Absolutely vital and sorely underutilised aspect of TEFL. I have a student whose mother tongue is Arabic and he reads from right to left.
When I observed him reading ‘was’ as ‘saw’, even after sounding the word out, I wondered whether there was a learning difficulty and I think a lot of teachers would categorise him that way.
But it’s because his learned instinct is to read right to left. Not only does this mean a learning difficulty is less likely, it actually shows proficient skill with reading, even if it reflects his culturally normalised way of doing it.
What a different outlook I have just for considering the cultural implications of skills like this.
“Cognitive - knowing about different cultures“
Absolutely vital and sorely underutilised aspect of TEFL. I have a student whose mother tongue is Arabic and he reads from right to left.
When I observed him reading ‘was’ as ‘saw’, even after sounding the word out, I wondered whether there was a learning difficulty and I think a lot of teachers would categorise him that way.
But it’s because his learned instinct is to read right to left. Not only does this mean a learning difficulty is less likely, it actually shows proficient skill with reading, even if it reflects his culturally normalised way of doing it.
What a different outlook I have just for considering the cultural implications of skills like this.