Abstract

If a child can comprehend their surroundings, they will gain knowledge, learn with more confidence and feel a sense of achievement. Confidence and self-esteem are paramount in the development of a person’s education and character (Wood, 1998; Lawrence, 1987). Unfortunately for pedagogues and learners alike, there is not just one universal factor that hinders comprehension, nor is there one magical cure to allow all students to understand everything. Every learner is unique, including their learning preferences and their learning difficulties. When teaching English to non-native speakers, it is not often easy to distinguish between difficulties on account of English being their second language (L2) and problems in reading acquisition because of dyslexia or other literacy difficulties. The sooner their specific needs are identified, the sooner the students can receive the most appropriate help from their educational setting.

Introduction

Although my time in the Far East sparked my interest in Chinese culture and the language, the main reasons for me focusing on native Chinese speakers learning in English in this article are threefold.

Firstly, although every language on the planet is useful and worth learning, English and Chinese are presently the most international and widely used languages in the world.

Secondly, because the graphemics of English and Chinese are so different, it allows for more contrasting and, in my opinion, interesting research.

Finally, and most importantly, English is my first language (L1) and Mandarin Chinese my most fluent second language (L2), while my wife’s L1 is Mandarin Chinese and she is fluent in English as her L2. I live in a bilingual household where English and Chinese are given equal importance, respect and usage.

As we are living in an increasingly globalised world, more and more teachers in the UK find themselves teaching children whose first language (L1) is not English. The amount of non-native speakers in England alone who are being educated in English as the language of instruction doubled between 1997 and 2013 and is now at over a million (Department for Education, 2012). This figure translates as around 14% of students in England being non-native English speakers. In some schools, over 90% of their pupils have English as an additional language (Department for Education, 2012).

As of the last UN report on immigration (Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Population Division, 2013), the UK as a whole is the country with the sixth-highest net immigration in the world. Over the previous eighteen years, there has been a year-on-year increase in the number of children in primary and secondary schools in England who face a barrier in the form of a second language (L2).

Because of the facts stated in this paragraph, the UK—and England in particular—seems to be a good place to conduct the research that I wish to carry out.

Throughout this article, I usually use the term literacy difficulties to refer to dyslexia, dysgraphia, or other lesser-known neurodevelopmental differences which affect writing, reading, motor skills, and more. This term is used because I want to focus specifically on the language and literacy aspect of neurological differences, and I feel that, since there are so many different types and varying severities of literacy issues, the term literacy difficulties best encompasses a variety of neurological differences.

Besides the term literacy difficulties, dyslexia and SEN (Special Educational Needs) will be used occasionally, usually when referring to the school’s SEN department or quoting an author who prefers focusing specifically on dyslexia.

Due to ignorance or, more commonly, a lack of funding, lots of educational institutions in the UK put English as an Additional Language (EAL) students and students with literacy difficulties into the same literacy development classes and group them under the same title, such as Extra English, despite the fact that both types of students require very different types of assistance. This problem must be addressed, but in this article, I will instead be looking at how to identify when these two needs can be found in one pupil: a language barrier and a literacy difficulty.

Although it is not common, there are many difficulties that arise when a learner has both EAL needs and literacy difficulties. One of the main purposes of my article is to research and identify adequate assessment methods to reliably test for such difficulties in EAL learners.

There are examples in my personal career, as well as internationally (Geva, 2000, in Kormos and Smith, 2012), where literacy difficulties have been identified very late in an EAL student’s time studying in their L2, which may have been detrimental to their education. Late identification of literacy difficulties can lead to an irreversible experience of classroom failure and loss of confidence, regardless of whether the child is learning in their L1 or L2 (Turner, 1997).

My Present Situation

In my current position as Head of EAL, I am responsible for ensuring all of our school’s non-native English speakers acquire a level of English from which they are able to access the school curriculum. This level of English varies depending on the subject, as a lower level of English is needed to appreciate the art or music curriculum than is needed to access the curriculum of history or mainstream English.

The amount of EAL classes that each pupil has per week reflects their level of English; the lower their English ability, the more EAL classes they need. Regardless of their English ability, all EAL pupils will have the majority of their 41 weekly classes with British children, as they are more likely to build strong relationships with their peers in this way.

We put the integration element of their curriculum and the lives of our overseas students as a high priority and passively discourage EAL students from spending all of their time with their compatriots. If we did not allow them to integrate with native-speaking peers in the classroom, they would be less likely to socialise with native English speakers outside of the classroom, and an important element of their education would be lost.

To socialise with native speakers their own age—and to be seen as less different or less of an outsider—is paramount for improving their English ability and building their motivation and confidence. Dweck (1986) and Kyriacou (2009) point out the importance of motivation toward learning.

Fortunately, in my EAL classroom, if my students did not previously have an interest in foreign language learning, their present situation seems to motivate them to learn English, as improvement in their L2 will make their lives in the UK easier. As around 90% of our school population speaks English as their mother tongue and the remaining 10% have a mixture of L1s, my students are generally very motivated to improve their English and integrate more with their peers from the UK and the rest of the world through the medium of English.

Although motivation assists with aptitude in foreign language learning, being keen does not guarantee success. One factor that could negatively affect a student’s aptitude in the learning of foreign languages is literacy difficulties in their L1. It has been suggested by many researchers that this leads to a greater chance of difficulties in learning another language (Schneider and Crombie, 2003; Nijakowska, 2010).

Cummins (2000) developed two theories of language learning: Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). I have discovered firsthand that BICS is easier to master for non-native English-speaking students who are studying in England. Some students whom I teach can develop their BICS to such a level that, within two years, teachers from other schools believe them to be native English-speaking British children.

CALP takes longer to develop than BICS. Cummins (2000) best expresses the difference:

Conversational aspects of proficiency reached peer-appropriate levels usually within about two years of exposure to L2, but a period of five to seven years was required, on average, for immigrant students to approach grade norms in academic aspects of English.

Evidence suggests that the speed of English acquisition varies depending on a variety of factors, including the stage of English the student has upon arrival in the UK, the student’s age, their living environment outside of the classroom, and the amount of support available within the classroom itself (Demie, 2013).

A few learners, however, find both BICS and CALP very difficult to master and often make errors in their spoken English, have a strong non-native English-speaking accent, and/or find the understanding of subject-specific vocabulary particularly difficult.

This is all in spite of years of studying in England and spending most of their time, both inside and outside of the classroom, communicating in their L2, English. There could be a variety of reasons for this: discomfort in social situations, aural issues, a lack of interest in certain subjects, etc. Some non-native English speakers who retain lower levels of English than their peers in both BICS and (especially) CALP have been assessed as having literacy difficulties in their L1, in English, or in both.

In Nijakowska’s book Second Language Acquisition: Dyslexia in the Foreign Language Classroom (2010, p. 69), the author puts forward a strong point:

“The strength of the native language codes considerably determines the extent to which a learner can become proficient in a foreign language.”

In order to best learn a foreign language, one must first have a strong basis in one’s mother tongue. A strong basis in a person’s L1 is more difficult to have if a person has literacy difficulties.

Difficulties that Can Arise When a Learner Has Both EAL and Literacy Difficulties

The UK Government (2012) suggests that up to 20% of EAL pupils in the UK have literacy difficulties. I have yet to find research dismissing the theory that learning a foreign language is more difficult for students with literacy difficulties than for students without. This is due to elements of learning that such people find difficult, such as phonological processing, auditory discrimination and sequencing, memorising vocabulary, and confusion over grammar and syntax (Peer and Reid, 2001).

When a person learns a foreign language in the classroom of a country where his or her L1 is the lingua franca, there is an obvious difference between how that person learns the foreign language and how they learned their L1. Chomsky (in Wood, 1998) first proposed the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) to illustrate how a child, who has no concept of grammar, can become fluent in their L1 as quickly as most people do.

When learning another language, however, students usually take a lot longer, not least because they are generally not immersed in an environment that uses only their L2. Regardless of the length of time needed to attain fluency in a person’s L2, there is a reference point to refer back to (their L1), which paves the way for a completely different style of learning, as there was no reference point when learning their L1.

For example, for a monolingual English speaker, the German word Hund can be automatically translated back into dog, whereas for a monolingual German child, the word Hund is associated with the animal itself and not a word in another language.

Crombie (2005) summarises this by stating that L1 acquisition is absorbed through experience, whereas in L2 acquisition new vocabulary is more often translated back to known L1 vocabulary. Acquiring a language through direct translation into a person’s L1 can be particularly difficult for students with literacy difficulties due to proven difficulty with memorising vocabulary (Schneider and Crombie, 2003), and so particular thought must be given to this when delivering a curriculum to such learners.

Unlike the variety of different ways in which a person’s L2 can be learned, most people learn their L1 in the same way: naturally, and are not taught per se (Chomsky in Wood, 1998). Motivation, attitude, learning styles, personality, and aptitude generally do not affect how a person communicates orally in their L1 (Cook, 2010), although class, age, dialect, gender, etc. may; these are more social issues.

On the contrary, motivation, attitude, learning styles, personality, and aptitude are all paramount when learning an L2 (Ushioda and Dörnyei, 2009; Nijakowska, 2010).

As 80% of English learners around the world classify themselves as beginners (Cook, 2010), the implication is that the majority do not progress to higher levels. Success in speaking a person’s L1 generally develops whether you will it to or not, whereas success in L2 acquisition is influenced by a range of factors.

Javorsky, Sparks, and Ganshow (1992, in Crombie, 2005) have put forward the argument that when learners with literacy difficulties study a foreign language, the writing and reading components should be given much less importance due to difficulties with literacy in the learners’ L1.

I disagree with this, although it may be preferable to what I experienced in the Orient. During my five years in the Far East (three in Taiwan and two in China), I discovered that reading and writing in English are generally given much greater importance than speaking and listening.

Chu (2008) suggests that it is a mixture of traditional teaching techniques and native Chinese-speaking teachers’ lack of confidence in speaking English that has led to most children in these countries having weaker speaking or listening comprehension skills. Chu (2008) notes that English education in Taiwan from junior high school onwards is highly examination-centred and therefore focuses mainly on grammar and translation activities, forcing students to rely heavily on repetition and memorisation strategies to study the language. I believe this is true for many countries.

Research into literacy difficulties by Schneider and Crombie (2003) suggests that this focus on the written form of language, vocabulary memorisation, and strict grammar rules learned by heart will cause great frustration for those with dyslexia or other literacy difficulties. I feel that a healthy amount of reading and writing can enrich the education of a student with literacy difficulties.

As mentioned above, many people hold the view that if a person has literacy difficulties in their L1, literacy acquisition in their L2 will also be affected (Nijakowska, 2010; Peer and Reid, 2001; Schneider and Crombie, 2003). Although this certainly seems true for alphabetic languages to some degree, it is my assumption that many who hold this view are not familiar with logographic languages such as Chinese.

Brunswick (2010) emphasises that most research in this field focuses on English speakers, with some researchers merely presuming that the results will be similar for other alphabetic languages. Shen et al. (2014) elaborates on this and underlines the differences between the logographic system of Chinese and alphabetic languages. I will analyse more deeply the comparison between literacy difficulties in Chinese and alphabetic languages below.

How Easily Are Literacy Difficulties Identified in EAL Students?

As almost all teachers in England will teach students with either literacy difficulties or EAL at some point during their careers, it is extremely important to be able to identify whether a non-native speaker who requires EAL support also has literacy difficulties.

A rise in the number of EAL learners joining schools in the UK has resulted in an increased focus on research into literacy difficulties in EAL learners, particularly since 2008. This research has aimed to both aid identification and improve teaching and learning strategies.

It can be difficult to distinguish literacy difficulties in L2 speakers because the symptoms of literacy difficulties are similar to those exhibited by lower-level EAL learners. Moats et al. (2010, in Mather and Wendling, 2012) state that the most common form of literacy difficulty, dyslexia, leads to poor spelling and word recognition and affects how fluently a person reads, as well as their comprehension and written expression.

Unfortunately for identification purposes, EAL students who have yet to master English have some, if not all, of the same problems. The average non-native speaker is able to catch up with and eventually surpass the average native English speaker in school within five to seven years in the UK education system (Demie and Hau, 2013). Therefore, those who still achieve less than their peers seven years after they started in an English educational setting cannot always have their difficulties justified by their mother tongue.

Even though students with literacy difficulties are more likely to achieve less highly in the foreign language classroom (Nijakowska, 2010), Sparks (2013) states that this should not be a foregone conclusion, as their achievement depends on a range of factors, such as the type of literacy difficulty, its severity, and—most importantly for my article—how the student’s L1 and L2 compare phonologically or orthographically.

When a person’s literacy skills in their L1 can be thought to affect their literacy skills in their L2, the learner’s full educational history is extremely useful. Parents and previous teachers must, where possible, be involved in order to gather as complete a picture as possible of the child’s literacy history and any issues evident during acquisition of the L1.

It is often the case, when teaching EAL students in the UK, that it is impossible to acquire reliable pre-existing evidence of literacy skills in a child’s L1. For example, in my previous two years of teaching, I have encountered a native Romanian-speaking pupil who has documented evidence of literacy difficulties in English but whose parents think dyslexia is a myth. I have taught a handful of children who have no record of literacy difficulties in their L1 but who, after a long period of time in the UK, seem to have at least literacy difficulties in their L2, English.

I have also taught a Russian boy whom our SEN department identified as having literacy difficulties in English, but who had never been to school before coming to the UK. As a result, we cannot test his literacy in his L1 to help assess him more accurately for literacy difficulties in his L2, as he is close to illiterate in his L1. Gunderson et al. (2011) note that many countries do not recognise the existence of dyslexia or other educational differences, and some do not even have a term for it in their language.

Almost all testing methods used to identify literacy difficulties contain a significant amount of English language. If such tests are given to non-native English speakers, there will always be the nagging thought at the back of the teacher’s mind that at least some questions were answered incorrectly because of limitations in the pupil’s L2. It could prove very detrimental for a child’s education if he or she has been labelled as having literacy difficulties when, in fact, they do not.

Unfortunately, most literacy difficulty assessment tools are very language-heavy, culturally specific, and aimed at a particular monolingual population. The abundance of literacy demands in such tests is likely to yield results that show the student’s language proficiency rather than cognitive functioning (Mortimore et al., 2012). Therefore, these results will not accurately demonstrate the presence of literacy difficulties in most non-native speakers.

There is the idea that a test for literacy difficulties can be given to non-native English speakers using words that they are more likely to have encountered. Kormos and Smith (2012), however, state that tests which use lower-level English words in order to be more accessible for non-native speakers run the risk of assessing only a limited range of cognitive functioning and are therefore invalid as forms of assessment.

What Can Be Done?

Geva (2000, in Kormos and Smith, 2012) reports that in Canada, where over 20% of the population are immigrants (Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Population Division, 2013), some education authorities wait until a child has been in the education system for five years before testing them for literacy difficulties.

I feel that five years is too long for EAL learners with literacy difficulties to go without receiving the specialist teaching that they need. That said, because the literacy skills that learners with low levels of English need to acquire can overlap with the literacy skills that learners with literacy difficulties need to acquire (e.g., the pronunciation of diphthongs, magic e, etc.), it may not be drastically important to identify literacy difficulties in EAL students from day one. I suggest that testing be completed by the end of the first term.

More suitable testing methods are being developed—or have already been developed—to assess literacy difficulties in EAL learners. Smith (ELT Well, 2011) created Cognitive Assessments for Multilingual Learners (CAML), which test different factors that children (and adults) with literacy difficulties find most taxing. I feel that this system is very useful, but only as a screening tool indicating potential literacy difficulties in EAL students.

These assessments include symbol-coding and visual-memory exercises that do not utilise words. I have yet to believe that any testing method can be perfect, not least because a student might score differently depending on the day they take the test. Additionally, as Sparks (2013) has mentioned, there are many different types and severities of literacy difficulties.

Furthermore, Turner (1997) showed through his DEST assessments that early testing methods designed to avoid inaccuracies caused by lack of language proficiency can also be inaccurate. He observed that the percentage of students identified as having potential literacy difficulties at age five differed considerably from the percentage of the same group identified with such difficulties when tested three years later using a more reliable literacy assessment.

Chinese Speakers with Literacy Difficulties and the Challenges They Face When Learning English

Despite there being seven main dialects and hundreds of sub-dialects of Chinese in China and around the world (Duanmu, 2007), they all share an almost identical writing system. As a result, literate Chinese speakers around the world can communicate through writing even when they cannot communicate orally.

Although mainland China and Singapore now use simplified Chinese, while Taiwan, Hong Kong, and most Chinese communities outside China (e.g., Malaysian Chinese, British Chinese, etc.) continue to use traditional characters, the two writing systems share the majority of their characters. The differing characters can almost always be understood from the context of the sentence.

The shared writing system across the various dialects means that literacy difficulties will affect a person in almost the same way regardless of his or her dialect. It should be noted that, even though the presumption of Chao (1968, in Fung, 2009) that there is one universal grammar system has since been questioned (Fung, 2009), my article is concerned not with grammatical rules but with how characters are read. Therefore, I will treat the dialects as one language and refer to them collectively as Chinese.

As Sparks (2013) mentions, people with literacy difficulties find different aspects of reading and writing difficult, and the severity of these difficulties also differs from person to person. In a study of English speakers, Ramus (2003) found that a deficit in phonological awareness was present in 100% of the dyslexic participants tested, more than any other deficit. Gunderson et al. (2011) suggest that, because English has a particularly deep orthography, literacy difficulties in readers of English are related to phonological awareness, whereas literacy difficulties in readers of shallow orthography languages, such as Russian, Finnish, or Spanish, are more likely associated with slower reading speed.

That said, Shen et al. (2014) state that people with literacy difficulties in all languages seem to have at least some form of phonological deficit, even if it is not as prevalent as Ramus suggests for native English speakers. Smith (2013) argues that the manifestations of literacy difficulties may be more apparent in some individuals when they use one language and less obvious when they use another.

Chinese, like English, is considered to have a deep orthography. However, because it uses a logographic writing system, it is even more opaque than English (Brunswick et al., 2010), which itself possesses one of the most opaque orthographies among the Indo-European languages (Mortimore et al., 2012).

Richlan (2014) argues that orthographic depth is one of the most important factors in learning to read and that the orthographic depth of a language heavily influences the ease or difficulty with which it is learned. Linguistically very different from the Indo-European languages mentioned above, Chinese, as a logographic language, relies more heavily on morphological awareness than phonological awareness when processing language (Lei et al., 2010).

In Chinese, there is no direct use of phonemes when converting the image of a Chinese character into a spoken word. For this reason, Wu et al. (2009) suggest that orthographic-related issues are the main cause of literacy difficulties in Chinese, as opposed to the phonological deficits more commonly associated with English. Despite the substantial differences between Chinese and English and the factors contributing to literacy difficulties in each language, Shu and Li (2012) suggest that, as in alphabetic languages, dyslexic children learning Chinese experience difficulties with the accuracy and speed of word reading.

Neurologically speaking, recent scientific evidence suggests that different areas of the brain are used to process reading depending on whether a person’s first language is alphabetic or logographic. Siok (2010), Hu et al. (2010), and Tan et al. (2003) all agree that Chinese speakers without literacy difficulties show increased activity in the left middle frontal gyrus when reading their first language. English speakers without literacy difficulties show increased activity in the left superior temporal gyrus when reading English.

Research throughout the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century has consistently identified the left superior temporal gyrus (Siok, 2010; Hu et al., 2010; Tan et al., 2003) and the left posterior portion of the inferior frontal gyrus (Tan et al., 2003) as key areas involved in phonological processing in English readers. While exact locations vary slightly across studies, these general regions are widely accepted.

Where Siok (2010) and Hu et al. (2010) differ is in their interpretation of whether Chinese speakers with literacy difficulties and English speakers with literacy difficulties are affected in the same areas of the brain. It is widely recognised (Xu et al., 2015) that people with literacy difficulties, regardless of their first language, show dysfunction within the left hemisphere language network. More specifically, Siok (2010), Siok et al. (2008), Hadzibeganovic et al. (2010), and Li (2014) argue that Chinese and alphabetic-language dyslexics display irregularities in different areas of the left hemisphere. Chinese speakers with literacy difficulties show reduced grey matter volume in the region used to process Chinese, whereas English speakers with literacy difficulties show reduced grey matter volume in the region used to process English.

If this is correct, it suggests the possibility of two distinct neurological disorders and raises the possibility that a person could have literacy difficulties in Chinese but not in an alphabetic language, or vice versa. Hu et al. (2010) and Silani et al. (2005, cited in Hadzibeganovic et al., 2010), however, found that individuals with literacy difficulties, regardless of their first language, exhibit reduced activation across a broader network that includes the left angular gyrus, left middle frontal region, posterior temporal region, and occipitotemporal region. Both perspectives should be considered when interpreting the findings of this case study, as no international consensus has yet been reached.

Figure 2 shows that Chinese-speaking readers without dyslexia have greater grey matter volume and stronger brain activity during reading tasks in the left middle frontal gyrus than dyslexic Chinese readers.

Figure 3, on the other hand, shows that non-dyslexic readers of alphabetic languages have greater grey matter volume and stronger brain activity during reading tasks in the left temporal gyrus and occipitotemporal region than their dyslexic counterparts.

Figure 4 shows activation volumes in different regions of the brain while non-dyslexic participants processed English words and Chinese characters.

The phonological processing task examined 24 pairs of Chinese characters and 24 pairs of English words that rhymed, as well as 24 pairs of Chinese characters and 24 pairs of English words that did not rhyme. None of the 96 pairs shared visual orthographic similarities, even when they rhymed.

In Figure 4, the black bars represent first-language Chinese readers deciding whether two Chinese characters rhyme. The hatched bars represent first-language Chinese readers deciding whether two English words rhyme. These participants began learning English after the age of twelve, had studied English in China for at least twelve years, and had been studying for doctorates in the United States for at least three years. The white bars represent first-language English readers deciding whether two English words rhyme.

As suggested by Siok (2010) and Hu et al. (2010), English readers show increased activity in the left superior temporal gyrus and, although not specifically highlighted by those authors, also in the left inferior frontal gyrus.

Unsurprisingly, Figure 4 shows that Chinese readers exhibited high activity in the left middle frontal gyrus when reading Chinese. More surprisingly, they also demonstrated high activity in the same region when reading English. Tan et al. (2003) interpret this as evidence that Chinese readers were applying reading strategies developed for Chinese when processing English words, rather than automatically converting letters into sounds. This raises the possibility that phonemic awareness may not be necessary for reading an alphabetic language when a reader’s first language is Chinese, and that morphological processing strategies may transfer from the first language to the second.

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