Bilingualism and Dyslexia

By Colin R. Baker

Worried that bilingualism might cause dyslexia in your child? Stop worrying! But make sure you take the steps to ensure your child receives the best support possible!

Dyslexia: Problems in learning to read, word blindness where students may have difficulty in, for example, distinguishing different letter shapes and words. (Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, published by Multilingual Matters: www.multilingualmatters.com.)

Dyslexia is definitely not caused by bilingualism. There is no evidence that links dyslexia with being brought up as a bilingual or that ownership (e.g. from birth) of two or more spoken languages exacerbates dyslexia. This is the case irrespective of whether the child has mild, moderate or severe dyslexia. Wherever the child is placed on the continuum from mild to very severe dyslexia, understanding and speaking two or more languages does not trigger dyslexia.

Nevertheless, a dyslexic’s problems will mean decisions about what language should be used to begin to learn to read and write. In one language or two? In the school language or a home language? In a majority language like English or in the minority language? In answering these questions (see below), it should be borne in mind that dyslexics have varied types and degrees of problems that will affect learning to read and write to a different extent.

First, parents of a dyslexic child are sometimes advised to concentrate on the child’s school language particularly in learning to read and write. Sometimes (e.g. in Wales) the advice is to acquire literacy through a phonically consistent language (such as Welsh) rather than English (which is irregular and phonically inconsistent). For a dyslexic child, learning to read via a consistent phonetic language has advantages in ease and speed of learning.

An example is a language where the same letter or combination of letters always makes the same sound (e.g. Italian). The dyslexic child learns the ‘sound rule’ quicker than a language (e.g. English) that is irregular. In English, one letter can be pronounced in different ways (e.g. ‘a’ in cave and have; ‘e’ in her and here; ‘i’ in pint and mint). In English, a group of letters may change seemingly arbitrarily in their sound (e.g. ‘ough’ in tough, through, bough). For dyslexics, English is a particularly complex and more difficult language to learn to read and write.

This means that, where a child speaks two languages of which one is phonically inconsistent, if other things are reasonably equal, the better ‘first language for learning to read’ will be the phonically consistent one.

Second, if the only school language is English (or another irregular language), then it is usually sensible to concentrate on English reading and writing. If reading and writing in school is solely through English, then to ensure linguistic and intellectual development, English literacy must be stimulated. Reading is crucial for learning and study at school so the literacy of the school will be a major influence on the ‘first language for learning to read’.

Third, once a child has achieved reasonable literacy skills in one language there are two effects. (a) The child has gained confidence in reading. For a dyslexic, such confidence is important for success to breed an expectation of more success (e.g. learning to read in a second language). When there is repeated failure in learning to read, it becomes disheartening for the child and increases the literacy problem. (b) Having acquired some skills in reading and writing on one language, there will be a transfer of skills into the second language: recognizing that letters mean sounds, decoding words as parts and wholes, making sensible guesses at words, understanding the meaning of a word in a sentence from the whole sentence, and that there are clues about words from previous sentences and pictures.

This means that a dyslexic child should not be banned from becoming biliterate. It implies that, once there is a solid foundation of reading and writing in one language, the other language can be introduced particularly when there is sufficient self-interest, self-confidence and educational support. Often, the dyslexic child itself triggers an interest in acquiring second language literacy.

Fourth, should a dyslexic learn to read in two languages simultaneously in the initial stages? The answer is typically ‘no’. For a dyslexic, learning literacy skills in one language is often slow and very difficult. Being taught two different systems at the same time from the outset will usually compound difficulties in acquiring the skills to read each language, developing at a fast enough rate to support curriculum learning, and developing confidence as a competent reader and writer.

However, if the environment is biliterate (e.g. with street signs and packaging in two languages), many inquisitive children will want to engage with both languages when they see them. Helping them to remember key words visually without necessarily learning the whole phonic system in the more complex language in the early stages may be satisfying for them, can be fun, and may lay the basis for later development of a broader range of reading and writing skills including biliteracy.

© Colin R. Baker.

Colin Baker, one of the most prolific writers on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, is a professor at the University of Wales, Bangor. Among his most popular publications is the book A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism by Multilingual Matters (2nd ed., 2000). His Foundation of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (2001, 2006) is the most widely read text on theory and research on bilingualism. Colin Baker is also the founder and editor of the International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. His Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education (1998) won the British Association for Applied Linguistics Book Prize Award for 1999.

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