Please help my dyslexic 11 year old struggling to decode Arabic script

[dyslexicboy]

I would really really appreciate some help here, especially from experts/experienced people who work in the dyslexia field in schools.

Basically, DS is English speaking and, like millions of children all over the world, is learning to read the Arabic script without understanding a single word of the language. By his age most kids (who also dont understand a word) would be able to fly across the page faster than you or I could read aloud in English.

DSs dyslexia comes with good level of intelligence, fairly sound phonic base (maybe that is why he can read?), and can read at age level BUT he skim reads (very effectively) to avoid reading accurately, has poor comprehension and muddles up words if reading aloud. Also has poor processing speeds and struggles to hold more than one or two pieces of information in his brain at a time (eg 3 part mental arithmetic sum is extremely difficult).

The problem is, there are many people who have taught thousands of "regular" nonArabic speaking students to read the Arabic script fluently, and many dyslexia specialists in native languages (even Arabic I am sure in the gulf), but noone with the specialist skills to help struggling readers decode a foreign script fluently when there are ZERO context clues for self correction ie if you dont know the language you have no way of knowing that you just said odg instead of dog

I'm almost certain noone will have direct experience but I know there are lots on this board who have plenty of knowledge that must be transferrable somehow, so if anyone thinks they may be able to help I can explain more about how Arabic script works and what the stumbling blocks are (as this is vv long already!!!).

Thank you

(That post of mine is very speculative, so I hope it doesn't go amiss. It's just I know that is what people did - exaggerating some of the distinctive characters of letter and word-shapes - when English was written without spaces. Obviously they didn't have modern theories about why they did it, but it seems to have worked so I wonder if it is a helpful thing for a person who has learned to read in modern English script?)

I think. EllaDee, that the real bgger in all this is the fact that the word after* the one that you have just read determines the last sound in the preceeding word. I don't even know if it is the phonics that would indicate which sound it is meant to be or actually knowing what the following word 'says'. You don't have that to worry about in English script

Yes, that's true and tricky. But I didn't mean writing the words without spaces, I just mean exaggerating or carefully choosing a script that makes the word shapes clear.

I think I'm too hampered by my lack of Arabic here, but it is a really complicated/interesting problem.

Maizie, there are some words in English where it applies a bit - eg 'the fish', 'the apple', 'the' doesn't sound the same. And it only applies sometimes in Arabic surely?

I'm not dyslexic and I have still found it surprisingly difficult to learn to read Arabic script; I feel like a child sounding words out. I don't know if it is just the amount of practice or if it gets harder as you get older!

dyslexicboy, does the Qu'ran when written have all the harakat shown? in normal text where they are not written, it makes it very hard to read phonetically, you have to know the words or be familiar enough with the language structure (which I'm not) to be able to work out the sounds.

And EllaDee absolutely some scripts are a lot easier to read than others!

quran would have all the vowels on it,

Hi , just popping in, will be back with some more info soon. Thank you all for contributions.

DS has been leaning for 5 years so far. He can read individual words of say 3 or 4 syllables fairly accurately (though not as accurate as other boys his age).

The problem is much greater when stringing text together.

I had a look today and would estimate that the last sound of the word changes in 35% or more cases depending on the first sound of the next word.

You dont need to know the meaning of the following word to be able to do this - the rules are very consistent with no exceptions - but you would need instant automatic recall of these rules at the same time as instant recall of the letters themselves and the blending method.

Also, it is hard to explain, but in English words have a clear ending, each word is a discreet unit - whereas in Arabic a string of say 4 or more words must be pronounced in one long chain, like decoding a 20 letter word in English perhaps - which is another reaosn why you have to be working on one bit whilst simultaneously deciphering the next.

I will make up an example here, instead of reading (please completely ignore changes to meaning, just looking at reading errors) "The girls were sitting under the big tree" he may read "All the girlings are sitted under the bigger trees".

Maizie - no time to read up, but what did you mean about "sigh" and "sound" memory if you didnt mean "sight words".

From this thread am having the idea of finding out the top 50 or 100 highest frequency words and trying an ultra repetitive approach to try and embed them like traditional English sight words (eg sand, air writing, playdough, mini white boards, pencils etc) and practice speed reading them using flashcards.

Does that sound any good for a start?

I would try to get him to know the high frequency words. Another thought (I checked with DH who is a native Arabic speaker and Muslim) is that there are some repeating phrases and sentences within the Qu'ran so maybe he could learn some of those to so he is not always faced with a page of unknown text.

This is probably a stupid question, but why doesn't he learn some of the more common word meanings at the same time? Wouldn't that help him to 'ground' it a bit (and make it more interesting too)? Does he have any Arabic-speaking family or friends who could help him out?

Maizie - no time to read up, but what did you mean about "sigh" and "sound" memory if you didnt mean "sight words".

There are two meaning of 'sight words'.

When I talk of 'sight words' I mean words which have been sounded out and blended a number of times (the number of repetitions varies very much from person to person) and subsequently recognised immediately they are 'seen'; I would describe these as having got into 'sight memory'.

The other (more usually used) meaning is words which have been learned as 'wholes' or 'pictures'.

The former 'method' is more secure as, usually, once in 'sight memory' the words are not forgotten. If by any chance they are forgotten they can easily be sounded out and blended again. The second 'method' relies on 1) the child being told what the word 'is' initially and 2) the child remembering the 'look' of the word; but not necessarily the letters and letter/sound correspondences of which the word is constructed. If the child doesn't know the 'phonics' of the word they are stuck to work it out if they forget it. Also, they can become confused between words which are similar in appearance.

I would be wary of trying to teach your son words by the second method, particularly if he is not familiar with the script, as words are far more difficult to learn as 'wholes' than by the decoding and blending route.

I don't know how many individual 'letters' there are in Arabic script, but I would have thought that learning the 'letters' and the sounds associated with them would put less of a load on memory than trying to learn 100 words as 'wholes'. Even if he learns a 100, what next?

This is what I was (clumsily) trying to get at too. There are probably some English words where you realize you know how to spell them because you know the shape needs a 'e' or another 't' to make it 'look right'. I think those will be words you've learned as maizie describes, right? So if he could get to that point with Arabic where he's visually very familiar with the combination of letters and can see where the ending is different, he'd be ok?

(Sorry, trying to understand if that's what's going on!)

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