Teaching Dyslexic Children the English Language.

My name is Luqman Michel. I am a retiree. I have been successfully teaching dyslexic children for more than 5 years. I would like to share with all of you my findings and would be happy to receive your comments and views.

There are many definitions for dyslexia. One of them is: “Dyslexia is a learning disability”.

I disagree with this definition. How can one say dyslexia is a learning disability when there are many things children with dyslexia learn at a much faster rate compared with children without dyslexia?

They can solve puzzles (the kind where you fit cut up pictures to form a picture) at great speed. Most of the dyslexic children I teach can do them faster than I can. Lee Kwan Yew, Tom Cruise and Jay Leno are dyslexics and I would not dare say that they have a learning disability. Most of our “learning abilities” are nowhere near theirs.

Another definition for dyslexia is: “Difficulty in learning a language”. I believe that this definition has come about because most of the people who write about dyslexia are from English-speaking countries.

All the dyslexic children I have taught speak and learn at least two languages. They have to learn both Bahasa Malaysia (Malay) and English. Most of them also had to learn Mandarin in school. I found that all of them had no problem reading Malay and Han Yu Pin Yin (romanised Mandarin).

How is it that they can read fluently (yes, fluently) in Malay and Han Yu Pin Yin and yet struggle with reading in English?

Is it correct to say that they have a language disability? I don’t think so. In fact, I completely disagree.

Recently, I met a friend who is working in Mozambique and he says the Portuguese language is also phonetic. He pointed out that the people in Mozambique also have a hard time studying the English language. I have had no time to check this out but I believe he must be right.

It is obvious to me that my students with dyslexia are very logical in their thinking and they don’t have a problem learning phonetically-correct languages like Malay and Mandarin (in Han Yu Pin Yin). However, they have a problem learning the English language which is not phonetically logical to them. In another words dyslexic children have a problem learning orthographically inconsistent languages such as  the English Language.

Another definition is that dyslexia is a lack of coordination between sight and sound. I will let you decide if this definition is correct. If you say that the definition is correct, my question to you is, “Why is it then that my dyslexic students can coordinate between sight and sound and can read Malay and Han Yu Pin Yin with ease?

Are Malay and Mandarin not languages?

Another question that comes to my mind is, “Who are the people who coined these definitions?”

My guess is that the definitions were coined by those who do not know how to write nor speak in any language other than the English language.

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