Not long ago, a student wrote to their language program at my institution sharing that their language study helped them with certain aspects of their dyslexia. Essentially, they noted that their dyslexia makes it hard for them to read and write and having to learn a second set of linguistic rules to follow “made it easier for my brain to read harder letter combinations.” I have a few theories about what underpinned the relative ease this student reported.
For one thing, I would imagine that the structured time afforded by regular classroom language teaching provided this student with a platform for dedicated and consistent repetition and practice with certain forms, over and over again (which you don’t get in quite the same way with naturalistic home language acquisition). For another thing, explicitness is very often a a force for good when it comes to language education for disabled students (see Kormos, 2020 and Konyndyk, 2011), and instructed second language learning tends to have more opportunity for explicit strategies than first language learning which is highly implicit in nature. That’s not to ignore the current prevalent emphasis on implicit teaching methods and communicative strategies in instructed settings that mimic some of what goes into home language acquisition, but I think it’s safe to say that we generally get much less explicit language tutelage in our home languages compared to instructed second language learning.
It seems like the structure, practice, repetition, and relative explicitness and directness of their language study probably contributed to this dyslexic student’s positive experience reading and writing in another language and helped mitigate some learning effects they typically feel in other areas of their education.
Caitlin Cornell 