Languages and Learning Disabilities

I just received a very interesting inquiry from an expat in Sweden who is struggling to learn Swedish after many years due to her dyslexia. This is a very unique challenge. Pronunciation in Swedish is also very challenging, as they have more vowel sounds than English does, and grammar is also very complicated, so she has her work cut out for her!

First and foremost, I think people with genuine, diagnosed learning challenges like this (and the rest of us too, actually) need to take stock of their strengths, and identify how they managed to succeed in school as children. Did they have a strategy for reading long texts? How did they learn to spell? Any tips or tricks or mnemonic devices they developed? Make an actual list of these strategies, and post them somewhere very visible for easy reference. You can add to the list whenever you experiment with something new that works, and increase the "tools" in your mental "toolbox."

Second, it's important to take small steps. Dyslexia can cause ideas to jumble up on paper and in the mind, so if there are too many items on a list, too many long sentences with small font, etc. it can be visually overwhelming and give people a sense of futility from the start. Consider limiting any vocabulary list to ten words. Or even five. Use large font, and double ot triple space from line to line. Cover other words or sentences with your hand or a piece of paper so you are only seeing one word or sentence/line of text at a time, and try reading out loud, which forces your eyes to focus and register what they see more consciously. Even for those of us without this problem, reading aloud can help us consciously register more of the text, whereas we otherwise may visually skim a paragraph or so and upon getting to the end, think: "What did I just read?"

These are just a few strategies. We'll address strategies for dealing with learing disabilities/disorders in future posts as well, so stay tuned!