ELL Students and Dyslexia presented at ORBIDA 2008 Annual Conference “Literacy Across the Spectrum

1. ELL Students and Dyslexiapresented atORBIDA 2008 Annual Conference“Literacy Across the Spectrum Julie Esparza Brown Portland State University jebrown@pdx.edu

2. Read This… ghoughphtheightteeau

3. a as in neighbor o as in dough o as in plateau gh ough phth eigh tte eau t as in gazette t as in phthisis p as in hiccough What is the word?

4. How did you approach the task? • Did you: • Struggle to figure out what sounds the letters said? • Feel that you should be able to read it but just couldn’t? • Give up? • These are the frustrations and emotions that individuals with dyslexia experience every time they look at written language.

5. Now consider the ELL student who must figure out that the following words are all pronounced differently: Meat Great Threat Or that “great” and “straight” rhyme. Or, that “sure” and “shot” have the same onset. Confusion for ELLs

6. The Context… • Out of every classroom of 30 students • 6 are poor and beset by multiple socioeconomic problems • 10 are ethnic or racial minority • 6 are language minority students • 4 ELL • 2 immigrant • 4 Spanish-speaking • 1 speak an Asian language • 1 speaks one of more than 100 other languages

7. Language Acquisition • All language is acquired in stages and all children go through more or less the same stages at more of less the same time. • It is not acquired through simple imitation. • Rather, the child infers a system of rules. • This supports the hypothesis that human beings are genetically programmed to acquire language. • Language is not a function of intelligence or intellectual abilities.

8. BICS CALP Two Aspects of Language

9. Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) • Language proficiency needed in order to function in everyday interpersonal contexts: • Greetings, words of courtesy • Numbers/calculations • Playground conversation • Communication used in daily routines • Communicative capacity all normal children acquire which reaches a plateau soon after child enters school • Not related to academic achievement • Universal across all native speakers • Typically attained after two-three years in host country

10. Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) • Language needed for literacy and academic success • Language required for: • Solving mathematical word problems • Reading academic texts • Taking tests • Writing exposition on a topic one has read about • CALP in L1 and L2 overlap, in spite of important differences in the “surface features” of each language • Typically attained between five to seven years in host country but up to twelve years when native language is not used for instruction

11. Preproduction Stage (No BICS) This stage is sometimes called the silent period because students are likely to be quiet listeners for much of this period. The student is dependent upon modeling, visual aides, and contextual clues to obtain and convey meaning. Research indicates it is at least four times more efficient to teach for comprehension rather than production at this stage. • Students communicate with gestures and actions (communicate their comprehension nonverbally) • Students can follow basic instruction and grasp main ideas by focusing on key words • Teacher utilizes Total Physical Response (TPR) techniques • Focus is on listening comprehension and building receptive vocabulary

12. Early Production (Early BICS) Students begin to produce words and short phrases in response to comprehensible (understandable) input. Students will understand approximately four times the amount of language they can produce. Difficulties with syntax and grammar will be evident. • Common nouns, verbs and adjectives emerge first • Vocabulary must be learned in context of themes, stories, or personal lives of students • Activities should be designed to motivate students to produce vocabulary which they already understand

13. Speech Emergence (Intermediate BICS) Students have now acquired a limited vocabulary and can respond to literal questions which have been made comprehensible. Students use simple phrases and sentences and will continue to have difficulty with syntax and grammar. • Errors of omission are common • Lessons should continue to expand receptive vocabulary through comprehensible input and encourage higher level of language use

14. Intermediate Fluency Stage (advanced BICS/emerging CALP) Students continue to develop excellent comprehension and are beginning to function in normal conversation. However, they continue to lack the sufficient academic language to compete with native English speakers. Their speech will still contain some grammatical errors. • Students should be presented with opportunities to produce responses that require creativity, critical thinking skills and complex sentence structures • Students actively initiate and engage in communication with fluency • Literacy skills and academic language are continuing to develop

18. Three More Language Concepts Primary Language (L1) Dominant Language Language Proficiency

19. Primary Language • The language: • that the student learns first and uses most frequently in the early stages of language development • of the home, used to make and establish meaningful communicative relationships with their family members • Best determined through home language surveys and carefully conducted parent interviews

20. Dominant Language • The language that: • the student speaks most fluently • the child prefers to speak when given the choice • can be situational in nature. For example, a child schooled only in English will ultimately become dominant in English academic language. • may remain dominant in other social situations such as church or community events

21. Language Proficiency • The student’s level of skill or amount of control in use of a particular language • Defined as the ability to “effectively communicate or understand thoughts or ideas through the language’s grammatical system and its vocabulary, using its sounds or written symbols” • Full proficiency in L1 contributes to the development of the L2 • Language proficiency is not a static state but rather a constant state of fluctuation.

22. Opportunities to Develop Languages • Many ELL students have immigrated to the U.S. or are children of immigrants. • Therefore, many ELL students’ families qualify for free and reduced lunch and are economically struggling. • While these families possess many other resources, language opportunities in L1 (as well as L2) may be limited. • Research (Hart & Risley, 1995) has shown that socioeconomic status significantly impacts children’s L1 language development.

24. Normal Second Language Processes – NOT Disorders • Language loss when the students’ opportunities in L1 are minimized • Language test scores similar to those of children with language disorders • Dysfluencies associated with lack of vocabulary, word finding difficulties, sequencing of ideas, and tension surrounding expressive attempts • Code-switching is a natural stage in second language acquisition

25. Normal Second Language Processes – NOT Disorders • It is not possible for a bilingual child to have a language disorder in L2 and not in L1. • A disorder may exist if language is atypical when student is compared with peers from same group, who speak the same dialect and have had similar language opportunities.

26. Language Delays • Sometimes, dyslexic ELL students are not referred for assessment because it is thought that their difficulties stem from trying to learning a second language and trying to learn in that second language. • This may delay the delivery of appropriate interventions.

27. The Importance of the First Language • If ELL students are strong in their first language (L1), then expect their linguistic strengths to transfer to the language of the school. • If an ELL student experiences fluency and phonemic awareness/phonological decoding difficulties in L1, then there may be a learning disability or dyslexia and the students should be assessed in their first language.

28. Common Underlying Proficiency or CUP (Cummins) • A study conducted by Leafstedt and Gerber (2005) suggests that phonological processes are cross-linguistic processes • Therefore, instruction and/or measurement in L1 provides information regarding performance in L2.

30. Comprehensible Input • What is Comprehensible Input? • It is meaningful language that is available to students and is therefore useful in developing their proficiency. Language that can be understood from context. • What is Input + 1? • It is language to which children are exposed that contains some structures a little beyond what they are able to understand in the second language. • Why is it important to use authentic language in context? • Children cannot acquire language skills that are divorced from context of meaning and use. Use “whole” texts (e.g., stories, books).

31. Comprehensible Input • Use simplified codes: • Articulate clearly • Increase volume on key words • Exaggerate intonation • Use fewer idioms and less slang • Use high frequency vocabulary • Use personalized language and nouns (reduce pronouns)Use non-linguistic cues: • Gestures • Facial expressions • Body language • Pantomine • Use manipulatives, realia, visuals: • Videos • Pictures, photos, drawings • Real objects • Hands-on activities • Use prior content introduction in the primary language: • “Preview, view, review”

32. Brain Research • We need to remember that an ELL child is not merely coping with the challenges of learning to read English, but is also at a fairly early stage in developing a bilingual brain circuitry to spoken language. • Studies have reported overlapping systems for the spoken forms of L1 and L2 in fluent bilinguals, but the degree of overlap appears to depend heavily upon factors such as age of acquisition, degree of proficiency in L1 and L2.

33. Brain Research • Highly proficient speakers of L2 show greater integration of L1 and L2 in the brain than less proficient speakers. • Thus, spoken language proficiency in L2, by virtue of its effects on brain organization for speech, might impact the ways in which reading circuits develop as literacy skills as taught (Kim et al., 1997;, Klein, Milner, Zatoree, Meyer, & Evans, 1995; Perani et al., 1998).

35. Discuss • Do you think there are equal percentages of individuals with dyslexia in transparent and opaque languages? • Why or why not?

36. Prevalence • The incidence of severe reading disabilities is around 5 percent in all alphabetic languages while the prevalence across languages depends upon the transparency of the orthography (Snowling, 2000).

37. What are Transparent and Opaque Phonologies? • Transparent: phonologically regular orthography • Finnish • German • Spanish • Opaque: phonologically less regular orthography • English

38. Spanish Phonology • Spanish has clear syllables. • It also has a small inventory of syllables with only 19 structures. • There is nearly 1:1 correspondence between letters and sounds with five exceptions: • c • g • r • ll • Y • Therefore, Spanish-speaking children master the alphabetic principle and develop spelling skills relatively early compared to English speakers.

39. Etiologies • New brain imaging techniques show that the brains of dyslexic people process language differently. • Phonological weaknesses make it hard for students to deal with an alphabetic script • Research also suggests that rapid automatized naming (RAN) seems to be a main characteristic of children with RD (Korhonen, 1995; Novoa & Wolf, 1984.

40. Etiologies • It was found that in both German and Dutch (both transparent languages) naming speed was a robust predictor of reading performance (Frith, Wimmer, & Landerl, 1998; de Jong & van der Leijk, 2003) • Spanish-speaking children with RD also had difficulty in reading fluency and orthography. • It appears that in transparent languages phonological skills are a key predictor of reading. • The second key predictor in transparent languages is RAN.

41. Research Across Languages • Studies demonstrate that normally progressing preschool children demonstrate good: • Phonological awareness of sylables • Onsets • Rimes • Around the ages of 3-4 • Syllable awareness • Around the ages of 4-5 • Onset-time awareness • Phoneme awareness only develops once children are taught to read and write.

42. What is Needed to Read in Any Language • The first step in becoming literate are the acquisition of the system for mapping between sound and symbol. • Mastery of this system allows children to access the thousands of words already present in their spoken lexicon. • The process of learning and applying these mappings has been called phonological recoding.

43. Phonological Recoding Deficits • Ziegler & Goswami (2005) found in their review that deficits in phonological recording underlie reading disabilities in all alphabetic languages. • Thus, children learning to read in transparent languages may master the process of mapping print to sound and sound to print more quickly than children learning to read in English (or another language with opaque orthography).

44. The Importance of Phonological Awareness • Many studies show a language-universal sequence in the development of phonological awareness (Cicero and Royer, 1995; Durgunoglu and Oney, 1999; Goswami and East, 2000). • Goswami (2001) notes, “…there is a causal connection between a child’s phonological awareness and his or her reading and spelling development” (p. 141).

45. Characteristics of Spanish-speakers with RD • Findings by Jimenez and Ramiez (2002)with native Spanish readers reinforce the hypothesis that the basis of reading problems is a difficulty in phonological processing. • Implications: Speech perception is an effective component in phonological training (Ortiz, Garcia, & Guzman, 2002).

46. Characteristics of Spanish-speakers with RD • Spanish speakers, even those with RD appear to be able to divide words into syllables but the difficulty comes at the phoneme level. • Ortiz et al., (2007) found that the performance of Spanish-speaking children with RD was lower than age-matched non-disabled readers in discriminating initial phonemes.

47. Characteristics of Spanish-speakers with RD • These students consistently display poorer phonological awareness skills and use a phonological strategy (sounding out) less often than peers without RD.

48. Characteristics of Spanish-speakers with RD • Research (Jimenez, 1997; Jimenez & Hernandez-Valle, 200; Rodrigo & Jimenez, 1999) has found that purely phonological deficits are less common in Spanish. • Poor readers in Spanish often read words with accuracy but their main problem is decoding unusual or low-frequency words and nonwords (Escribano, 2007). • Assessing rapid serial naming appears to be very important.

49. Naming Speed in Transparent Languages • It was found that in both German and Dutch (transparent languages) naming speed was a robust predictor of reading performance (Frith, Wimmer, & Landerl, 1998; de Jong & van der Leij, 2003).

50. The Importance of Early Intervening • McCardle et al. (2005) report that ELL students are identified as having a learning disability most often in grades 4 through 6, 2 – 3 years later than most English-only children. • It is probable that this delay may ultimately affect their academic success.