1 Red Flag and 3 Myths about Dyslexia
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Imagine a group of new students, teenagers, about 14 years old. On the first day of class you give them a speaking exercise, in pairs. You ask them to talk to each other for about 5 minutes, and tell their partners about their summer holidays.
Nothing too difficult. Just to check on their level of English.
And, all of a sudden, you see this one boy rattling away, making expressive gestures with his hands, visibly enthusiastic, explaining his summer holidays to his partner in a dramatic and theatrical manner.
You walk over, curious, to listen into the conversation, and you hear beautiful and rich vocabulary, hardly any hesitation in speaking, almost impressive grammar, and here and there even some idioms. It seems like a flowing river of teenage talk in English. You even have to stop him to give his partner time to do some talking as well, and you think; “I wonder if he is in the right level.”
Nevertheless, you don’t bring it up with your director of studies. At least not yet. After all, it’s the beginning of a new course and she’s way too busy with sorting out other stuff.
And it’s a good thing you don’t.
The next class, with the same group of students, you set a different exercise. This time a short essay. You ask them to work quietly and write a short essay about…. Oh, why not, let’s take the same subject as last class; an essay about their past holidays.
They don’t have to think of new vocabulary or grammar. They can just use what they spoke about two days ago.
After your experience in the previous class, you are really excited to read what that chatty boy is going to produce. You even wonder if you will be the one to discover a literary talent in your class.
But what you didn’t expect is seeing him staring out of the window most of the time, hesitatingly moving toward his sheet of paper, writing for only short periods of time, visibly struggling. You’re a bit startled, but still wonder if, maybe, that’s how true literary geniuses produce their writings.
And then, when all your students hand in their essays you are shocked to see that, who you thought to be your star student, hands in not even three paragraphs of hardly legible, badly structured text, full of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and simple, repetitive vocabulary. Idioms? Nowhere to be found.
This is when you say (or think): He can do more if he wants to!
Why, because you saw it. The other day.
And yes, you did. But what you saw the other day was his performance in speaking. Today you are seeing his performance in writing.
"80% of dyslexic pupils were not diagnosed."
This should be your first RED FLAG when it comes to spotting the possible signs of dyslexia in your classroom. It’s the difference or unexpectedness between your student’s performance in spoken tasks and how they perform in reading or writing.
You might have noticed the word “possible” when I mentioned dyslexia. This is very important, because, just like my colleague Clair mentioned in her blog about autism, it should never be the teacher's job to diagnose dyslexia, nor any other neurodivergent condition, in their students.
That’s why teachers should say “possible” and leave the official diagnosis to the professionals.
But, and this is very important, as teachers we can, and I think should, be able to recognize these possible signs of dyslexia, and most of all, act upon them.
Dyslexia is a very complex condition, but also a condition that still has very high levels of underdiagnoses. In 2019, estimates were that, in the UK alone, 80% of dyslexic pupils were not diagnosed. This means that 4 out of 5 students with dyslexia would go through the educational system without being diagnosed.
Apart from its complexity, dyslexia is also difficult to diagnose. And, there is no real world-wide consensus on how to do this. Each country and each educational system has it’s own protocol, and sometimes there are different protocols in the same country.
“It should never be the teacher's job to diagnose dyslexia, nor any other neurodivergent condition, in their students.”
As a matter of fact, being a student with a dyslexic brain, it relies on where you live if you will or will not be officially diagnosed with dyslexia. As an example, a student in the UK could be diagnosed with dyslexia, with all accommodations in place. But when the family decides to move to another country, the same student will have to go through a new diagnosis and, this time, might NOT be diagnosed with dyslexia.
Dyslexia, just like many other neurodivergent conditions, is still a big unknown territory for many teachers.
We’ve heard about it, we know something, we don’t know enough. This is what I hear, and see, in teacher training to teachers from all over the world.
Within all its complexity, if anyone asks me to define dyslexia in a few words, I will say it’s a different way of the brain in processing the information it receives.
Not worse, not better, just different.
Nevertheless, when referring to dyslexia with the terms “disorder”, “difficulty” or "disability" we are degrading a different brain into a deficient one. And this does no good to any dyslexic person, regardless their age.
The terminology we use to describe something, anything, decides how people look at it. This is probably where stigma stems from and it’s the likely birthplace of myths.
Teachers, parents, students, and even policy makers still rely heavily on enduring myths around dyslexia.
One of these myths is the fact that dyslexia is all about mixing letters. It’s about the “b’s” and the “d’s”, the “p’s” and the “q’s”, the “m” and the “n”. And yes, dyslexia is, mainly, a phonological processing and decoding issue. This also implies that one could read a “b” like a “d” or “saw” like “was”. But this doesn’t happen to every person with dyslexia.
As a matter of fact, dyslexia manifests itself in different ways in different people.
And it involves so much more than mixing up letters or writing backwards.
Stepping away from the stigma and the myths, Dr. Sally Shaywitz describes dyslexia as an island of weaknesses in a sea of strengths.
To me, this is probably the best and most powerful way to describe the brain of our dyslexic students. Yes, we have to work on the weaknesses, but we have the strengths to help us do so.
Learning languages with dyslexia might be hard work, but nonetheless possible. Most of all with the right strategies.
And, talking about working hard, here’s another myth for you: “She’s not dyslexic, she’s just lazy”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this. From teachers, from parents, but also from students.
When interviewing adult dyslexics, many times you will hear that same argument. Over and over again. Teachers and parents not seeing, or not wanting to see, that, when these adults were in school, they needed help, accommodation, empathy, recognition, love. But instead they got blame, pressure, impatience, punishment and stigma.
Imagine the effect on a young person’s self-esteem when you come to believe your academic results are a reflection of your character. That it’s all about will-power and that you just don’t have it.
This brings me to the third and final myth of this article; “dyslexic children should not be learning foreign languages”. So yes, dyslexia is a condition that manifests itself mostly in language acquisition. But it doesn't mean that the person with dyslexia isn’t able to learn a second, or even third language.
Too many times I hear of speech therapists or other professionals who advise parents to take their dyslexic children out of foreign language classes. With this, we are saying to the child that they are not good enough to learn a new language, that they are not capable of acquiring these vital international communication skills.
Nevertheless, and with the right support, these children are not only able to learn a new language, they can thrive in it.
Over the years I have met numerous dyslexics, adults and teens, who were non-native speakers of the language but had incredible levels of spoken English.
We should start recognizing that when it comes to second language learning, the solution is not just forgetting about it, it’s training our teachers and changing the way we teach those languages.
When teaching any language with the right strategies and support we can create truly inclusive language classrooms where all students will be able to reach their full potential, also those whose brain processes information in a different way.