The language learning experiences of students with dyslexia: lessons from an interview study

Abstract

Our interview study investigated what experiences Hungarian students with dyslexia have in the language learning group and concerning the general behavior, the instructional methods and assessment techniques of their language teachers. Long qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 students of different ages who studied foreign languages in a variety of educational settings. Our results indicate that the participants generally had negative experiences when studying in groups, especially if the number of students in the group was high, but they enjoyed when they received special attention and the rate of progress was adjusted to their needs. Students with dyslexia were found to be highly appreciative of clear and well-structured explanations and frequent revision opportunities. The students’ views confirm the high importance of applying motivational teaching strategies in teaching foreign languages to students with dyslexia and the existence of an indirect link between teachers’ attitude to dyslexia, teacher behavior, and language learning effort.

Keywords:

• dyslexia
• language learning attitudes
• teacher behavior
• motivational strategies

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the participants who devoted their time to sharing their experiences with us. We thank Éva Gyarmathy and Eszter Bakos for recruting participants. The research reported in this paper has been sponsored by the Equal Rights in Foreign Language Education project of the Hungarian National Bureau of Research and Technology (NKTH B2 2006-0010).

Notes

1. The Hungarian data protection law does not allow access to student's psychological tests for outside school use. Therefore, we could only verify the existence of the diagnosis but were not able to collect information on diagnostic test scores.

2. Many of our participants gave up learning one foreign language in the hope that they will succeed in the other one. Some of the interviewees had to choose another language because they changed school, and the new school did not offer the language the student previously studied. This explains the high number of students who studied two foreign languages.

3. There was only one exception to this among our interviewees: a late identified student who was driven by her intrinsic motivation to acquire English, and who despite the fact that her teachers were unaware of her dyslexia, enjoyed language learning and compensated for her difficulties by studying extremely hard. She was, however, provided a lot of help in her family.