Reconsidering Language Instruction for Multilingual Students with Dyslexia
A Critical Examination of Traditional Approaches
For many years I’ve worked with students at the intersection of multilingualism and language-based learning differences. And for much of that time, I repeated the same guidance that specialists had been giving families for years: simplify the linguistic environment. Focus on one language. Eliminate competing phonological systems.
I believed this was best practice. After all, the goal is literacy, right? The research seemed clear, the logic appeared sound, and the specialists I respected endorsed this approach. When families came to me with children struggling to decode in multiple languages, I confidently advised them to abandon all but English instruction.
However, after marrying a non native English speaker and participating in the development of his English literacy in a way that was different from being an educator, I started to question my original thinking.
The Moment of Questioning
The change began with a fundamental question about equity that I couldn’t shake: Just because something takes longer to learn, should we abandon it?
I started examining this principle across education. We don’t tell students who need extra time in mathematics to stop learning math. We don’t suggest that children who require additional support in writing should cease written expression. Yet with multilingualism and dyslexia, our field’s standard practice was essentially to declare defeat, that is to say that because managing multiple languages with a learning difference requires more time and support, we should simply eliminate the “extra” languages.
This struck me as fundamentally inequitable.
The more I questioned this logic, the more I realized how much of traditional educational practice wasn’t actually grounded in research but in convenience - convenience for schools, for assessments normed on monolingual populations, for educators who hadn’t been trained in multilingual instruction. We are making decisions based on system limitations rather than student potential.
This recognition became one of the driving forces behind founding Conduit Academy. I wanted to create a space where we could move beyond these artificial constraints; where we could implement what research actually tells us works, even when it requires more time, more expertise, and more individualized approaches. I was tired of what I came to think of as “fake education”- practices that look efficient on paper but don’t serve the whole child.
Examining the Evidence
The traditional recommendation to cease multilingual instruction stems from studies in the 1980s and 1990s that documented additional processing challenges for multilingual children with dyslexia (Kovelman et al., 2008). These studies accurately identified that managing multiple phonological systems requires additional cognitive resources and that students with dyslexia often showed delays in language milestones when navigating multiple languages.
However, more recent research reveals a more nuanced picture. Antoniou’s (2019) comprehensive review of bilingual cognitive advantages found that even individuals with dyslexia demonstrate enhanced executive function and metalinguistic awareness when maintaining multiple languages. Siegel (2016) argues that the presence of dyslexia across languages actually supports the neurological basis of the condition while simultaneously demonstrating that bilingualism itself doesn’t exacerbate the underlying processing differences.
Perhaps most significantly, Cummins’ (2017) work on cross-linguistic transfer demonstrates that skills developed in one language support development in others when instruction explicitly builds these bridges. This suggests that the issue isn’t the presence of multiple languages but rather the absence of instruction that acknowledges and leverages multilingual contexts.
Case Studies from Practice
Consider Dominico, a second-grade student who arrived at Conduit Academy with a complex linguistic profile. Having spent his early years in Luxembourg exposed to Luxembourgish and German, followed by a move to the Dominican Republic where he navigates between Spanish at home and a bilingual Spanish-English school environment, Dominico presented with significant reading delays across all languages.
The traditional approach would have been to eliminate all non-English instruction. Instead, we developed an intervention that explicitly addressed his multilingual reality. The primary challenge we identified wasn’t the multiple languages themselves but rather the lack of explicit instruction in managing different phoneme-grapheme correspondences across language systems. The letter ‘A’ represents /ay/ in English, /ah/ in Spanish, and /ah/ in German—but no one had ever explicitly taught him this code-switching framework.
Through systematic Orton-Gillingham instruction that incorporated metalinguistic awareness across his languages, Dominico achieved grade-level reading in English within one intensive summer while maintaining his other languages. The key was not simplification but rather explicit, structured instruction that acknowledged his complete linguistic profile.
Similarly, another Conduit Academy student, Tiara - her case illustrates the complexity of these decisions. Her linguistic journey, from Ewe as a first language, through adoption by a French speaker and subsequent education in French, to English instruction and now Spanish acquisition - all of this might seem overwhelming through a traditional lens. Standardized assessments normed on monolingual populations do indicate delays in some of Tiara’s discrete skills. However, her metalinguistic awareness, cognitive flexibility, and approach to language learning demonstrate capabilities that extend far beyond what traditional assessments measure.
Reconsidering the Cost-Benefit Analysis
The traditional recommendation to cease multilingual instruction rarely accounts for several critical factors:
Socioemotional Impact: Norton’s (2013) work on identity and language learning demonstrates that language is inextricably linked to identity formation. When we ask children to abandon home languages, we’re asking them to distance themselves from family and cultural connections.
Cognitive Benefits: Lauchlan et al. (2013) found that cognitive advantages of bilingualism - particularly in executive function and cognitive flexibility - persist even in populations with learning differences. These are precisely the skills many students with dyslexia need to develop compensatory strategies.
Long-term Outcomes: While monolingual instruction might show short-term gains in English literacy, we lack longitudinal data on whether these gains persist or whether the loss of multilingual capacity impacts future academic and professional opportunities.
Family Systems: The recommendation to cease home language use can fundamentally alter family dynamics, potentially affecting attachment, communication, and cultural transmission across generations.
A Revised Framework
Based on current research and clinical experience, I propose a different framework for supporting multilingual students with dyslexia:
Comprehensive Assessment: Evaluate the student’s complete linguistic profile, including all languages in their environment, rather than assessing only in the language of instruction.
Explicit Metalinguistic Instruction: Teach students how their languages relate to each other, making transparent the similarities and differences in phonological, morphological, and syntactic systems.
Extended Timelines: Accept that multilingual students with dyslexia may require additional time to reach benchmarks, but recognize that they’re developing competencies across multiple systems simultaneously.
Structured Literacy Approaches: Implement evidence-based interventions like Orton-Gillingham that can be adapted to acknowledge multilingual contexts rather than ignore them.
Family Engagement: Support families in maintaining home languages while providing strategies for supporting literacy development across all languages.
Implications for Practice
This shift in perspective requires significant changes in how we train educators, design interventions, and counsel families. It demands expertise in both learning differences and multilingual education—areas that have traditionally been siloed in teacher preparation programs.
It also requires honest conversations with families about timelines and expectations. Yes, maintaining multiple languages while addressing dyslexia requires more time and more sophisticated instruction. But the alternative—asking children to abandon parts of their linguistic identity—carries costs that we’ve been too quick to dismiss.
Conclusion
After years of following conventional wisdom, I’ve come to believe that telling families to abandon multilingual instruction for children with dyslexia is not just ineffective; it’s potentially harmful. The research supports a more nuanced approach that recognizes both the challenges and the benefits of multilingualism for students with learning differences.
Our role as educators isn’t to simplify children’s linguistic realities but to develop the expertise and instructional approaches necessary to support them in all their complexity. The students I work with at Conduit Academy demonstrate daily that dyslexia and multilingualism are not incompatible: they simply require us to be more thoughtful, more skilled, and more patient in our instruction.
The question we should be asking isn’t whether students with dyslexia can handle multiple languages, but rather: How can we best support them in maintaining and developing all their languages while addressing their learning differences?
This article reflects an evolution in my own understanding and practice. I welcome dialogue from educators, researchers, and families navigating these complex decisions.
References
Antoniou, M. (2019). The advantages of bilingualism debate. Annual Review of Linguistics, 5, 395-415.
Cummins, J. (2017). Teaching for transfer in multilingual educational contexts. In O. García, A. Lin, & S. May (Eds.), Bilingual and multilingual education (pp. 103-115). Springer.
Kovelman, I., Baker, S. A., & Petitto, L. A. (2008). Bilingual and monolingual brains compared: A functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of syntactic processing and a possible “neural signature” of bilingualism. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(1), 153-169.
Lauchlan, F., Parisi, M., & Fadda, R. (2013). Bilingualism in Sardinia and Scotland: Exploring the cognitive benefits of speaking a ‘minority’ language. International Journal of Bilingualism, 17(1), 43-56.
Norton, B. (2013). Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation. Multilingual Matters.
Peer, L., & Reid, G. (2016). Multilingualism, literacy and dyslexia: Breaking down barriers for educators. Routledge.
Siegel, L. (2016). Bilingualism and dyslexia: The case for conducting research with bilingual populations. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 42(2), 15-19.