Bonus Episode #1: Edmen Leong on Helping Children with Dyslexia Learn to Read
Summary Keywords
dyslexia, child, read, learners, challenges, dyslexic, decoding, students, reversals, teacher, learning, word, understand, language, classroom, Singapore, thinking, letters, knowledge, dyslexia association
00:04 Host, Loh Chin Ee
What do Steven Spielberg, Steve Jobs and Lee Kuan Yew have in common? Well, besides being famous, they are dyslexic. Worldwide estimates that dyslexia affect 5 -15% of the population, which is why we need to understand it better. In this bonus episode of the How We Read podcast, I decided to explore dyslexia, a topic you might be interested in. Bonus episodes run a little differently from the regular episodes and are structured as straight interviews for listeners interested to find out more about a particular perspective on a topic. I’m Loh Chin Ee. Welcome to the ‘How We Read’ podcast.
00:45 Host, Loh Chin Ee
To tell us more about dyslexia and what we can do to help dyslexic children learning to read, I speak with Edmen Leong, Director of Specialised Educational Services at the Dyslexia Association of Singapore to find out more about dyslexia. Edmen is also completing his PhD/ at the National Institute of Education, exploring the links between dyslexia, motivation and engaged reading.
01:11 Host, Loh Chin Ee
First things first. What exactly is dyslexia?
01:15 Edmen Leong
Dyslexia can be characterized by problems with accurate or fluent word recognition, poor decoding and poor spelling abilities. This is the main problem of dyslexia. And because of these problems, it usually will lead on to secondary consequences, such as reduced reading comprehension, reduced reading experiences, or a challenge in vocabulary growth, for example, and of course, challenge in writing.
01:39 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Dyslexia is a condition that can often be undiagnosed until well into adulthood. What are the signs that parents should know are possible markers that their child might be dyslexic?
01:51 Edmen Leong
What's most common is reversals. You hear of reversals, meaning, the misunderstanding of how the letters B and D are formed. Confusion between the two BD, PQ. But there are also other common challenges. For example, missing letters when you're reading, missing letters when you're spelling. Adding letters, for example, is possible as well. But these are just some signs, they may not necessarily mean that a child has dyslexia if you see some of these signs in a child. So I can give you two examples. One example is that children who are a lot younger. Sometimes, during that early age when they're still picking up the language, they may not already know the structure of the language. My own daughter, for example, she do show some signs of reversals when she's growing up. The reason why is because she haven't exactly understood that language. So that is why they’re delaying the assessment for dyslexia till at the age of six. So only when you're six, when you're going to school in Primary One, then you diagnose and see whether this particular child has dyslexia. Another example I can share is my experience when I volunteered to teach in a school in Thailand. It was quite an eye opener because when I went into the classroom, what I realized when I got them to spell, I realized that they had a whole lot of reversals. So I started to think a little bit more and wonder why. And I realized that actually, the Thai alphabet kind of looks like inverted English letters to some extent. So these are just two examples of how reversals, missing letters, things like that can be signs of dyslexia, but it is actually important to go through the assessments to really tell if a child has dyslexia.
03:19 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Is there a difference/ between dyslexia in different languages?
03:23 Edmen Leong
Dyslexia is not exactly language specific, you see. So when you see dyslexia, it does not mean that it's really a problem with English language and that's it. So you are right, dyslexia can come as a challenge to other languages as well. But there is a difference between the phonological languages. Dyslexia being an issue with phonology actually, the phonological languages. Phonemic awareness, for example, is a challenge for languages not only in English, but the other phonological languages. For Chinese, that language is a little bit more unique because (the way) Chinese words are thought or read, it's a little bit different. It's logo graphic, so they are pictorial. The challenges of a dyslexic child for the Chinese language may be different. So for example, the lack of the ability to recognize the different morphemes, or the structure of the word, that could happen as well. Also, understanding that dyslexia is really a spectrum of reading challenges, so there might be some children with both issues with English and Chinese. There might be children with phonological issues, and therefore probably more so in English than Chinese.
04:29 Host, Loh Chin Ee
What are the challenges a dyslexic child will face in learning to read, compared to a non-dyslexic child?
04:37 Edmen Leong
It is actually quite good to have this comparison between a dyslexic child and a typical child. I can think of an example, probably more so for a younger age than eight, to understand a little bit more of language acquisition and how the child picks up that language from when the child is born till the age of eight, for example. If you think of how each of us, the two of us, and probably the audience out there, how we exactly picked up the ability to read. If I think how I learned how to read, it really seemed like it came naturally. So my mom read me books and I watched television shows and I had conversations, I overhear conversations. And through all of these exposure and experience, I kind of automatically acquired the ability to read. A dyslexic child, however, the way that child learn to read is not that automatic. They require a lot of guidance, a lot of systematic, progressive kind of intervention and training. So, for example, instead of being able to recognize a simple word or sentence from a children's storybook, after a few times of exposure from a parent reading to the child, this dyslexic learner might not be able to pick that up. And therefore, we need to break down that single word into very small categories and small phonemes and build up that knowledge of that word for that child to pick it up.
05:55 Host, Loh Chin Ee
What’s one example of a word that a person might read automatically that would be difficult for a dyslexic child?
06:02 Edmen Leong
When I was a first-year teacher with my organization, the Dyslexia Association of Singapore, I came across a Secondary Two boy. I mean, I knew what dyslexia was, I knew that it was challenges for reading. When I went into the classroom and I got him to read the first sentence, I was shocked by his inability to read very simple words. So, just for example, the word love. L-O-V-E, he can’t read the word love. For example, the word clap, he was not able to read it as well, just by looking at it. So we do need to break it down for him in order to him understand how the word clap is being read.
06:35 Host, Loh Chin Ee
How would you teach/ a dyslexic child to read CLAP?
06:38 Edmen Leong
How to read the word clap? So this is a strategy to teach dyslexic child, for example. So let's say you want to teach the child how to read ‘clap’, have the words printed big on a piece of paper. This is called ‘blending’ by the way. So we cover all the letters except for the first letter, the letter ‘C’, and prior to this, we would have already trained that particular child how does the letter ‘C’ sound. So he will say ‘C’ sounds like /k/. After that you cover everything and reveal the letter ‘L’, and then get the child to read the sound ‘L’. So the child will say, /l/. And then you reveal both ‘C’ and ‘L’ and get him to read together. ‘C’ and ‘L’ together goes /kl/. And then you progress on and on and on. And depending on the length of the word, you just carry on expanding until the child is able to read this automatically. So this is of course, the initial stage whereby a child is still not really blending words properly. But eventually, when this this skill becomes automatic, the ability to read becomes a lot faster.
07:39 Host, Loh Chin Ee
It is really tiring for a child to go for many extra lessons to get better at reading. How can we encourage or motivate dyslexic kids with their reading?
07:48 Edmen Leong
So many things to expand on this, actually. So the first thing I want to share with regards to your comment is yes, it is actually very cognitively challenging. And I think a lot of the challenges with reading and learners with dyslexia is because, for example, the amount of time and effort spent in trying to understand how exactly to read the word ‘clap’. Because of the cognitive load for just reading the word ‘clap’, the child is not able to actually understand what exactly the entire sentence was trying to tell him. So that really restricts this particular child in in in reading, and this is reading comprehension, right? So you've asked about how it is possible to motivate the children. One very important point is encouragement and building up of self-esteem. A challenge that we see in our classroom in all of the learners that I see is that because they are failing in school, they're feeling in their ability to read, they always come in with a very negative self-perception. Very common I come into my classroom and I have students coming into me crying and telling me that their friends are laughing at them because they're not able to read in class, or sometimes the teacher doesn't understand why she's not submitting her homework on time and things like that. So these actually add on to the already negative self-perception that the child already has, because this child is already failing in school. Motivation comes with teachers. Not just an educator who teaches a child with dyslexia, but also the parents of the child, the school teachers, we need to come together and understand the learning needs of this child, encourage this child to progress as a whole.
09:19 Host, Loh Chin Ee
What is the role of motivation in encouraging dyslexic children to read?
09:24 Edmen Leong
I think one of the reasons why the students are not motivated is because, for example, I mentioned the word ‘clap’ earlier, imagine you have a page of very interesting text, but this child goes there and does this: /k/, /l/, /a/, /klap/. The process of picking up that particular word and understanding the sentence is just too slow, to a point whereby the child loses that interest in the content of the book. So what I found in a study that I have done some time back was that when I tried to ease the words in a page or try to put a few pictures to try to tell the story of the particular passage, the participants in the experiments comment were that they actually really appreciated the fact that they were able to understand the story, the big picture of the story, which is something that learners with dyslexia very rarely encounter or experience. To answer your question, I think the knowledge and the learning of decoding needs to happen, because without decoding, the child is not able to pick up individual words to read. But at the same time, we do need to kind of provide opportunities for children to enjoy stories through other possible means. It's not just about enjoying stories, it's also about acquiring knowledge. Because if you're able to read text, then you're able to acquire and absorb knowledge, and this is really not accessible to a lot of these learners who are not able to read. The answer to that question is really the need to work in both directions, bottom-up and top-down. So learning how to decode individual words, at the same time, trying to give this exposure of stories and knowledge to these children with all kinds of alternate means.
10:57 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Singapore classrooms typically have 30-40 students, and for such a large class, there has to be a fixed curriculum. How can the Singapore education system better support children with these learning needs?
09:24 Edmen Leong
The first comment I would like to point out for this point is that our education system has been really working very hard to try to support all kinds of learners. But as you mentioned, there are challenges mainly because of the size of the class. In a class of such large size, usually the learners with dyslexia or the learners with learning needs get left behind, because the teachers can’t exactly afford to wait for the pace of this particular child. The teacher has the other children to account for as well. But the education system has been thinking about this. MOE, they have been developing this thing called the SDR or the School Dyslexia Remediation programme. So this is where students will be removed from their original class and then they'll have additional intervention for them. Within the classroom setting, I think what will be useful for the teachers to do is actually to properly understand the challenges of this child. So put this child in front or match this child with a buddy who is probably a little bit faster to support this child. This is already ongoing in the classrooms. It's really dependent on the awareness of dyslexia and how familiar the teacher is with dyslexia. A very important push for the education system as a whole is to ensure that this awareness, this support, and the self-esteem of these individuals are accounted for in progressing forward.
12:21 Host, Loh Chin Ee
The children Edmen mentioned are likely to have been diagnosed. But there may be children who are not diagnosed, and a teacher may not be trained to tell whether a child is dyslexic or not. Some children may also have learning difficulties that may be not categorized as dyslexia. How can we begin to identify these learning needs?
12:41 Edmen Leong
Identifying learning needs is always going to be a challenge. If you're just talking about dyslexia and how many dyslexic learners they are in Singapore and in the world, for example, we know of a whole lot of learners with dyslexia that we teach in my organization. We have 3000 to 3005 learners with dyslexia but I do come across a lot of friends who are teachers who tell me about the children that they see, they're undiagnosed and asking for strategies to support them. You are right in the way that you have mentioned – how that there are actually a whole range of students that with several kinds of learning difficulties that have yet to be identified. What's really important is not so much of the label, the identification, because every child, dyslexic or not, whether you have a certain learning disability, or whether you have other challenges, they're important and their learning styles. The way they acquire knowledge is going to be very different. So what's really important is the knowledge of that teacher to account for the differences of a child. If the child has challenges to a certain extent that requires some form of intervention, the teachers need to have the ability to be able to differentiate whether or not these children require additional help and where to direct them to. This has to do with teacher education, knowledge of the teachers in acquiring and picking up some of these students.
13:59 Host, Loh Chin Ee
I asked Edmen for some of his final thoughts on teaching dyslexic children to read?
14:05 Edmen Leong
The importance of thinking in the angle of celebrating strengths. It's just a matter of how society developed in such a way that the way we are acquiring knowledge is through reading and writing. The way we access knowledge is through reading and writing. So, for example, the exams. How well we do in the exams is determined by how well you write down the knowledge that you have on a piece of paper. So many times, our learners with dyslexia, they face failure. Very important thing to note is to celebrate success, and to celebrate the strengths of some of these children. Do not focus on the academics, the challenges in reading and writing, but focus on all the other successes in this particular child.
14:50 Host, Loh Chin Ee
We need to focus on the successes. When children see that they are successful at reading, it motivates them to read more.
14:58 Edmen Leong
I interviewed the students at the end of this study and the interview was so exciting and thought-provoking because I discovered really something that I didn't discover prior to the study. I really felt and saw the excitement of the children that I interviewed. And the excitement came with that final possibility in understanding a story. A lot of them, there are a few of them that I interviewed, and all of them revolved around the same point, which is, whoah, finally I can see the story as a whole. I can understand the big picture of the story. So this is something that they have never been able to discover. They have never been able to look into. In that context, even the children themselves are celebrating their success in finally being able to enjoy a story like the rest of us.
14:50 Host, Loh Chin Ee
The goal of reading is understanding and in our roles as teachers, we want all children, dyslexic or not, to be able to understand and to see the story as a whole. Thank you for listening to the ‘How We Read’ podcast bonus episode on Dyslexia. Swipe on the cover art to see show notes with links and references. We’re available on all major podcast apps. Please subscribe to be notified of new episodes. For more information please visit lohchinee.com.