Foreign language disability?

Parents Forum
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<p>Another vote for American Sign Language here, if there’s a community college around that offers it. It’s just as much a language-learning experience and just as challenging (if the class is good-quality), but in a different way. There is no writing system so that is not an issue, but people with spatial issues can struggle mightily with ASL, and the grammar is not at all close to English grammar. But if she’s mostly having trouble with the written part of it, she could do a lot better with ASL. </p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

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<p>I don’t know if it’s a true correlation, but my students who were super strong in math were also incredibly gifted in languages as well. Read somewhere that there have been studies that agree with that notion.</p>

<p>Ease at language learning could be related to how it’s taught: auditory (speaking) vs visual (written). My DS2 has a terrible time with foreign languages and he’s a kinesthetic/visual learner not an auditory learner. He always hated studying English grammar in MS too.</p>

<p>He uses lots of index cards to help him remember vocabulary. The act of writing down the words helps him to remember them.</p>

23

<p>S2, not a good math student, also had a rough road with Spanish in h.s.</p>

<p>Got a C in Spanish I, mostly because he was decent at memorizing vocab. and the teacher gave lots of extra credit for easy projects. Signed up for Spanish II and flat out failed…harder teacher, harder material and really hadn’t learned much in Span.I.
He retook Spanish II the following yr. and had another teacher very similiar to the Span. 1 teacher so he emerged with a C and his Spanish career was over.
Two credits in the same foreign lang. were enough to get him into the state u. he wanted to attend, thank goodness.</p>

<p>S2 was really a fairly avg. h.s. student. His transcript showed a few A’s, a lot of B’s and some C’s …no D’s and the one fat F in Spanish II.</p>

<p>He specifically chose a major in college that did not require taking a foreign language.</p>

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<p>Quite a few people on the autism spectrum have trouble with foreign languages. (I suspect the problem is with learning it in the typical classroom setting; I bet they’d pick it up if emersed.) Son’s friend would come out of Spanish class, go outside and SCREAM, it was so frustrating for him.</p>

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<p>Sounds familiar. I hate Spanish and will have taken eight semesters of college Spanish before I am done with a two semester requirement, assuming I pass the next three on the first attempt. If they will let me I think I’ll take all I have remaining over spring and summer so I don’t have any other courses to take at the same time.</p>

<p>I can learn languages fine on my own, I taught myself a fair amount of Swedish one summer, but the classes are just impossible.</p>

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<p>My DH is one of the smartest people I know – especially in math and with spatial things – and while he got through high school Spanish by learning vocab and grammar rules, to this day he can’t use any foreign words. He can’t pronounce “prix fixe” or “carpe diem” or “idee fixe” or “faux pas.” It just never settled into the synapses of his brain. I consider it a learning disability, because in so many other things, he’s brilliant.</p>

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<p>My son has a friend he’s known since they were little, who has LD’s for both math and foreign languages. Both caused problems for her in high school, and satisfying the language requirements is still a big issue for her in college. I have no idea, though, whether it’s the same LD for both, or what their technical names are.</p>

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<p>thanks to all; I think the big problem here is that Spanish is taught at her school like “whole language”; no vocab; no flash cards needed…they learn through what the teacher calls “structures” and the vocab is integrated within the sentences or structures that they learn…see why I say “whole language”?</p>

<p>anyway, apparently the weakness is in the details missed when writing answers to questions on the exams…all open ended questions…</p>

<p>She is meeting with the teacher tomorrow to try and figure out how to address her particular weakness…</p>

<p>incidently, to the poster who asked about her English writing…“A” student in a very rigorous English curriculum that requires writing papers at least twice a week…</p>

<p>Math weakness is a speed issue and she does use extra time if needed…earning B’s which is just fine…</p>

<p>thanks to all for the support…</p>

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<p>rodney -</p>

<p>The instructor’s methodology is in line with current thinking on second language acquisition: grammar and vocabulary are acquired in context rather than being memorized without any context. The advantage of this methodology is that the student’s brain constructs an understanding of the grammar of the new language in much the same way as it constructed an understanding of the grammar of his or her first language. But, of course, much as toddlers go through phases when they say “I runned.” instead of “I ran.” the learner does have to work through all of these things individually. Students who can notice when something “looks wrong” or “sounds wrong” can think through what should be there (or what should be left out), and can self-correct. Your daughter may not be quite up to catching some of her own errors yet. Her teacher should be able to suggest some extra exercises to help her recognize and retain patterns in the language that she hasn’t mastered yet. </p>

<p>She also might want to discuss the extra time she is allowed in math. She might need that for writing and editing her responses in Spanish as well.</p>

<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>

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<p>tx, happymom: great suggestions…I’ll discuss with her…</p>

31

<p>You definitely came to the right place!</p>

<p>I used to get Cs in Spanish in high school. I was just a good kid- went to Spanish classes and did the homework and everything. I just struggled with the language orally (seeing as I’m deaf). Writing was better for me. I dropped it after 10th grade. I didn’t want to take Latin and nobody wanted me to take French. </p>

<p>Then I took Russian in my first year of college. It totally brought up my confidence for that A) I was actually motivated to learn Russian for a variety of reasons, B) the teacher was very patient, caring, and just excellent despite a large class and C) I was in class for about 70 minutes 3 times a week. When I realized that by the time I left the classroom, I just getting into Russian that it just stayed with me when I studied for quizzes. I got As.</p>

<p>I took Spanish again in my sophomore year- 50 minutes, 4 times a week. I still got Cs. That’s when it became clear to me that 50 minutes just wasn’t enough to “get into” the language. So I pushed all of my desires to learn languages aside and said that I would be better off learning in an immersed setting like going abroad.</p>

<p>Junior year, I studied abroad in Israel and studied Hebrew for 6 months in an immersed setting where I had to attend classes 5 days a week for 5 hours a day in the first and last months I was there and in between 2 hours a day for 5 days a week. I learned SO much Hebrew that I actually understood more of what was going on in class. I passed the proficiency level exam as well as earned respectable grades given the difficulty of the class.</p>

<p>First year of graduate school, I studied Yiddish and the class was 2 hours a day, twice a week. It was a disaster in terms of being able to pick up comprehension. When I did the summer program, it was all much, much better.</p>

<p>Now I’m taking 8-credit intensive German for fun and am performing way better than any of the languages I’ve studied except for Hebrew. I can feel my brain becoming quite malleable that I almost don’t really need to make flashcards.</p>

<p>My German professor pointed out that it’s the motivation and maturity level that make all the difference in a student’s success, which is why she sees that older students outperform younger students (especially freshmen).</p>

<p>My suggestion to your D is get on the Internet and read Spanish language newspapers, blogs, websites, etc online and perhaps set some of English language websites into Spanish to increase her reading comprehension which will translate into her writing. See if immersion is the key to her success in Spanish before giving it up entirely.</p>

<p>If it wasn’t for my career choice demanding all these languages, I would’ve given up a long time ago!</p>

32

<p>Well…I’m not going to be any help at all. One of my kids was not a great math student and he was also not a great Spanish student. The other kiddo is GREAT at math and loves it…and is also not great at Spanish.</p>

<p>Just an FYI…both are outstanding musicians…which flies in the face of good musicians being good in math…one was…and one wasn’t.</p>

33

<p>Proposing that an ineptness for learning a foreign language is somehow the result of some kind of a congenital disability is a laughable attempt by the all too typical over compensating “CC type” parent seeking to absolve their little snowflake of an inability and the resulting “CC type” measuring consequences. It is as sad as it is silly.</p>

<p>Disclosure: My kid can’t juggle.</p>

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<p>“Proposing that an ineptness for learning a foreign language is somehow the result of some kind of a congenital disability is a laughable attempt by the all too typical over compensating “CC type” parent seeking to absolve their little snowflake of an inability and the resulting “CC type” measuring consequences. It is as sad as it is silly.”</p>

<p>Pretty harsh judgment there. My impression of the OP was more trying to find out a better course of action, rather than my interpretation of what you’re saying… That she’s trying to set up an excuse for why her kid isn’t as smart as other kids?</p>

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<p>Not my intent at all, but nice try. Even after the briefest scan of my post, I think most people would agree that I inferred nothing of the kind. And that I was making a statement about the OP.</p>

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<p>toblin, actually, your statements represent the arrogance of folks that have not faced learning disabilities. For some,the foreign language difficulty can be the real key to an underlying LD that had not been properly diagnosed. S1 had his 8th grade French teacher suggest the LD based on her interactions with him. It was actually the key to the problems he was having in other subjects, too. We followed up with testing and he eventually learned how to change his study methods so that he became successful and was able to graduate college with honors (without accommodations) . Oh - and he was not trying to go to HPYS. </p>

<p>Until you have walked in the shoes …</p>

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<p>“Not my intent at all, but nice try. Even after the briefest scan of my post, I think most people would agree that I inferred nothing of the kind. And that I was making a statement about the OP.”</p>

<p>That wasn’t a ■■■■■■■■ attempt. I read it again and still get the same impression. Why don’t you tell me (in different words) what you are trying to say?</p>

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<p>Absolutely the pedagogy of the day. And it definitely doesn’t work for some kids and its unfortunate they they are unable to mix methods to reach different learning styles. My oldest had 7 years of intensive french, including two entirely french immersion years (we are in canada), all oral, context…and she barely got anything from it (you would not believe how much she did not absorb, compared to classmates)</p>

<p>In HS, they finally had a textbook, she could see the words, sort out the patterns visually and use her amazing memory, and she finally started to learn something and could put it together orally and finally hear what was otherwise meaningless jumbles. She got the whole picture by being able to write out the different tenses, and so on…put it together herself, teaches herself from written material…and it was only then that she started to learn french. </p>

<p>This current thinking of the day works for most kids perhaps, but not all kids. Those that are extremely visual and not auditory learners, it maybe doesn’t work for them. Too bad there is so much dogma around it now.</p>

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<p>I think it would be strange if there was a strong correlation between talent at math and talent at foreign languages. There are plenty of kids who stink at English but are great at math, and vice versa . . . Why would that suddenly change just because the language was non-native?</p>

<p>Maybe the kids who are great at languages and also at math are those lucky souls who are just talented at everything. (Or maybe their downfall is a different class!)</p>

<p>As for me, I was good at French but horrible at math.</p>

40

<p>I teach French and Spanish, and the learning specialists at my school insist that there is a correlation between difficulty in math and difficulty in language acquisition. I don’t know that I agree. For myself, I was awful at math, but languages were incredibly easy for me to learn. As is music-- I could hear the words to a song once, and I knew them. That seems to be more of a logical correlation, don’t you think? Some of our students have difficulty in both, some in one or the other. </p>

<p>So much of language learning is memorization. Not rote memory, necessarily, but our ears learn, memorize if you will, what correct language sounds like, and we learn, also memorize, perhaps, correct grammar by hearing and using it over and over. My school uses the “whole language” method in theory, but in practice we need to write down notes, drill usage over and over, and set up contrived situations to enforce rules and vocabulary. To me, it is false to teach students completely by a “whole language” method, because in the US at least, we are not living in a “whole language” environment, except that of the English language (for the most part, certainly not entirely). So after 50 minutes or so each day, students leave the target language and head back into the native language, in our case, English. It is not fair to immerse students totally in another language, no matter how trendy it might seem to be. We can come close, but we should not frustrate our students. Nothing turns them off faster. Perhaps the OP’s question deals with frustration rather than learning difference/disability.</p>