Hi! I have a friend whose child is having difficulty in learning to read. She is first grade and speaks excellent English. However,both parents are from Peurto Rico and speak Spanish first, then English. Since it is now spring, should the child still be having a problem with the reading? Hard to tell where the problem might be an ld or because of ESL.Obviously, if it is ld, the problem should be addressed. Would a school eval be able to tell the difference? I appreciate any help you can give. I haven’t come across this problem before.Thanks!!!
Re: possible ld in esl child
I agree with Victoria. My suggestion would be for the parents to get a copy of Reading Reflex by McGuiness and use that to tutor their daughter. The book is written specifically for parents, and lays out the why’s and how’s very clearly.
Mary
Re: possible ld in esl child
I certainly agree that tutoring is a good choice. My own inclination as to underlying causes would be more related to the language thing though. I recently evaluated a middle level student with a similar sort of background- and since it was new to me also in many respects I did a lot of reading about ESL and reading and written language development. This young person- who has been a fluent English speaker since first grade was also a slow starter in reading, continues to process a bit more slowly than the norm- though his basic skills are fine. The issue for him is that he translated what he heard and read into Spanish and then back to English when he had to respond. That is a huge amount of processing:) In my travels through research I found that this is actually fairly common with students in bilingual homes- especially in homes where at least one parent’s english if limited. So- it would seem that there is some justification for a slower start- and good tutoring would certainly be the solution.
Robin
Re: possible ld in esl child
I agree that tutoring is a good idea. I see a lot of second language learners at the high school where I teach. They are slower to read and to pick up the language they need for the classroom. If the child can already read in his first langauge than there isn’t an LD issue, If the child is learning English at the same time he is learning to read, it just has to take longer because part of what we do as readers learning to sound out words is to connect what we see in print with the words we already know. If he doesn’t have a huge English vocabulary, it will be harder for him to do it. If you think it’s more than just 2nd langauge, look for the same kinds of things you would look for in any kid who has LD, but find out if those problems exist in his first langauge. Parents or other fluent speakers of the language will have to help with the evaluation, but it is possible to identify a student with LD who is a seocond language learner, it is just a lot harder. If he does have LD, it should not be ignored.
Before I’d think of LD, I’d think of poor teaching. It’s more common. And poor programming, which is almost universal.
Many teachers start with an expectation of failure for ESL kids. Add that to the “hope-and-pray” system of whole language, and the child has probably never been taught much.
She should get tutoring right away, from you, or from the parents; lend them a good English phonics book and a few basal readers from pre-primer through first reader. At this stage, with a couple of months of tutoring, she can get on to grade level by the end of the school year. The system, will just say she was “immatuire” and she blossomed naturally, but for the sake of the kid you can let them have their illusions.
If a couple of months of tutoring from people who really care does not make any change, then I would start to ask about LD.