getting tutor while in school. Some times it would make you feel stupid because you just don�t get it. Going through high school I always got by but would never get good marks. I almost always had to rely on others for help. Luckly for me I had good friends

Since being out of school for a few years and getting into the corporate world has really taught me how to learn for myself. Little things that I still have to do sometimes.... The B's and D's can still be a problem, I always just picture in my head how to spell dog and I can see how the D is faced. Sometimes I do have to go things over and over and over again. I think for me the best tool is association, and as much visual work as possible to help make the associations. The best thing is patients, there was nothing worse than a teacher that was frustrated with the fact that I just wasn�t getting it.

Hope it helps a little....