I am an assistant teacher at a rural junior high school in Japan. In each of my classes I have a few kids who can`t read or have difficulty reading. For many of them, I assume they are not good at English or lack the motivation to learn. There is one 8th grade student, however, who is attentive during class, but his reading and writing skills are terrible. I have seen him writing letters backwards and often copying words down incorrectly even when it is written on the board. For some reason, in his case, I feel compelled to think that he may have a learning disability. Does anyone know anything about recognizing dyslexia in non-native English speakers (Japanese being in no way like English). Is there a way to help students, or does it just come down to the students wanted to learn and putting in the time and effort to do so? Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.
English Second Language Dyslexia Question
I saw your post on the LD forum. You may wish to check out this website it has a lot of adaptive tools for students who have learning disabilities. May be particularly interested in Universal Reader with integrated translation. It can translate back and forth between Japanese and English. It will also read in both languages to the students.
http://www.readingmadeez.com/UniversalReaderIGT.php
Jim Nuttall — Michigan
Dictated with speech recognition software Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.1.
www.geocities.com/jnuttallphd
Re: English Second Language Dyslexia Question
Teachinginjapan,
Try doing some reading on vision therapy and the sort of vision problems it addresses. You will find that not only the student you’re concerned about manifests symptoms of a vision problem, but you will probably also begin to wonder about some of your other low achievers.
Your attentive student is still trying. By junior high, most kids with vision challenges have given up and found other ways to get through the school day with their self esteem intact. (Note how you, yourself, think that they are incapable or just don’t care—they have been getting those messages from teachers since the first year of school.
The website for developmental optometrists at www.covd.org has information and also lists two practitioners in Japan, one in Nagoya and one in Kasugai. If either of these is convenient, you should consider mentioning them to the parents of your student.
If you’d like to learn about vision therapy from my personal perspective, I’ve been building a website at [url]http://ontrackreading.com[/url] for the past month. Take a look at [b]The OnTrack Reading Story[/b] on the sidebar of my site.
Good luck in finding help for your student
Rod Everson
[url=http://ontrackreading.com]OnTrack Reading[/url]
I work occassionally with kids who are ELL and LD. This makes for an extremely difficult situation.
Much like any native English speakers, they are going to need extra supports to help them overcome their LD. There are many helpful books on Dyslexia which would give you ideas that may help this student.