I really enjoyed reading the Chapter on “Reading
Disabilities” from the book “How the Special Needs Brain Learns”. I have a Kinesiology background and the
anatomy break down and diagrams were very helpful describing Dyslexia and how
people learn to read.
One of the first things that sparked my interest was the
concern of learning how to read at such an early age. I totally understand when they broke things down and
explained the linguistics of the English language. I just felt it was strange because when I taught ESL in
South Korea we were teaching 2-5 year olds how to speak, read and write
English. One of the things
that I found interesting was the connection between speaking and the ability of
reading. If people started talking
later in childhood then there was a connection between a reading
disability. In Korea all students
are taught how to read English and all of their textbooks are published in
English. They have excellent
reading comprehension and can read fluently but when it comes to speaking or
carrying on a conversation they don’t have it.
Last summer I took the Introduction to Disabilities course
and we talked a lot about invisible disabilities and the difficulties people
have because their disability is not out in the open. The readings made me think of this and how people with some
LDs have twice the difficulty with society and on top of that the article
pointed out how much more effort people with LDs have to work to
learn/read. I found this really
interesting article about Dyslexia and how it is known as an invisible
disability.
Candice, your comments about you students inKorea not being able to carry a conversation in English is a parallel problem in French immersion programs. So much emphasis is placed on the reading and writing aspects that often the ability to casually in the second language is overlooked therefore resulting in learners who can meet the outcomes but cannot use their second language in a real life situation.
ReplyDeleteI was just scrolling down to write a similar comment Ainslie :) FI see that a lot.
ReplyDeleteHi guys,
ReplyDeleteThat is very interesting because you would think... that if students did not have a background with the French language that their formative years in school would be focused on language and conversation not reading and writing! It seems that maybe we have that a little backwards in our way of thinking. I wonder if the FI programs in other provinces are similar or if any other programs do it differently?
Thanks for sharing, that was not something I had realized before! :)