Reading, Young Learners and Learning Difficulties

By Misty Adoniou

Do you suspect a student in your junior English class has a learning difficulty?

With an estimated one in ten of the population affected with some kind of language learning difficulty it’s entirely possible, but how can you be sure and what can you do about it?

Diagnosis of language learning difficulties, like dyslexia, is something that should be done by experts, but by being aware of learning difficulties – their symptoms and effective remediation strategies – the EFL teacher can do a lot to support learners in the classroom, particularly when parents and the State are a little slower to do so.

So what do we mean by language learning difficulties?

Language learning difficulties are biological in origin. They are not related to intelligence but a specific difficulty in processing and producing language due to minor malfunctions in the areas of the brain that control language input and output. In the US and Australia these are frequently called Language Learning Difficulties (LLD); in the UK and Europe the term Dyslexia is often used as a cover all term. The use of the word ‘dyslexia’ in this generic sense is not especially helpful when identifying students with language learning difficulties, as the word ‘dyslexia’ is frequently associated solely with spidery handwriting and poor spelling, and the range of possible indicators of LLD is far greater than this. Using these as the sole indicators of a language learning difficulty leaves a lot of students undiagnosed and therefore unsupported in their language learning.

The following list of indicators for language learning difficulties has been adapted from ‘Language Shock across Cultures’, European Children in Crisis, 1998

Generally

Difficulties with matching sounds and symbols

Difficulties with reading, slow and poor comprehension

Difficulties with writing, slow and poor spelling

Often

Difficulties with maths, particularly multiplication tables and symbols

Poor short term memory

Poor organization skills

Difficulties following a sequence of directions, passing on messages accurately or remembering a sequence of numbers like a telephone number.

Poor listening comprehension

Left and right confusion

Poor handwriting

Sometimes

Problems communicating orally, difficulty getting the words out in sequence, mixing up the syllables in long words, and confusing words when speaking

Difficulties with time concepts, including sequencing months of the year

Spatial orientation problems, bumping into things, general clumsiness

Difficulties reading a map

Students with language learning difficulties are not dim, or ‘a bit slow’. They appear to be bright, with average or above intelligence. Theoretically they have as much aptitude for language learning as the student sitting next to them, but they just don’t seem to be able to grasp it. There’s a gap between what they should be able to do and what they actually can do – a gap between their aptitude and their achievement.

However, it’s not that they can’t learn language, it’s just that they can’t learn it the way it’s being taught to them.

They don’t have learning difficulties, they simply learn language differently.

Language learning difficulties may appear in any or all of the macro skills of language learning – i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking. However this article will describe how a language learning difficulty may present itself in the beginners’ EFL classroom, particularly when young children are learning to read in English, and provide some simple strategies, which will support all learners in the reading process.

Language learning difficulty or just typical foreign language beginner?

One of the difficulties in identifying students with language learning difficulties is that many of the indicators for LLD (as outlined above) are typical of any beginner learning a foreign language. When does a teacher know that the difficulty a student is having learning English is attributable to a language learning difficulty and not just poor motivation, immaturity or other environmental factors?

A student having difficulties with English which the EFL teacher feels may be attributable to a LLD will almost certainly have had, or be having, similar language processing difficulties in their first language. The extent of the correlation will depend upon on a number of factors, including the student’s age and first language learning experiences.

However when the student is young, around 4 to 7 years of age, and only just beginning to learn to read and write in their first language, the LLD will not yet be obvious, making diagnosis very difficult indeed in the Junior EFL classroom.

What skills are necessary for successful reading?

In order to understand how LLD may affect a student’s reading progress, the teacher needs to have a basic understanding of the reading process. Being aware of the pre-requisite skills of reading helps the teacher identify the specific difficulties the LLD student may be having and thus implement appropriate remedial and support strategies. Indeed, understanding the reading process is essential knowledge for any teacher of English.

To read fluently and with comprehension, students must successfully combine a number of reading subskills, pre-requisites to successful reading, described below.

DECODING

A concept of print – understanding that the spoken word can be represented on paper, and that we move from left to right when reading

Alphabetical awareness – knowing the sound/symbol relationships in English, and that left to right represents first and last sounds

Phonological awareness – knowing that sounds go together to make words

Phonemic awareness – knowing how those sounds go together to make words, being able to identify and manipulate the sounds in words

ENCODING

Syntactic awareness – understanding the grammatical markers and systems in English

Semantic knowledge – having a large vocabulary and being able to infer meaning from context

Discourse awareness – understanding how texts in English are organized according to their purpose.

LLD students invariably have difficulties with the ‘decoding’ skills, and reading becomes a slow laborious process, making it difficult for the student to gain meaning from text. These students require lots of work learning the sounds of English and how to manipulate them. However ‘decoding’ English does not automatically bring comprehension, and whilst teaching the ‘phonetics’ of English is extremely important for students with LLD, it does not constitute a comprehensive reading programme. Teaching a student with LLD to ‘decode’ English without understanding what they read is eminently possible, but entirely pointless.

The point of reading is to understand what is read. To understand what they read, students need good general language comprehension, with adequate semantic, syntactic and discourse knowledge to draw upon to enable reading with meaning.

A key indicator of LLD in native speakers of English is when students struggle to read despite having full oral competency in the language. They have the language resources, but seem unable to draw upon them to read successfully. However, this is obviously an indicator of limited use in the EFL classroom, especially the Junior classroom, where students are usually developing their oral and reading skills in English simultaneously. In fact, in many cases reading skills receive far more focus in the classroom than speaking skills. In most EFL classrooms the language resources required for successful reading are substantially developed through reading, rather than the rich oral resources at the disposal of the native speaker. How can we decide whether the student is struggling to read with comprehension because he doesn’t yet have enough knowledge about the grammar, vocabulary and rhetoric of English or because of a chronic biological cause, a specific LLD?

Essentially, in the typical EFL classroom we are asking students who have difficulties learning to read, to learn their English primarily through reading. No wonder they make so little progress.

Which strategies are useful for teaching reading to students with language learning difficulties?

Fortunately, teaching strategies that are recommended for LLD students are beneficial for all students in the classroom. The basic requirements are explicit teaching of new material and scaffolded support to independent language use through a multisensory approach to learning in an emotionally supportive environment. The final ingredient is time, extra time to process new language, to write, to read, to respond and to complete tests and tasks.

Specific strategies to support the teaching of reading in the beginners classroom involve the explicit and multisensory teaching of the sounds of English, the development of an extensive sight vocabulary, exposure to stories in English, and a heavy emphasis upon the teaching of spoken English.

Phonemic awareness

Almost all LLD students have difficulty with the ‘mechanics’ of reading English, particularly ‘word attack’ skills, using phonemic knowledge, syntactic or semantic knowledge to identify a word. They need to be explicitly taught alphabetic and phonemic awareness, sound/symbol correspondence, blending skills, use of context to help identify words once its been partially decoded, working with syllables and multi-syllabic words, and the automatic recognition of irregular words (i.e., developing a sight vocabulary).

Whilst familiarity with the English alphabet is a must, teaching the sounds the letters make is more useful than knowing the letter names, or being able to recite them in order. In fact learning the sequence of the alphabet will be very difficult for many LLD students. The sounds in English (phonemes) should be the focus of teaching when familiarizing beginners with the alphabet. A useful strategy is to differentiate between letter names and sounds by telling young beginners “This letter’s name is A, and its voice says /a/.”

Syntax, semantics and discourse

The best way to increase young learners knowledge of the language is to read them stories in English. Using shared books in the classroom allows the opportunity to teach new vocabulary and expose students to the structures and discourse patterns of written English. Invest in large print books, ‘big books’, and have a shared reading time during the lesson. After the children have enjoyed the story, it can be re-read to teach various concepts of print. A useful activity that teaches both semantic and syntactic skills is to use sticky post-it notes to cover key vocabulary, turning the story into a cloze reading exercise. When the story is then read chorally by the whole group it becomes a guessing game that supports all learners in the reading process.

Oral language

Oral language competency is a key support and resource when learning to read, and this sends a clear message to EFL teachers, materials writers, and course designers to reassess their priorities when planning lessons and syllabuses for young learners. Rich oral resources aid reading comprehension for all EFL students, but are absolute necessities for LLD students who have difficulty drawing upon other resources. Expecting them to learn to read by reading is unfair.

Developing oral language in EFL students also aids in the identification of LLD in students. The wider the gap between a student’s oral capabilities and their reading abilities, the more likely it is that a student has a LLD.

Teachers should highlight ‘speaking’ in the classroom, making it a regular component of each lesson, integrated with the other macro skills – rather than being isolated to the ‘conversation’ class. The majority of lesson time in the beginners’ classroom should be devoted to developing oral language skills.

Conclusion

LLD is a lifelong condition but its intensity may vary over the years, as will its impact upon the academic, social and emotional progress of the student. Much will depend upon the learning environment the students find themselves in, and how supportive it is of the LLD student’s special talents and special differences.

Because students with LLD have difficulty processing language in the way most people do, it’s difficult for them to achieve to their maximum potential in traditional learning environments, i.e. schools, where their style of learning may not be valued or even recognized.

The EFL teacher of juniors has perhaps the biggest challenge of all; because it is here that the diagnosis of LLD is most difficult. But the evidence clearly suggests that if the LLD student is not given appropriate support at this time, his/her likelihood of success in English in later years is severely reduced.

EFL teachers and institutions may have to reexamine their assumptions about language learning and teaching in the junior years, and become actively informed about language learning difficulties in order to provide a learning environment that provides equal opportunities for English language learning for all students.

Misty Adoniou (Dip.Teach. B.ED) is a multi-disciplinary educator. She began her career as a mainstream primary educator, moving into ESL consultancy and curriculum writing. She has been, most recently, course coordinator and lecturer in Art Education, Language Education and Cross-cultural Studies at the University of Canberra, Australia. In Greece, she has been extensively involved in teacher training and writing on educational issues for the local and international press. Misty will be returning to Australia at the beginning of September to take up a full-time position at the University of Canberra in the Language and Literacy Department.