Little kid big reading problem

[Phil]

Hi everyone,

I am starting out tutoring a kid from China; she is twelve
years old and has been in New Zealand for two and a half
years. She seems to have a history of being passed from
tutor to tutor.

Here's the problem; When she reads she not only struggles
with the pronunciation of most words, but it's as if she is
seeing words that aren't there. For example she might come
across the word take - what pops out is something like ship!

I think to myself - 'where the heck did that come from' now
it's not just now and then, it is consistently over half
the words that she comes across. What also makes it
confusing is that she seems to go through short instances
where there just isn't any problem at all, where she reads
perfectly well all the precise words that are there with a
lovely flow.

Has anyone come across this kind of problem?

Best Regards.

[LarryLatham]

Have adverse medical conditions been ruled out?
How well does she read in her L1?

Larry Latham

[dduck]

Is there any perceptible link between the words she makes up and the words she's trying to read?

It could be that her imagination is being triggered by the material, whilst she's working hard to read the material. Does she have this problem more with material she finds difficult or boring? Or is there no difference?

It could be that her imagination is working much faster than her reading ability and she getting frustrated by how slow she's reading. So too, she might be trying to impress you with these extra words. "I read slowly but I know all this other stuff!" Or she might have something else wrong. I'm no professional!

Iain

[Lorikeet]

I wonder if she had a chance to start learning how to read and write in her native language, and whether she had trouble then too. Sounds like a bad case of dislexia perhaps. I'm not sure how to handle things like that. I do know, however, that when my kids' class was learning letters, the teachers did lots of things including writing on kids' backs and seeing if they could "see" what the letter was.

[dduck]

Reading:

slow, labored, inaccurate reading of single words in isolation (when there is no story nor pictures to provide clues)

when reading aloud, reads in a slow, choppy cadence (not in smooth phrases), and often ignores punctuation

becomes visibly tired after reading for only a short time

reading comprehension may be low due to spending so much energy trying to read the words. Listening comprehension is usually significantly higher than reading comprehension.

When reading, frequently reverses, inverts, or transposes letters:
reverses means flipping a letter horizontally along a vertical axis, such as reading ded for bed, or bog for dog

inverts means flipping a letter upside down, such as may for way, or we for me

transposes means switching the order of two adjacent letters, such as on for no, gril for girl, own for won

Substitutes similar-looking words, even if it changes the meaning of the sentence, such as sunrise for surprise, house for horse, while for white, wanting for walking

When reading a story or a sentence, substitutes a word that means the same thing but doesn't look at all similar, such as travel for journey, fast for speed, cry for weep

Misreads, omits, or even adds small function words, such as an, a, from, the, to, were, are, of

Omits or changes suffixes, such as need for needed, talks for talking, late for lately.

I wasn't too familiar with the symptoms of dyslexia. I think this is worth some study, especially the third and fourth from last.

Iain

[Lorikeet]

Thanks Iain, an interesting explanation.

[EH]

I am an American speech-language pathologist who specializes in reading disorders and bilingualism. Based on even such a limited description of this girl's reading errors, I would strongly suspect dyslexia and would recommend discussing with her parents at least a quick screening, if not comprehensive testing. Twelve is already late to be catching the problem. Going from tutor to tutor is what frustrated parents often do, but it's really not going to help.

If she knows how to read only in English, I would guess her primary reading problems stemmed from a lack of phonics knowledge (relatively easy to fix) and increased impulsivity (pretty hard to fix). However, if she had already learned to read in Chinese then I wouldn't call her strategy impulsivity. Personally, when I learned to read in Chinese, the most effective strategy I found for oral reading of unfamiliar words was to very quickly look at the basic appearance of the word and blurt out the sound of a word that kind of looked like that one. I wouldn't be right all the time, but with a limited number of possible syllables in the language and a strong visual resemblence between some similar sounding words, the strategy worked more often than you'd expect. She may be carrying over this effective Chinese reading strategy into less effective English-based contexts. Either way, she almost definitely needs phonics (sound-symbol correspondences) instruction and she probably needs more phonological (sound) awareness. You can do a lot of this instruction yourself, especially if you get help from a specialist to get you started. Often the best thing for bilinguals with dyslexia is to work with both an ESL teacher and someone who specializes in reading disorders.

Try the website of the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) for more info. The British Dyslexia Association (BDA) is also excellent. I really don't know what sort of info is available locally in New Zealand. You might try calling a nearby university and talking to a reading specialist, a speech-language pathologist, or a special educator to get a referral.

Feel free to email me with specific questions.

[email protected]