Mandarin - harder to learn with Dyslexia

[BusyBusyBusy1]

My 11 yo DS has been diagnosed with mild Dyslexia (is currently having full Ed Psychology assessment) which confirms our suspicions - he took a long time to learn to read, is a 'terrible speller', finds writing really hard. His Secondary School seems to be responding - they are going to give him a laptop, extra time etc BUT Mandarin is a compulsory subject (until GCSE) and he is really struggling with it. Obviously it is a hard language, particularly the characters, but do you think that being dyslexic is making it worse? And any advice on whether it might be worthwhile asking if he could switch to another language, such as Spanish which is a)same alphabet b)regular phonetically. This would obviously mean asking them to make a big exception for him - so I need some evidence before I even start to approach them.

All advice would be gratefully received. Thanks

I know one school has shown that Dyslexic students do better with Japanese than French. I'm not sure Mandarin has been studied, it is probably a memory issue associated with Mandarin.

It depends on the type of dyslexia. Once the assessment is done you might have more of an idea of how to address the difficulty.

My DD did Spanish early in year 9 (compulsory at her school). She found it impossible to learn by rote and memorise. She got a B but had 18 months of private tutoring and I think the teacher at school was over generous in the oral exams.

Agree with HP. Dyslexia covers a very wide range of possible issues, only some of which will apply to your dc. The ed psych report will show you where your child's difficulties and strengths lie and you can go from there.

Thank you all of you for your helpful replies. Looks like it is going to be a question of sitting down with the teachers when we have the Ed Pschy report.

Do you know how the school has treated dyslexic students, with regards to studying Mandarin, in the past?

It is a new school (Academy). Only been open two years. I am not sure if they have come across this question yet with any other kids. I suppose that might be good in that they might be open to discussion......

HAve PMed you but one more point , when you get the report phone the person who did it and ask them this specific question. IME they are really helpful and this may not be something they had thought of.

A lot of native English speakers struggle with Mandarin and Japanese regardless so the struggle may not be because of his dyslexia. It is hard to grasp and requires a lot of effort - more hardwork memorising than say French where things can be absorbed. It may well be that with the emphasis on picture based characters dyslexic people have some advantage but it is still going to be hard for him.

Hi busybusybusy1

I think perhaps an easier way of determining whether this will work is to consider where the dyslexia is strongest (problems with reading/ problems with numbers) and how your DS has compensated for dyslexia (slow processing skills/ slow reading ability/ etc...) through building up other skills (good auditory/ memorization skills/ musicality (Chinese is tonal)/ photographic memory).

My understanding is that dyslexia (as shown through poor reading skills) is a difficulty in processing that the symbols (alphabetic letters) have a number of sounds and in combination have meanings (sometimes same combination of letters can have two different meanings: eg wound (I've injured myself)/ wound (I've wrapped some thread around something).

Chinese symbols are pictographic (en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:Languages/Mandarin_Chinese) - admittedly abbreviated versions now used in modern Mandarin - but if your DC can make that logical jump swiftly than it may be that learning Mandarin doesn't present as much difficulty since it frees them from Latin alphabet.

I'm not expert (just married to a dyslexic who has a strong photographic memory) so I can't answer your question but DDs (both non-dyslexic) were taking mandarin and DH picked up symbols just in observing their work swiftly.

HTH